Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Preparing to hunker down...

 January 25, 2023


The headline on the Weather Network’s website this past Monday began with: “Winter strikes back at Ontario…” Of course, my first thought was that this could not possibly be good. Next, I did pause a moment to wonder what Ontario could conceivably have done to result in winter wanting to strike back. But then I brushed that useless bit of thinking aside. The way things are going in this province lately, it quite literally could have been anything and everything.

The long and the short of it is that we are expecting (according to the weather network) sixteen and a half inches of the white stuff from this morning, (Wednesday), through next Tuesday. I of course informed my beloved of this impending doom on Monday shortly after I discovered it and in response he scoffed, and asked, “did you check the 14 day forecast? That one will really scare you!”

I admitted I had not, and after a respectable amount of time had passed so that I did not give off an air of alarm, I did just that. Oh, goody, we get not quite the same amount of the white stuff all over again in the seven days after this week, but it shows us down into the sub-zero temperatures, again! So as you read this, dear friends, the Ashbury household is getting ready to receive more than two feet of snow, and to be shivering in their timbers for several days.

As luck would have it, one of the things that was on the calendar for two days from now—Friday—was grocery shopping. We’re still trying to figure out our new shopping schedule, and yes, this is actually another recalculation yet again. We adjusted for Covid. Then we adjusted for inflation, which is to say, we stretched our trips out to every two weeks, from weekly in an attempt to make things last longer. David and I are already eating much smaller portions than we did even a year ago. The every-two-week pattern of shopping did help some, and that was before we factored in being alert for “sales”. Our belief in this household is that a sale is only a good deal if it’s something we would have bought anyway.

Recently, however, David has been finding it increasingly difficult to lug in a lot of items in one day. With the end of the good weather and the return of the snow, our method of importing items from car to house has to change. He can’t use his trusty garden wagon in the snow, and I can’t park on the steep hill at the south side of the house. So between us and our daughter, we are working on going to the two area grocery stores a bit more often and buying a fewer number of items each trip. It’s going to be interesting to see how that works out for us over the next week or so.

Provided, of course, on whether we are able to go out on Friday, or if we’ll be snowed in.

Modern living certainly is complicated. I don’t mind that so much, so long as my brain is still providing me with the capacity to work things out. Despite all the new hoops that we seem to need to navigate our way over, around, and through, we consider ourselves very lucky.

We’re not rich, but we do manage to get by. And one of the reasons we don’t fret very much anymore is that we’ve redefined downward the number and types of things that we’re willing to fret about. We’re way passed the age where we need to acquire possessions. We didn’t even buy each other Christmas gifts this past year. It just wasn’t important to us to do that, in the larger scheme of things.

We’ve no plans to travel in the near or even medium future, because we’re focused on the here and the now. This is a transitional time for us both. We’re all just exiting the reality of living in a pandemic world and need to learn to adjust to living with Covid-19 as an endemic virus for which we will (likely) get annual shots, just like we do for the flu. I think a couple of years ago I mentioned that possible future for us all. You can’t know anything about viruses without understanding that there are two things they like to do: mutate, and live.

I had believed we had a chance to eradicate it, but that belief was predicated upon my faith that most people, being of good will and sound mind, would follow best practices and get vaccinated, as soon as a vaccine came available. But despite my disappointment that my optimism wasn’t borne out this time, I will still always, if given the choice, bet on the intelligence and goodness of perfect strangers. I truly do believe that there are more good people who will act for the public good than there are evil or even selfish ones.

Optimism, and the feeling of positivity I enjoy while trusting in others can also be their own reward.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury


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