What Day is it Anyway?

So, is this week 24 of the Corona Virus lockdown? Or week 25? I get confused somedays. It’s a failing. Today is a Wednesday and my trash guy always comes on Wednesdays. So that is one fixed point. On the other hand, he came super early and I missed putting out a few additions to his haul. But was yesterday really Tuesday? I sort of lost track of the days when the Trump Show started running seven days a week. It was even on the same day as the “Sunday Shows” which are usually another drumbeat in my weekly calendar.

And I stopped getting the print version of the three newspapers I read. The hefty Sunday editions are another clue that I no longer have. But by the time I sat down to read the “real” paper I’d clucked over every single story in the digital version, and sometimes twice on the same story if they changed the headline or the picture, (which is a sneaky new thing digital editors are doing now to test my memory.) On the other hand, a friend told me that the Sunday print versions are no longer so hefty as they were. The ads and the circulars are now next to nothing. Not so many people rushing out to buy patio furniture and tires this week, I guess.

Yesterday mid-morning I went to the grocery store for a “big shop.” I was trying to game when best to go. Super early was out of the question, even though there are special times set aside for me and my aged cohort. I tried this once and couldn’t see how being in a line with so many codgers advanced my health and hygiene situation. But yesterday was Tuesday — I checked — and I reasoned that some people might be at work at their essential jobs, or at home glued to their laptops and headsets, or supervising ZOOM school time with their kids. So, that seemed a good bet. It was a triumph. I waited outside in line for maybe 10 minutes. The rain wasn’t terrible. And everyone had their masks on. Some had disposable gloves and see-through face shields too. I’m pretty sure everyone had a squirt botttle of Purel in their pockets just in case. There was no eye-contact either. Everyone was deep into cell-phone study hall. I realized something else about the face masks and the face shields and the cellphones: you can’t see anyone smile. No human acknowledgement that we are all in the same predicament, sort of a funny-tragic epoch. But I missed that shared sense of irony as I was very, very careful to touch only the mangos I planned to buy. And never to get too close to another shopper deliberating over rainbow chard versus swiss kale.

Usually shopping trips are a kind of up for me. I’m an ambitious cook and I love to ponder what I might make in the days to come. Will I make Bolognese? A ratatouille? The new coconut curry recipe I read? But here I was shopping for the weeks to come, and I know now that nary a dinner guest or coffee klatch friend will drop by to share our goodies. So, I held back. There’s only the two of us. And while I could cook for the cast of Survivor without a blink, they are not coming. Not even on Saturday night. On tonight. Or Wednesday. Wait, was it already Wednesday?