A creature of oil and mess and stain

Day 35. No baguette. My mistake: Too early to the grocery, before they'd received their bread delivery.

I am starting to find my groove. Yoga, jigsaw puzzle, German lessons. Work. Watch a movie, read a book. I could almost enjoy lockdown. Except for the part where I have to procure provisions.

Yesterday I ventured to the pharmacy. Hands sanitized, but stopped at the door. Questioned, instructed, and allowed in. (I hesitated, wondering if my list really warranted a trip. What did I need here that I couldn't get on my weekly grocery trip?)

Approach the counter, let the employee know what you want and he'll go get it for you.

Extra-strength Tylenol. Small or large?

Hair conditioner. Brand? I don't know. Whatever's on sale. (Can I smell it first?)

Cortisone ointment, I brought an empty tube. But I want the higher percentage.

Pads, do they still call them maxi pads? Mini pads? I need a pack of regular, and pack of long, or heavy flow. Brand? I don't know. I usually stare at the shelf for ten minutes wishing I had the gene for brand loyalty and trying to remember what I bought last time. (Have I really been doing this for more than 30 years?) He brings me a package. No, I want thin. (They still make non-thin?) No, not panty liners. Yes, that'll do. And a pack now for heavy flow.

Maybe toilet paper. How much is it?

And on it goes.

Some things, like cat litter and kleenex, I decide can wait till I'm browsing grocery store shelves myself.

Do they have any Easter chocolate left? Am I allowed to ask that? There are now two women waiting behind me. (Well, one woman is two metres behind me; the other is standing near the entrance, to ensure appropriate physical distancing.)

It's not often I have to articulate my shopping list and the micro decisions regarding size, brand, quantity. And in another language to boot. [I remember needing bandaids in Portugal, 1993. (And a corkscrew.) Everything in Poland, 1994.]

Still reading Eimear McBride's Strange Hotel.

While she may not consider herself to have achieved any particular greatness in life, it's been hard enough to keep on clocking those decades up. To get to her late forties has taken a lot of ploughing through. There may have been considerable work put into forgetting too — sometimes with more success than she cares to admit — but without those accumulations displayed in plain sight it would be as if she had never lived at all. She'll not stoop to clichés about the blank canvas of youth — despite, generally, subscribing to their truth. She's just not unhappy about being a creature of oil and mess and stain. She has been bitten and will bite and there is a life in her home, even when she is not around, which bodily exists and is true.

I regret not asking for smokehouse almonds. They're hard to find.