Shelf-Stable Goods

I visited the NY Botanical Garden with my BFF yesterday, whose special-needs kids will likely be home for weeks so I won't get to see her for a while. They won't get educational therapy while they're at home, so she despairs of keeping them entertained while trying to get work done.

The orchids were very pretty. There weren't many people around. We had lunch in the sit-down restaurant, overpriced but tasty; the place was more than half full.

I went with my friend to the Aldi on Broadway in the Bronx. The lines wrapped up and down the aisles, and she later reported the shelves weren't being restocked because the cashiers are supposed to do that. I didn't need anything from there so I went home; I had a shopping list for my own neighborhood, as Spouse started working from home today.

The express bus passed the Met Museum, where fewer people than usual were lingering on the steps. I felt heartsick for the street vendors who won't have thousands of tourists thronging their carts for weeks and weeks. I hope they can survive.

As I rode a bus home, my iPod offered up, in a row:
The Weeping Song, Nick Drake
I Wanna Be Sedated, the Ramones
Bad Medicine, Bon Jovi

THEN the supermarket all-70s muzak offered up OH MY MY by Ringo Starr. "I called up my doctor to see what's the matter, He said come on over, I said do I haveta..."

THANKS UNIVERSE.

I bought a lot of durable groceries this week, to supplement the stuff we already had: rice, pasta, ramen, canned tomatoes, butter, cheese, potatoes, turnips, carrots, hummus, peanut butter, crackers, chocolate, cookies, frozen sausage, frozen veggies, matzoh, popcorn. Hot sauce for all the rice and beans in our future. WINE. Got a hunk of corned beef for the weekend and a head of cabbage, enough to share with Spouse's elderly aunt whom we are still planning to visit on Sunday.

(We already had beans, coconut milk, jam, canned soup & shelf-stable broth, corn chips, pumpkin, couscous, bulgur, cornmeal, coffee, tea, cereal, raisins, nuts, granola bars, chutney. Ordered more Birds & Beans coffee the 2 of us usually drink 3 cups a day total.)

Eggs keep for over a month in the fridge. We eat a lot of eggs. I bought a lot of eggs. There were plenty in the stores.

The supermarket has lines, as does the gourmet market, but I've seen worse on just regular weekends. Shelves were being restocked all week. The usual stuff was flying out: paper goods (we have plenty), bread (we have enough), Clorox wipes (we have LOTS). I did buy extra laundry detergent and dishwashing liquid. Gourmet market coffee was partly cleaned out today -- a lot of people won't be going to Starbucks next week as usual.

I got good at prepping due to 9/11, Hurricane Sandy and various big blizzards. I know how to cook meats and veg nobody else seems to bother with. Today I got oxtails that I can freeze, and make stew whenever, same as I did during Sandy when more popular fresh meats were scarce. The freezer also contains random sausages, a package of ground bison for chili, and a roast chicken carcass for soup.

Pretzels don't seem popular with food hoarders, while chips & popcorn go fast. Judging by what's gone first, I suspect a lot of the folks emptying the shelves don't actually cook very much, and aren't entirely sure what to buy or how much. They aren't buying things to eat NOW -- fresh fish or fresh produce, only fresh meat, so maybe they're freezing all that chicken? First rule of prepping, don't eat the storeable goods until all else is gone!

I should've bought fish for tonight's dinner but I forgot as soon as I had ground lamb in hand, so oh well, so much for my own advice...

Why I HATE the current crop of Republicans

Some leading Republican politicians think poor people still aren't poor enough. Hence their redoubled efforts to take yet more money away from the mass majority of Americans, and fork it over to insurance company CEOs instead. Never mind that actual human beings -- including children -- will go hungry, or suffer pain and hardship because of untreated illness, or end up sleeping in their cars because they can't pay rent. Here's a lovely list  by John Scalzi, of so many of the effects of poverty on a person. (And here is a followup post he made, too.) 

My family didn't have much money when I was a kid; we lived with my grandparents and aunt and uncle, we made do until I was in 3rd grade. When I was 5 I didn't know that my supermarket meltdown over a box of heavily advertised cereal -- that I then refused to eat -- meant we did without other things that week. I didn't know why we bought bread at the Silvercup day-old store instead of across the street at the supermarket. I didn't know fabric and thread for homemade clothes were cheaper than store-bought clothes. I thought shopping in bargain odd lot stores was fun, not just necessary. Things got much better after my dad got a new job. When he got very sick -- twice -- and needed hospitalizations, operations and lengthy recuperation, the union he belonged to made sure we had health coverage, and made sure his job was still there once he recovered.

And, I didn't know how many of those poverty habits were left over from my father living through the Depression, or my mother surviving as a teenager in a Displaced Persons camp after World War II. They never took good times for granted. Ever.

I become absolutely ENRAGED when smug Republican shitgibbons try to suggest poor people are just stupid, or unworthy, or a lower class of animal. Poverty can happen to anyone because bad shit can happen to anyone. 

Yes, I'm one of the privileged now: we don't have to choose between a smartphone bill and a grocery bill, we have health insurance, renters' insurance and we have retirement funds. But not a lot of things have to go wrong for us to upend us. And I have too many friends who truly live on the edge of disaster, through no faults of their own, to ever feel comfortable enough to not worry about growing old in a society being overrun by these hypocritical shitgibbons who lack sympathy, empathy and humanity.

There's a lot of poor-shaming going on. A lot of well-off people think poverty is somehow a "choice" or that poor people aren't being inventive or aren't "thinking positive" or praying hard enough or whatever shit they use to excuse their own lack of caring about other people. There are people who think they are Christians who go to megachurches and pray very loudly, but don't actually pay attention to anything Jesus or his disciples were quoted as saying. These "prosperity gospel" fatheads aren't Christian. They belong to a much older type of religion in which the gods were sometimes kind and sometimes cruel without reason, much like the view of god in the Book of Job. They're basically pagans with a Biblical veneer. 

I'm not a Christian either, so I can wholeheartedly say, without fear of burning in hell, that I hope those smug smiles get wiped off their faces by Fate someday. I hope they end up dumpster diving for their next meal someday. I hope they have to buy an interview outfit at Goodwill. I hope they feel desperate someday. I hope they learn humanity.