Surreal

Today's episode follows our intrepid blogger as she tried to complete a few simple errands.

OK, overblown much? Mea Culpa. Might as well have titled this post "Damages." Every stop reinforced how covid has changed my former world. Steve and I may have just sat relatively peaceably at home through it all for way too long, but getting out and about turned into a series of shocks this morning. And afternoon.

I had a list. It was fairly long, so I didn't want to forget any of the errands. 

First was the local post office, returning a magazine sent to our house number (correct) but ours was the wrong street, and nobody here reads Architectural Digest. It'll get redirected. However, on the way in, I saw a familiar face. I've known him for years, a property owner all over the county, including the actual post office we were standing outside of. He also owns in our town an apartment building and the former creamery which had been rehabbed partly into a venue where Steve and I had our commitment ceremony back in 2012. In his role as a landlord, I had a question for him. Did he know how to get in touch with where a former tenant had moved (in with her sister) before she died? We had something of hers and were trying to figure out how to connect with her relatives. This was a person well known to him, from a variety of connections, for years. He didn't recognize her name. As I tried to explain to him who she was, I quickly recognized he wasn't the sharp dealer I'd gotten to know over several  years, including his several times appearing before the city council trying to get beneficial ordinances - or exceptions - for his particular wants. I quickly settled for the usual "glad to see ya" pleasantries that hurry a conversation to its close. He'd certainly changed in a couple years. I didn't stop to explore why.

On the way I reorganized where some of my errands would be located. Two were financial institutions, with various branches. I could just hit Forest Lake, 17 miles in towards the metro, for the first, the site of my final stop, a WalMart. But I needed to hit my credit union, much sparser in locations available, and decided to relocate all but the final stop to a small area of the metro. There lay the sites of one fantasy stop and another at my favorite camera store. It had been in the back of my mind ever since planning to head up to Minnesota again that I'd hit that particular camera store. And since I was doing that, I had the opportunity to dither about whether or not to stop at my old place of employment to see if anybody there still remembered me. So that would be first stop on the rest of my list - if I still wanted to do so.

I had all but decided to  stop by work when I ran into road construction. Lots of road construction. Lots of signs, few of them helpful. It's been my observation that detour signs and this-way-to-that-exit signs make more sense  the second time you go through them. The first time you find out what they didn't actually mean. Was my desired exit still available? It wasn't last time I drove by, two years ago, and it's now in the heart of a huge project. Roads go different places now. Others don't go, period.  So in my first mistaken turn, I took advantage of a place to turn around by utilizing a gas station with a posted price $.11 cheaper than anything I'd seen in a week or more and filled up. My second wrong turn showed me some new and old roads  that got me deciding that yes, I definitely was going to stop at work, but I was taking the next exit instead of where I was. I knew there was a way to get there from here, but which street exactly? It was no longer that familiar, construction of roads and new buildings, loss of landmarks both contributing.

OMG, I was losing my map! It was something I took complete confidence in, knowing everything about how to get around in the metro... until now. I was confident in my workarounds, being able to figure out from the alternatives how to get there. But there was that hole there.... Finding my old route in, my recent missteps had me wondering for a bit how much of the changes I was seeing around me were new and how much might be just stuff I'd forgotten. Is this how Alzheimer patients started, knowing there were gaps but not how to fill them? 

In the end, my drive-by of the old work site turned out to show a wholly different company occupying the building. Scratch that fantasy, guys. Did the old company survive the pandemic? No way to know  this day, so on to the camera store. They could be a block away, or just reduced to the back end of the building, and I'd never know.

Roseville is also under construction, two lane streets converging into one feeding into 4-way stops where the lights were out. A familiar Burger King had  (my) usual exit blocked off, and even the motorcycle ahead of me changed tack and didn't try to ride in that way. When I finally got to the "L" shaped strip mall with the camera store, it wasn't there. About half the storefronts were vacant, others held different companies. National Camera Exchange was one of the casualties, at least at that location. (Further research once home showed the other ones have survived.) It was being driven home to me by now - yeah, slow learner, folks! - that I probably should have checked what still existed before I left the house. I knew businesses had folded, now was being slapped in the face - and my ignorance - of how extensive that has been.

OK, my next two stops were very close. First, my credit union. It had always been between Good Earth - great restaurant and still in business, hooray! - and a mattress store. No mattress store. No credit union, replaced by a bank I'd never heard of before. At least I have the credit union's phone number in my cell phone. I was assured the Roseville branch was still open. Eventually she gave me their actual address, and yep, they'd moved. About a block away, and once I'd turned the corner, there it was. I pulled into a parking space in order to endorse a pair of checks to deposit, and upon backing out needed to pause for an idiot coming head-on towards me the wrong way on the one-way drive. She missed me, at least. But the ATM was built for somebody in a jacked-up SUV, not a hatchback. I had to do my own repositioning of the car, and half step out to reach the slots and buttons required for a deposit. It's definitely not a walk-up machine, or it would have been simple. Bad engineering. But at least I finally knocked another item off the list.

The next one was Steve's bank. It was kitty corner across a major intersection also all muddled up with construction, overcrowded streets full of impatient drivers. I decided to scratch it - at least at this location. There's one back up in Forest Lake, where the WalMart is. No need to fight my way through this mess. Instead, I inadvertently chose to fight my way through a bunch of other  messes. The freeway back north is something from a very wicked person's nightmares. It kept pointing me ahead to reach the actual freeway... and then dumped me off again at the next exit. After three of those, I chose to take that particular road  a few miles to a spot well beyond the construction mess. Maybe next time I get on that.... No, scratch that, I'm taking something else to get there, or better yet, not going there at all again. Without the camera store, I see no reason to visit Roseville again this summer. Golden Valley should be a good alternative branch location. Or I could call. Or check online. Or....

Forest Lake's bank was another ATM, but this time set at a height for ordinary cars. Errand done. Back to the WalMart I bypassed on my way.

By now I was worn out in more ways than one. My morning had started with its now usual hour in the yard, after breakfast and before my return to civilization otherwise referred to as a shower and clean clothes. All the driving and frustrations added to my tiredness, so for the first time in years, I opted for a motorized scooter. I knew going in that 1: this was an unfamiliar store and 2: I would be hunting all over for several things before even hitting the grocery section. So, list: Nikes shoes. The website says this store carries them. It lied.  Next, bandanas, needed to keep the sweat out of my eyes so I can work longer. After asking three different people where they were located I finally found somebody who knew. No, they weren't "up in front with the men's hats." First, what men's hats? Anybody? For future reference, bandanas are in an aisle next to jewelry. And boy is there a selection! I'm guessing they stocked up with weird shi... uh, stock after lots of people decided they made covid masks. Something had to explain the selection. 

Next, bras. Always a disappointment for a variety of reasons. Let's just start with my requirement for a front closure due to my rotater cuffs. Walmart had one kind that had a front closure, and they'd likely fit a 5-year-old just fine, should she need one. You know, another of those sound business decisions some people make. Anyway, I'm still wearing out the 4-year-old ones I've got. No joy at Walmart.

Except for the groceries on the list. They had all I needed, and even just in that department I was glad of a scooter for all the hunting and backtracking I needed to do. It was time to head home. Now some of the groceries are in, others still in the car - if you can consider paper napkins and laundry detergent as groceries. I'll get them in when needed. I'm getting too old for this stuff.