Coming Home to the City During a Pandemic

I made it back to Victoria yesterday morning. I took the 9:50am ferry from Salt Spring Island to Vancouver Island, which has been home to me for the past 5 years this July. If you have been reading along, you know that I went to stay with my daughter there for the past 5 weeks after being released from the hospital. I needed somewhere safe to convalesce and gain my strength back again. The time had come to return to my life in the city. I had a job interview this week that I am hoping went well. If I am offered the job, I will be starting work very soon, so needed to be back in the city for that. I don’t know if the job will be office based at this point - kind of forgot to ask that important question during the interview!

I am parked on the street in front of my friend’s house, plugged in and on wifi. Had a glorious shower this morning. There were no real showering opportunities on the farm, off the grid. My daughter and her partner use their shower as it is a tiny little square thing in the bathroom. Mine is a nearly full size bathtub with a shower and has been far more valuable to me as a closet for my clothes as there aren’t really any in here. I have just been showering at friend’s/family houses or campgrounds for the past 4.5 years living in the RV. And when I can’t shower somewhere, I can wash my hair in the sink and get a good scrubbing with just one gallon of water. I didn’t care much on the farm. The only people that really saw me were my daughter and her partner. We were all dirty most days with farm work. The animals didn’t care. 

I stopped to do my RV chores on the way back here yesterday, as well as filling the propane tank, and stocking up on groceries. I went to Walmart where they had quite strict social distance guidelines which was great. I have to park in the Save-On parking lot across the street with an RV and walk to Walmart. 

For the past 3-4 years I have been able to take my shopping cart from Walmart across the street to the parking lot where I park. The carts initially wouldn’t go across because of that lock function but then that broke and no one noticed for the past 3-4 years. Until yesterday. I had always hesitated when I did take the cart over - should I buy something this heavy because if I can’t take it across in the cart, it might be too much to carry in my arms, and once the carts lock, you cannot move them in any direction. 

So fuck. The cart locked at the crosswalk. I had bought the heavy things. I had taken out most of my own shopping bags weeks ago as you cannot use them in the store. I had two cases of diet soda, a giant pillow, a floor mat and four bags of groceries. It took three rounds of pressing the crosswalk light and lining it up to when I was actually able to lift and carry everything at once. I kept dropping stuff, breaking handles, and had to pass on the crosswalk. Finally it all lined up, my hands and arms and shoulders and back are SCREAMING at me as I lug all this shit across the crosswalk. I get a couple of car rows in and am able to grab a Save-On Foods cart and dump all my stuff in. No one was washing the carts off there or controlling their return. On Salt Spring they had strict control on the carts. You bring them back to them to sterilize and all cart corrals were closed off. At Walmart there was no cart control either but plenty of hand sanitizer available, and they only had every second checkout open and someone was directing all shoppers through the checkouts to avoid being close to one another. I had gloves and mask on, as usual. I head into Save-On next where there is very little customer control happening other than a sign at the doorway that directs traffic to walk in on the right and out on the left of a barrier they have placed in. Problem was, when walking from the direction I came in, you could not see the sign as the barrier blocked it - they had written on a whiteboard right at the same level as the bars on the barrier. So I walked in the wrong way, got plague stares...whatever! Let’s get this shopping done and get me parked! 

Made it back here after a quick stop for propane and at a friend’s to pick up my mail. Couldn’t get in front of my friend’s house at first but as soon as the car that was parked there left, I jumped right on in there. Home. I won’t need to leave here for at least 2-3 weeks and only then for RV chores. 

I went for a walk this morning to Tim Hortons. I had not been in one since this all unraveled. The one I normally went to was closed before I went to Salt Spring. It was nearly empty as the seating is all closed off. The floor is marked with where to stand. I didn’t notice right away so was right behind this guy for a few minutes, got the death glare then figured out why. He was the only other person in the line. I decided I don’t want to go there daily anymore, not now with things the way they are. So I bought a can of the French vanilla mix and I will just make it at home for now and only go when I run out. Not worth the risk to go out in public like that. I didn’t see too many people while out, but I passed a lot of smokers who clearly live in non-smoking buildings, sprawled on the grass outside their buildings, coughing like smokers, and that just made me nervous. No one had a mask on of course as they were smoking, but that meant someone could walk by as they were coughing due to smoking, no knowing they might also have the virus. So fuck that. Got my can of FV mix and a huge bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream. I’m good. I shall stay the bloody hell home. I will only need to go out for milk I reckon. The flowers I saw along the way though were beautiful!

So without all the farm work and hanging out with the creatures all day, I now have a lot of time on my hands again. I’ve cleaned the RV top to bottom, scrubbing out the farm mess. We always had all manner of chicken/goat/goose poop or mud, compost or clay on our boots and wood chips, hay, leaves, branches and who knows what all over our clothes, so there was quite a mess to muck out. Now it smells clean instead of like a barn. I think I will haul out my rock painting supplies and get busy. Nash is napping up top, beside his little windows up there. He loves this neighbourhood. Lots of dog walkers go by, little kids with parents. He just sits in the window and meows as they go by.