Debbie wrote:Allergies are getting me good this year. Normally they don't bother me....but this year is bad.
In my part of NJ, too. Every car is yellow, coated with tree pollen. I don't dare open my windows in the mornings when the pollen count is highest, and my son keeps his HEPA filter going in his bedroom and luckily works in an air conditioned store and takes an air conditioned light rail train on his commute so he's been able to skip his Zyrtec most days.
Mostly, it's my eyes. They itch and burn and water
I usually have dry eyes and have drops my ophthalmologist gave me. They help a bit, but they still itch like crazy. For years I've been told to stop rubbing my eyes (Even more important now to keep my hands away from my face!), but sometimes I just do it without thinking.
But I still wake up very clogged, nose and head. Super groggy.
I can't do allergy pills - they raise my blood pressure - but at night I use those Breathe Right strips. It helps a lot.
It still floors me there are food lines and food shortages in some areas.
It's weird around here in urban NJ. Stores like Costco and Walmart, even Target, still have people lining up outside hours before the stores open. Costco still has a placard in the lobby listing what "hot" items they do and don't have. I was in our Stop and Shop yesterday and the paper products aisle was bare except for a few packages of store brand napkins and some Bounty paper towels, and not one bag of frozen veggies. Half the tomato products, canned veggies including beans, pasta, and other food items were also still missing. The other big chain grocery stores in our city are the same. But we then went to a tiny CTown grocery store walking distance from our house, and they were fully stocked with everything they usually carried (Which isn't much - just the basics, not much more than a bodega or deli would carry). My son works in Target the next city over, and they've been fully stocked and had all but Lysol spray and all brands of disinfecting wipes for weeks now. He's been bringing home a bag of assorted items almost daily and we're fully loaded with TP and Puffs tissue. Their store has been getting as many truck deliveries daily as they got during the holiday season, he said. But at Stop and Shop and Shop Rite, the workers there said sometimes they've recently gone a week without one delivery. Rumor has it the distribution centers that do the Peapod and other home deliveries are getting first crack at warehouse deliveries and what they don't need is sent to the stores. I'm glad I started stocking up with rice and beans and plenty of dehydrated veggies, potatoes, and blueberries back in March, or I'd really be in trouble!
I keep hearing people screaming about meat shortages...But when I go to the store, I find all the meat sections are full.
2 weeks ago Stop and Shop's meat section was pretty bare, but yesterday it looked back to normal as I walked past it.
Its still the rice, beans, potatoes and other starchy staples that are in super short supply. I have enough for now...But there is this part of me that feels like I need to just get some because they have some...this time. Anyone else feel like this? It's odd.
I have stuff stored in every inch of free space in this apartment. Want the pinto beans? They're in the computer room closet. Brown rice? In the storage container under the Christmas decorations on the landing outside the front door. Dehydrated spinach? Just got a 5 pound box of it 2 weeks ago. It's over in the corner with the printer paper. Right now the big chain grocery stores are still short on rice, but the CTown as plenty of it, including 20 pound bags of white and 5 pound bags of brown. They may not be name brands, but it's decent rice.
We've been living like this since mid-March. I'm sure once people are allowed to go back to their jobs and stop ordering from Peapod and Instacart the stores will get their regular deliveries and things will go back to normal around here.
That's another thing - those pick-up and delivery services. Even now, open slots are rare. People still have to be awake at midnight and keep hitting the refresh button over and over and over again to get a date that's 2 weeks in the future, and then when your time comes up, the shoppers are on the phone with you for almost the entire shopping trip because the stuff you ordered 2 weeks ago is no longer in stock. I never even bothered trying to use a service like that, but I read on some of our city's unofficial Facebook groups all these people that do, and how frustrated and angry they are about it.
Grocery shopping was never on my list of favorite things to do, and many weeks it was down-right intolerable, but now it's ridiculous.
by Debbie » Sat May 16, 2020 12:02 pm 
