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Catherine Gardner, a low-income woman living in Ottawa, is lobbying to have thrift stores declared essential:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/open-letter-thrift-stores-essential-ontario-1.5904854

Sounds like a great idea to me. You may be familiar with the anti-Walmart slogan "The high cost of low price" but even Walmart's supposedly low prices may be out of reach for many. Thrift store prices are typically even lower and the merchandise, while pre-owned, is often more durable and of better overall quality than that sold in big-box stores. I really believe there's something in that old adage that they don't make things the way they used to. Moreover, being much more environmentally sustainable, thrift store shopping, at least for some products, is really a win/win solution: low cost, low environmental footprint.

Is it easier or harder to be thrifty during a pandemic? I suppose it depends on a number of things. Staying at home, you probably spend far less even on local travel, whether by private car, public transit, bicycle, sled or even just on foot. And that's before you consider inter-city or international travel of any kind.

Day-to-day shopping like groceries? Well, we're more organized about it these days, generally shopping only on alternate Mondays. We don't eat out any more and haven't been getting take-out meals but when it comes to the food we buy at the grocery store, I'd say we've definitely been spending more. Part of it is an overall increase in food prices; another tendency I have, with certain shelves at the supermarket being quite depleted, is to shift spending towards a pricier alternative - for example, fruits and vegetables that are marked organic or heritage, or the Amy's soups which are tasty and fairly healthy, but more expensive than Campbell's or President's Choice. Although we don't buy meat, the plant-based alternatives tend to cost just as much, if not more. Then there's the mode of payment: pre-pandemic, we always used cash so if we didn't have enough with us for certain extras, we did without or went back later; or we waited till we found the item on special. But since Covid struck, cash purchases are not widely accepted, and certainly are discouraged. So except for the summer farmers' markets, I've been using a credit card for everything, whether on line or off. That does tend to encourage more spending at any one time, as well as feeling a little less "real" and conscious than cash.

With more time on my hands, I find I've been sorting through stuff a lot more, which I guess is good. I'm finding stuff I'd like to donate, like clothing, books and unneeded household goods. But then, with thrift stores closed, there's no place to take the surplus stuff. Pickups have been cancelled as have city-wide giveaway weekends where you can put unwanted items out by the curb and let people help themselves if they're interested.

Speaking of books, I'm buying a lot more of them online now that libraries are closed; I'm more likely to take a chance on buying something I'm slightly interested in and will probably read only once, whereas before I would have just gotten it from the library (or one of those fabulous second-hand book sales at a much lower price). On a more positive note, I AM getting around to reading some of those books in my collection that I could never get around to before!

I was musing today about Girl Guides and thrift badges, wondering whether they were still a Thing. While there have been numerous changes to Guiding over the years, it seems Guides do still work towards earning their stripes when it comes to money management. Here are a couple of links I found interesting, from U.K. and Canadian Guiding sites:

http://guidebadgesuk.com/Thrift.htm

https://www.girlguides.ca/WEB/Documents/GGC/programs/Deep_Dive_BuildSkills.pdf

Think of all the getting-around challenges you've faced since the pandemic began. Maybe you've been diligent about following those arrows in the grocery store, ensuring you're not going up the down aisle or vice versa, even if it means going down an aisle you didn't really want to go down at all. Maybe you've squinted helplessly at all those tiny little ingredients lists on the tins of soup, doubly stressed because there are people waiting to get to that aisle and only a certain number of people are allowed per aisle. Maybe you've walked in vain along an aisle looking for a bag of flour or a package of toilet paper, only to be confronted with empty shelves and "Sorry, all sold out" signs.

Now imagine having to forage for essentials if you have low or no vision.

I have yet to encounter a store that provides auditory signals for blind or partially sighted people, though I'm grateful to whoever initiated the idea of special shopping hours for seniors and folks with disabilities. And fortunately, guide dogs are not required to observe the same physical distancing restrictions as humans, although I understand there's a big problem with importing and training new guide dogs these days.

Then there are all the logistics of negotiating crosswalks and public transit, all of which are much more problematic during a pandemic.

So for the above reasons and any others I haven't thought about yet, I've decided to direct this week's donation to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, better known as the CNIB:

https://cnib.ca/en/sight-loss-info/virtual-program-offerings-covid-19-resources?region=on_east

Today was another grocery shopping day. We bravely got up for seniors' shopping hour, despite having only slept in fits and starts, what with two or three waves of thunderstorms last night.

