Wednesday, April 22, 2020. It was my high aspiration when all this began to keep a daily journal of life in the midst of COVID-19 changes and restrictions. Perhaps it goes to show that human beings can adapt to most anything given this entry comes after more than a month of hashtag #QuédateEnCasa" (Chile's slogan for sheltering at home) and doing so feels almost normal.
Today like most days of late, I began with listening to Pastor Ross Shannon's daily devotional on Facebook Live. Then I quickly did a voice recording reading chapter 30 of Elizabeth George's book Proverbios para el corazon de la mujer and sent it to multiple women via WhatsApp. Next I headed downstairs to join Pedro and the kids in watching Pastor David Doran Jr.'s teen Bible study on YouTube. While the kids and I finished up with prayer time, Pedro hurried upstairs for an online task force meeting. I purposely did not shower but dressed in yesterday's clothes because grocery shopping was scheduled for today! (Today's shopping was not primarily for our family but for giveaway food boxes.)
Initially due to safety reasons and later the requests that no children and only one person per family enter the stores, for the past month I have only shopped with my sister or another adult friend. Technically our daughter Eva is an adult, but she has no desire to go anywhere the coronovirus might be. Isabel, on other hand, has struggled with being homebound and today I decided that at 17 years + 10 months she is close enough to legal adulthood and an outing to the supermarket might do her mental health some good. Inviting her resulted in the additional perk of rousing her to a state of attentiveness for our morning family devotions, ha!
Our list was relatively simple and in some cases, limited by the store to only five of the same item such as liter boxes of milk, kilo bags of rice and/or beans, cooking oil, and clorox gel for cleaning. We also purchased boxes of oatmeal, cans of peaches and tuna fish, spaghetti noodles and tomato sauce, and boxes of teabags. Our giveaway boxes include all of this plus canned peas, flour, sugar, liquid hand soap, and occasionally other items if we have special requests (today one box contained frozen chicken, dish soap and eggs as well.) Unfortunately our first grocery store did not have canned peas and with two liters of milk per box, the allotment of five would not stretch sufficiently. So we delivered our first purchases home and proceeded to a second grocery store nearby.
This is our grocery story routine. First, we try to arrive promptly in the morning. Our nearest store previously opened from 8:30 AM to 10:00 PM but now opens from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM. During busier hours, a long line can form as the store limits the number of customers inside. Today we arrived around 9:25 AM and thankfully there was no wait. Second, we wear masks (cloth ones made by our friend Catalina that we wash afterwards) and we use clorox wipes to clean the handles and all around the cart before beginning to shop. Third, a guard at the store's entrance sprays our hands with alcohol gel and takes our temperatures by pointing a thermometer at our heads. Fourth, we rarely pay in cash anymore and we sorely miss the students who used to bag groceries for tips! Getting everything on and off the belt and packed makes the experience lengthy and laborious in comparison to more carefree times. Fifth, upon returning to the car we use clorox wipes to clean our hands, purses, debit cards, steering wheel, and whatever else is nearby. Then, when we deliver the groceries to the house our assembly line of kids use clorox wipes to disinfect the outside of every item before it goes inside. Sixth, at home we spray our shoes with Lysol and leave them in the sunshine while heading inside to shower and throw clothes and masks in the wash.
After many weeks of wishing to go to the store, Isabel admitted it was not nearly as fun anymore with all of the above to endure! But I was thankful for her company nonetheless and later in the day she helped me pack the giveaway boxes and joined me and Pedro to deliver them (another chance to get out of the house!) Before we did so, however, Pedro made his trademark slow roasted whole barbecue chickens on the grill to add to our deliveries. We also enjoyed lunch as a family and some down time in the afternoon. Later at night, we enjoyed some delicious homemade pan amasado made by Chris Ruz while we watched a couple of season two episodes of Scorpion. (Although watching the genius team save the world from a fast-multiplying infectious disease of unknown origins was somewhat disconcerting given the times in which we are living!) Finally, before bed I watched Bonnie Truax's "In This Together" video including clips Isabel, Ian and I had submitted about life in Chile under COVID-19 conditions which were edited along with testimonies from around the world. There is a measure of comfort in knowing that from Australia to India to Chile to the States, our lives are similarly reflected in these strange new customs and routines that will not last forever.
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