Today started with a bunch of pharmacy nonsense and a trip to the grocery store, so you will forgive me for being a little cranky. I called the doctor last Thursday to refill a prescription – one needed daily – and it hadn’t been filled as of yesterday, so I called back yesterday. (“Hmm. I don’t know what happened,” said the nurse, which is not really a confidence builder.) And when I called the pharmacy this morning to check on the prescription, it was not there. Today was the day of the final dose of the medication, so I was beginning to get a little panicky. So I called the doctor AGAIN, and spoke to the nurse AGAIN, and she informed me that the prescription had been called in, and gave me specifics as to time/date, and so instead of CALLING the pharmacy again, I drove there and waited in line at the drive-through.

The pharmacy tech was very nice but – even though the prescription was called in yesterday morning, which seems like plenty of time to have it ready and waiting – she had to go through some rigamarole known only to her to figure out what I was talking about. And then she said, “Oh, it’s too early for you to get the refill.” Um. What? We had a very confusing exchange, with her telling me it was only a 30-day supply and that it was too soon for me to get the refill. When a) I am 100% sure that the bottle was empty as of this morning and b) there were only 30 pills in the bottle to begin with, and yet I know there have been some occasions that the daily dose wasn’t taken for Reasons, so we have surely had the bottle for more than 30 days. She asked if I had the bottle in front of me, to look at the date I picked it up. Well, NO. I did not bring an empty bottle with me to the pharmacy. Oh, okay, she would look at her computer. (Sigh.) She kept insisting that it was a 30-day supply, and it had last been filled on September 28, and I kept insisting that September 28 was MORE than 30 days ago, and then we finally figured out that she thought it was October 10, not November 10. DEEP BREATHS. 

But then, of course, she couldn’t give me the prescription right away. So I left without it and will have to make another trip to the pharmacy to pick it up FUN TIMES EVERYONE. 

It all turned out okay – I mean, presumably; I don’t actually HAVE the prescription in my hands yet – but it reminded me of a million years ago when I was pregnant and was trying desperately to get a refill of Zofran – which was absolutely the only way I could get through the work day. And the prescribed amount – I don’t remember exactly, but let’s say it’s three pills a day – worked out to be 90 pills to cover 30 days of violent nausea, and yet the 30-day supply that insurance would cover was something like 45 pills. So, half of what you needed in order to follow the doctor’s orders. And you could go around insurance and get more, but it would cost nine billion dollars. I am willing to bet that I am exaggerating slightly. Then, like today, the medicine was really, really important to day-to-day functioning, but was not like, critically important to the point of keeping someone ALIVE, so it felt almost greedy to be asking for an appropriate doctor-prescribed supply. Today’s experience, until we discovered that the pharmacy tech was a little off in terms of her place in time (and who can blame her?), reminded me of that awful feeling of, “But these pills are NECESSARY” and not knowing how to get around it. Anyway, I hate dealing with medications and refills and pharmacies and it is all terrible. 

You can imagine that I wasn’t in the most festive of shopping moods after the pharmacy hoopla. The grocery store experience has become much more routine for me, for which I am grateful. But continued random shortages – cleaning supplies are still extremely difficult to come by, and today the frozen breakfast food supply was very picked over – plus ongoing pandemic uncertainty makes shopping super uncomfortable. 

This is not a new realization, nor is it unique to me, but today it was more clear than ever that this pandemic has completely changed how I think/feel about grocery shopping. The fear that I am going to be stuck at home for an unspecified amount of time without access to a grocery store, coupled with the fear that, at any moment, some household staple will be suddenly unavailable for an unspecified amount of time, has become pathological. For instance, I passed an end-cap of flour, which was ON SALE for the first time since the pandemic began. And I had to have a very long, calming, frightened-pet-hiding-under-the-porch talk with myself about how I have plenty of flour at home and I can, fortunately, afford to pay a higher price for flour should this be the only time it ever goes on sale again, and there are other places that sell flour should it become unavailable at this particular grocery store, and I can, in fact, live entirely WITHOUT flour if I need to. I managed to talk myself down from piling on-sale flour (ON SALE) into my cart, but it took a bit. 

I was NOT able to talk myself out of grabbing two more cartons of chicken stock, which I don’t think has ever been in short supply, and which can be MADE at home, and which can be substituted with lots of alternatives. But it was on sale and I use chicken stock a lot and knowing that I have FIVE (5) quarts of chicken stock at home just didn’t make me feel as good as buying two additional cartons. 

I had a very panicked few minutes looking at chicken nuggets in the freezer aisle. Carla’s main source of protein is chicken nuggets, and listen, we can all discuss why that’s probably something I should work on changing at a later date. But for NOW, I feel like they are Very Important and I should always have some and a backup at home. Well, I have a near-empty container at home right now, plus two brand-new, unopened containers, PLUS Carla is capable of eating other sources of chicken, PLUS there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of chicken nuggets right now, PLUS we could always go to one of the many fast-food restaurants within a ten-mile radius of our home to procure chicken nuggets if we became absolutely desperate, PLUS Carla would totally survive even if there were a chicken-nugget apocalypse and all the world’s nugget supply disappeared from our planet forever. So I was able to once again talk myself out of buying a brand new container. But it was hard. 

You know that I just bought a five-pack of Clorox wipes at Costco last week. But I STILL hesitated in front of a large container of Seventh Generation wipes, debating whether I should get them, too. (I did not.)

This is not an actual problem. And I so far have enough money and freezer space (though the latter is dwindling) to cater to my over-buying. So many people are actually going hungry that I am embarrassed that this is something that I find bothersome; I should feel extremely fortunate. And I do. I do. 

But I am wondering if I will ever find a way back to pre-pandemic normal? Will I ever be able to bypass a shelf of on-sale pasta without grabbing a couple of containers “just in case”? (I was not successful today.) Will I ever be able to stick to my meal plan grocery list, instead of also buying food for backup meals that are more freezer/shelf stable just in case we are stuck at home without grocery store access for awhile? Will I ever feel like I truly have enough flour/Lysol/frozen pancakes? Or is this just… the way it is now? I don’t know. 

Dinners for the Week of November 10-16

Also, I have two overripe bananas that I need to deal with. So I may make a snack cake, if I can find one that only requires two bananas. (Although perhaps I have a couple of bananas in the freezer, as well. I’ll have to dig around in there.)

What’s on your meal plan this week, Internet? Are you feeling Back to Normal about grocery shopping?