Friday, November 20th, 2020

A thunderclap awakens me at five minutes to five AM. Torrential rain quickly follows. Through my windows, it sounds like a wall of white noise, joined by other plonks and hisses. At five after five, just as abruptly, it stops. I go back to sleep. I wake up again a few hours later. It’s earlier than I’d like, but we’ve managed to work out a half hour slot when the meeting place outside the House of a Hundred Grandmothers is available. I can get together with my family. The weather remains uncertain. If rain starts, there’s a backup meeting place in their auditorium. We sit and talk. Some technology I’ve set up for them is working. That’s good. After the half hour, I take a bus to the mall. Inside, one take-away coffee shop is open. I haven’t had much of a breakfast. I get a muffin and coffee to eat on a bench outdoors. The muffin is messy. I get chocolate on my mask. When I go back inside, I pick up another package of masks at the pharmacy. I should keep some spares with me. Almost everything on the ground floor is closed. The top floor is dark. The escalators up to it are off, but the ones to the basement are working. Nothing that I can think of should be open there, other than the parking exit. I’m surprised to see that the computer store, appliance store, and home center are functioning. I don’t know why they’re allowed to be open. I go into each of them. I think of getting a UPS, but I wouldn’t be able to carry home both the unit and the groceries that I need. I head up to the supermarket. I look for ingredients for a beef stew. The recipe calls for tomato paste. There are signs on the shelves for it, but the containers all say tomato sauce. I finally find two packages of tomato paste. I get them. Later, my family tells me that laws have changed. Since much of what had been labeled as tomato paste has added sugar, it now has to be labeled as tomato sauce. I get what ingredients I can find. I drag them home. Once in the house, I sit down at my desk. I doze off, listening to thunder. It doesn’t rain again until after night falls.