Remarkably, there was no apparent property damage when we got up and our garbage and recycling bins that we put out yesterday were still sitting calmly by the curb, waiting to be emptied. We didn't lose power overnight either. On the political front, the news was not so good - I'm crossing my fingers that maybe when the next election rolls around, folks who would normally vote Conservative but do not hold particularly conservative social values will consider moving towards the Liberals. Unfortunately I don't feel the NDP have a particularly good leader at the moment. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that the parties will work together on some of the critical issues that transcend party affiliation.

Grocery stores don't seem to be as busy these days and the shelves are a little better stocked. Flour was no problem today. But I still couldn't get tapioca (which we use mainly as a thickening agent in pies), the cauli-crumble we like or full-sheet paper towels. The lettuce still didn't look great, but I got some that looked OK; on the plus side, a number of the things we needed were on special. I stocked up on canned beans, soups, crackers, coffee and orange juice. I also found some Ontario nectarines, which were excellent.

They've started charging for plastic bags again, but they still aren't allowed to help you load your own re-usable bags and they still ask that there be only one shopper to a household. Add to that the fact that we're now trying to do two weeks' worth of shopping at a time and it generally means that since I'm on my own at the cash, the cashier is usually ringing things in faster than I can load everything on to the conveyor belt, let alone pack it (and they often have two employees on a checkout lane: one to ring things in and the other to pack them). It's great that they're so efficient and I did manage to pack a few things myself.

Anyway, after getting the grocery shopping done, we thought we'd detour up to the Shouldice stand on Prince of Wales for strawberries and corn on the cob... except it was too early for them to be open. We did go back a little later, though and managed to get what we wanted. Then I baked cake, then it was time to watch physically distanced Coronation Street...

So life goes on. We're not really hurting from the "new normal", it's just that everything is so much more convoluted and time-consuming than before. And some of the things we'd like to be doing are still not possible, even at this stage of re-opening. But it could be worse...

So after working OK again for maybe a day and a half, the display options here seem once again to have gone kittywampus on me. No capability of showing my Reading page, Recent entries or Archive, although I still seem able to do the posting and editing functions. It's all quite bizarre.

As far as the mid-pandemic re-opening and loosening restrictions schedules go, I'm finding it all somewhat confusing. To be sure, there is some progress in the right direction. Checkpoints on bridges between Ottawa and Gatineau were finally removed yesterday, though not without some dire warnings that they might at any time be reinstated if we don't behave ourselves. On our walks lately, we've actually seen people playing in parks and in one case sitting on a bench (which I think technically is still a no-no). Apparently the City of Ottawa is now using "park ambassadors" (with green T-shirts or red jackets) to educate the park-using public about what is or isn't allowed instead of bylaw officers with the power to issue outrageous fines for any violation of the rules. I haven't seen any of them so far. But all the one-household and physical distancing restrictions and limits on gatherings of more than five people are still in place as far as I know. Standalone stores with street entrances are allowed to open again although I'm not sure many are ready to do so with existing limitations. And even online shopping is confusing when it's not clear which items may be obtained in-store, which via curbside pickup and which can be delivered.

We went for groceries today during seniors' hour and I actually was told I mustn't use our reusable grocery bags. I had to leave them on some shelving between the two sets of doors and collect them on the way out. The sign outside the store also specified "One shopper per household if possible". As with previous trips, I was the Designated Shopper (since I can't be the Designated Driver); I did think the "if possible" was at least a good sign that they had taken note of the challenges that a rigid lone-shopper policy would pose for some families.

I managed to get most of the items on our grocery list. Their stock was rather depleted in some areas though, perhaps in part because it was just after a long weekend. There weren't any of the larger varieties of tomatoes, for example. Not much in the way of ready-to-serve soups, though I did get some Amy's soups from the organics section. No tins of pineapple; no charcoal briquettes. I had to buy microfiltred milk rather than the regular 2% though I did find half-and-half and our preferred type of yogurt and all of the types of cheese we wanted. They were out of our black bean burgers and our food-waste bags. On the plus side, I was pleased to find a 5kg bag of all-purpose flour as well as shortening and pecans. And in the beer section I found some local brews, Broadhead (stout and blueberry) and some Flying Canoe hard cider.

