We were greeted by a white labradoodle with a tuft of bright pink hair on its head. The pooch aptly set the tone for our visit.The shop was filled with an assortment of Curiosities, hence the name of the place. Politician bobble heads, shot glasses with sayings on them, socks for every occasion...
There were several other patrons of all ages milling about, everyone scootching by each other in the tight corners of the shop. But I honestly didn't see much activity at the cash register. I also ended up not making a purchase.
We'd decided to go downtown to visit a local gift shop. Our realtor had given me a gift card for the place, so it was an excuse to walk around Old Town on a decent weather day.
After we'd left the shop and had a mediocre lunch served by unmasked, ungloved food handlers in a restaurant with other people eating similarly mediocre food, we continued walking around other unmasked people walking around on the nice prelude-to-spring day.
At one intersection, the railroad arms came down as yet another freight train approached. I'd recently blogged about the strange presence of trains blasting through town at all hours. Even though we'd sort of gotten used to the trains, it was strange to have one blast through the middle of downtown. Magnum snapped a pic.
I think this was the last pic before the current lockdown became a thing. Coronavirus and quarantines were in the news, but we were still going about the "normal" day-to-day. Wondering about our toilet paper inventory wasn't a thing. I was working a predictable schedule at the cafe' along with tutoring a few students preparing for their April tests that didn't happen.
While I worry about the virus lingering and the effects on the economy and other ripples, I feel optimistic. But maybe that's just my nature and has no root in reality.
I hope to someday soon be able to walk into a shop of nothing I want to buy and eat a meal at a restaurant I would not recommend.
Trains are welcome too.
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Linking up this week with Mama Kat for the prompt:
3. Show us the last picture you took BEFORE quarantine. Write about that moment/day.
And maybe this prompt also applies in regard to lunch that day:
1. Write about a time you wasted your money.
13 comments:
Abby as I read this great story I kept thinking, wow they aren't in quarantine like us. then I got to the bottom and it was explained. Whew. I too hope we'll be fine but I fear we'll be fine after a much longer time shut down. If I win the lottery tonight I'll be moving to an undisclosed location with only my dog and my hubby and it will be atop a mountain somewhere. :-)
Peggy, yep, we can still buy lottery tickets! So there's that.
Abby you can buy them now online. I bet for gamblers this is a big issue.
I tell you what - you would never know there was a virus going on here - except for some people wearing masks (me).
We are going to take a small trip tomorrow.
I know what you mean.
Sandie, our restrictions have been somewhat lifted, and I notice plenty of traffic, but we're not quite to Georgia standards. Enjoy your outing!
People wearing masks actually creep me out. They feel impersonal and makes speech muffled sounding. I feel like I'm living in a horrible Alfred Hitchcock movie. But the truth about the virus is full of unknowns and they've been working off a guess-work predictive model. They've just recently concluded that cases were they thought the virus was reoccuring wasn't true. It wasn't reoccuring, but the test was a mis-read, because of how human bodies shed the virus. A misread! I have to wonder how much more is a "misread" that's effecting policies that will later be a "nope we were wrong." I just read today that the reason Miami was so hard hit wtih the virus is because people from New York fled there and brought it with them. True story.
MDW, I believe there are plenty of "misreads" to be had and any reported statistics and predictions have large margins of error. This is learn-as-we-go.
I generally have that same sort of optimism. But I also have a strange penchant for the post=apocalyptic genre, so sometimes my brain goes there.
Larz, I have a similar penchant, so I get it!
I went out and found myself comforted by all the masks I saw, and annoyed by the non-masked. I agree with you about tuition costs. There should be a break if the students aren't getting what they signed on for.
Linda, I've seen very few who don't mask up to grocery shop, but hardly anyone wears a mask when outside around here. I'm sure many are grumbling about tuition for online-only classes, but whatcha gonna do? The university is planning to reopen for fall semester.
Okay I too, was reading your post thinking how strange it was that you guys are allowed to go back to normal and then my aha moment came...beforrrre Quarantine. Someday lovely adventures will be allowed again and this will all be a thing of the past!
Ahhhh, the good old days, BQ...Before Quarantine.
In a matter of a few weeks, I think we've all done look-backs on so much of what we took for granted, especially toilet tissue.
I think we're all in for new adventures as states slowly reopen. I just hope that everyone's mad rush towards whatever the new "norm" will be doesn't end up biting us all in the posterior should this virus do an about-face.
Stay safe!
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