March 13, we were sent home from work. That was a weird day and a weird week, and I recall mostly being impressed how the headlines kept updating just like in a novel about a pandemic, getting steadily worse.
The first thing I bought from home was a planter and some bags of topsoil I had to go pick up at the Heights Garden Center. A co-worker gifted me three baby cucumber plants and I knew they couldn’t live on my bedside table forever.
I also bought two sections of decorative Garden Fence from Home Depot to use as a trellis. They worked very well, and it was good I bought two because a neighbor gifted me six more cucumber plants.
I ordered full Easter Basket contents from Mitchell’s Candies on Lee. Jelly beans, bunnies, fondant eggs. The owner of the store delivered the order himself, which is an advantage of living so close to Cedar and Lee.
I ordered a sprig of silk daffodils from JoAnne Fabrics to cheer me up and decorate for spring. They substituted some rather ugly pink crocuses, but I put them on the door anyway.
The next thing I bought was an eShakti evening gown. I had promised to buy an eShakti dress if I sold a novel, and I did, so I did. I learned they were shipping masks with dresses and thought “Well, good, if I end up needing a mask, I’ll have one.”
The eShakti dress didn’t ship for four months. It wasn’t their fault entirely I think the order ran out and got lost. When I finally contacted customer service they got it to me. By then, I’d sewn myself a mask.
I made myself a dress for Easter because I needed to be doing something with my hands. It turned out nice and so I went onto JoAnne Fabrics website and ordered two yards of white flannel, two yards of orange flannel, and two yards of brown flannel. (Two yards was the minimum order for fabric shipping.) I was going to make myself a cuddly snuggly Cleveland Browns dress for football season.
I started cutting that out, made a mistake, and it sat in a pile in my bedroom for three months.
In June, I bought a skein of rainbow yarn for Pride from a queer-owned small yarn dyer. Dear self: when will you stop buying single skeins when you need at least two for a sweater?
A neighbor gave me an antique clock and a little glass bottle in the shape of a boot. These are purchases, but they are an increase in stuff.
In September, my friend Haizle convinced me to sew a project with her, and I picked out some pink silk to make it. I ordered a zipper from JoAnne’s in hot pink to match the fabric. I made the muslin and abandoned that. I guess the sewing bug was a temporary thing.
(I did make the Cleveland Browns dress then, as an excuse to procrastinate on the pink jumper, and because the first game of the season was suddenly here. It’s all done but the armpits, which were too tight, so I’m going to adjust them.)
I bought two books from Mac’s Backs the day they announced they were open for at-the-door pick-ups. I asked them to add a random pulpy paperback, and they did.
I bought a sundress with planets and stars on it from Passport to Peru because it was there on the sidewalk as we were walking to get subs at Grums.
I hung the dress on my laundry rack, intending to leave it for two days in case of contamination, but my husband said “Try it on” so I did. Turns out, the dress was not infected. Also it had pockets.
Impulse-bought some gold glitter nail polish at CVS, feeling I could because I’ve used up and thrown out two nail polishes recently.
A trip to Target resulted in two new Halloween decorations because they were cute and cheap and Halloween.
I don’t normally drink coffee at home, but Phoenix Coffee announced they would have free bicycle delivery so I bought a bag of coffee beans and a mug just to have someone come to my house with them.
I just ran out of those beans and stopped at Phoenix to pick up a new bag. I’ve also made another Mac’s Back’s order.
It made me think about how my life from March 13 to today, October 21, has been one specific adventure, and how aware I am of every last thing I’ve bought in the time, like I have a duty not to increase the contents of my house while five people are stuck in it. Every purchase feels partially a failure, but I can say they were all carefully weighed, and except for the unused sewing supplies, useful, if not necessary.
Still, do I always buy this much stuff when it’s not a birthday? Am I trying to fill in the void left by restaurants and movies? Or am I over-reacting because actually that’s not too terribly large a list of nonessential purchases for seven months?
In a normal year, I don’t think I would even be taking stock of such things.