So we're good to go for another couple of weeks. Meanwhile, we're keeping an eye on the local markets site and Burrow Shop.

Today we made our second pandemic-era grocery trip. I'm pleased to say we are now well-stocked with most things, although the trip was a little more harrowing than last time.

As before, we got there early to take advantage of seniors' hour. This time it took pretty nearly the whole hour to do the shopping.

A number of things had changed. For starters, I did have to line up outside the store, although the wait was a short one. A lot more people were wearing masks, myself included - just a home-made one so not medical quality, but I guess it stopped me from breathing moistly on people and produce!

Then there's the one-shopper-to-a-household rule. For us, that's doable though not ideal (more on that later) - I navigated the grocery aisles while my driver waited in the car reading The Testaments. But what about the single parent with kids who are too young to be left home alone? Under normal circumstances, they might be at school or day care or you could at least phone a babysitter to come to your place and watch them. None of that is allowed these days!

There's also the shop-no-more-than-once-a-week rule. Again, that's feasible for us and in fact, we've been aiming for roughly once a fortnight instead. If we upped it to once a month, we might be inching perilously close to hoardery! But I have many friends who do not have a car or driver at their disposal so they only buy as much per visit as they can carry. I'm sure my resident driver would be willing to take them shopping - but that's now a no-no too!

So anyway, I went bravely into the fray. As mentioned before, I'm not a driver but those humongous shopping carts, if rather unwieldy, do help with physical distancing!

The aisles now have arrows along them, indicating which way you're supposed to go along any particular aisle. In theory, you'd think that might make traffic flow a little easier, but that's not necessarily how it works in practice. If you get to an aisle flowing in the right direction but where you don't need anything, should you go down it anyway (adding needlessly to congestion) to get to the aisle you DO want? Or should you bypass the next two aisles and go down the third one, and just hope you remember to loop back to the aisle you missed?

Now a few words about shortages. The one item on my list I couldn't find AT ALL was flour. Just a sea of empty shelf space where flour should have been. Flour strikes me as a pretty basic pantry staple, unless maybe you've gone gluten-free, but luckily we do still have SOME. Maybe it's down to all those households busily baking bread, ourselves included. Although we do still have plenty of bread around, I'm finding myself doing a Marie Antoinette, saying, "Let us eat cake!" Or at least muffins or cookies?

As for other products, I sometimes couldn't find our preferred type or brand of something, but I at least managed a reasonable facsimile. And I'm pleased to report that they no longer had signs posted in the milk aisle asking us to limit what we bought. So I got a 4-litre bag of milk and a full-sized carton of half-and-half.

When it came time to check out, I noticed a long line-up at the cash, so I asked if any self-checkout stations were available. And there was one, with no waiting. What I hadn't realized at that point was that the one long line-up was actually for three open check-out lanes - the queuing system had changed since last time, when it was still one line per checkout (or actually maybe it wasn't - on that occasion there was no waiting, and we were simply told to go through a particular checkout lane).

So anyway, I went to the self-checkout station with my big full shopping cart and only a few of my own cloth bags. This was when it certainly would have been easier if we'd been shopping as a couple! One person to scan the items, the other to pack. My partner had suggested just wheeling all the groceries out to the car and bagging them there. But I quickly realized that if I did that, I'd be unable to keep track of what I'd scanned and what I hadn't! So I supplemented my cloth bags with a generous supply of the (now free) plastic bags at my checkout station. They're pretty flimsy things and one of them broke before I even got out of the store. I finally got everything scanned, although the silly computer insisted that my bananas were white-flesh peaches! I think maybe I mistook some obscure number on them for a barcode. Once everything was bagged, I wheeled the unwieldy grocery cart outside and through the parking lot (which mercifully was not busy). En route, one of the bags escaped the bottom rack of the cart. I was flustered enough that I probably wouldn't have even noticed. Luckily some kind soul drew my attention to it and I retrieved the bag. Luckily too, it didn't contain eggs or anything breakable or seriously fragile.

We made it home in one piece. Well, two pieces not counting the car or all the bags of groceries we had to schlepp inside.

I'm already thinking ahead to how we should approach things next time. Should we continue with our biweekly schedule? Should we still go up there together but split our list in half and shop with two separate carts in different parts of the store? Some would say that's cheating the system but I see it as more hands make lighter work, enabling us to get out of there in half the time it took me today.

I may just drop Galen a line and tell him what I think.