Familiar, Yet Weird

Grocery shopping this week was a mixture of familiar and weird.

  On Wednesday, I went to Trader Joe's for the first time since school closed.  I arrived shortly before they opened, and found a line of people waiting to get in.  They were all practicing proper social distancing, standing six feet apart.

Near the door, in Trader Joe's typical artistic fashion, there was a sign asking us to not buy more than two of anything, and not to fill more than one cart of groceries.  That wasn't hard, since they were out of half the things on my list, like quinoa and canned corn. I also can't find white whole wheat flour for love or money. :-/

Our main grocery store seems to have a new social distancing rule every time I go.  This week, they asked us to wait in a long line (six feet apart) once we were done shopping, so an employee could assign us to the next cash register that was free.  I worried my ice cream would melt while I waited, but the line moved along pretty quickly.  It was just, you know, weird.  Like everything else these days.

Actually, what's really weird is that a night owl like me got up in the pre-dawn hours to stand shivering outside the grocery store at 7am when it open its doors to people under the age of 60.  I've heard that if you go in when they first open, you have a better chance of finding popular items before they sell out.  It seemed to work, but it was rough getting up that early.  Yet another reason to only go shopping once every week or two.