Tuesday we had a 1 pm reservation at Walmart to pickup our our grocery order placed Monday morning. Walmart associates do not 'pick' your order until shortly before your appointment so it is possible that some of the items in your virtual shopping cart may be no longer available, or they (Walmart) may have to substitute one brand for another, or one size for another. These substitutions show up in your 'virtual' shopping cart, and you can approve, or disapprove. The items no longer available will also show. Over the course of Tuesday Morning TLE checked her 'cart' and saw several substitutions which she approved. In one case they substituted a large yogurt with two smaller ones of the same brand, and honored the price for the larger one....nice. The same with several other items. In every such case they always honored the price of the original item we had ordered. In a couple of cases we got what we originally ordered, plus the substitution, but were only charged for the substitution.
We left to make the 25 minute drive to the Super Walmart located off Waddell and the 303 FWY. About 10 minutes out TLE got an email advising our order was ready for pickup, and that we got everything we wanted except for bacon.....oh well. As we drove into the Walmart parking lot around 12:55 pm there were orange signs everywhere directing us to the pickup area located on the right side of this Walmart.......
....it was very easy to find our way to the pickup area. There were 6 parking spaces reserved for this purpose, and they were all covered providing shade from the intense midday sun. As we pulled in to the reserved parking spot a Walmart associate approached and asked our name. She then advised our order would be out very quickly, and she was correct....by 12:59 pm we had our order loaded in the VW, and were on our way over to the local Supercuts for a haircut for moi.....it's been around 7+ weeks since I had my last haircut, and I was way over due! TLE had called in earlier to make an appointment for me, although they were still taking 'walkins'.....there was only one other hair stylist, and one other customer in the store at the time I had my haircut, and they had us separated by quite a distance.
While I was getting my ears lowered TLE drove across the street to check out WINCO, and Safeway for TP, bacon, and a few other things. She arrived back shortly after I exited Supercuts with my new coif.....she arrived with 12 roles of TP, bacon, and several other items we could not get from Walmart.....SCORE!
We were home by 2:30 pm with big smiles on our faces. While I was at the Supercuts I heard that many local supermarkets had TP again, and it sounds like the supply lines are beginning to catch up after all of the hoarding people engaged in a couple of weeks earlier. Kleenex, and Cottonelles are still in short supply, and almost impossible to find, and we are beginning to get low on those items. Hopefully, things will continue to improve over the next 10 days, but for now we are fine.
TLE and I are still asymptomatic as I write Wednesday morning. Also, as of this morning there are just 326 diagnosed Chinese virus cases in all of Arizona, and 5 deaths from same. Virtually all of those cases are in Maricopa County, which has a large retirement population (think Sun City). I am thinking about some of the possible ramifications of the COVID-19 virus pandemic. Will those living in some of the hard hit, high density population centers such as NYC, L.A., Chicago, San Francisco, NOLA, Seattle, etc. begin to leave those population centers for rural America? Will those living in the cloistered, high density retirement cities around the country rethink their choice, and move into more diverse neighborhoods where not everyone around them is in the same high risk group? Will large corporations begin to move from these same high density population centers to rural America where exposure to, and disruption from pandemics appears to be less of a risk? Such a move would automatically redistribute our population over the next few years. These are just a few of the ramifications I think about......how about you, are there any ramifications about which you are thinking, or imagining? I am sure there are many more that are not yet apparent to me, but a large redistribution of our population will have many unknowable consequences....some good, and possibly some not so good.
TLE and I made the decision over 9 years ago to spend the rest of our lives, as much as was possible and practical, living in rural America, and it has been wonderful. Our reasons had nothing to do with pandemics, (who knew this was possible 9, or 10 years ago) but now we find ourselves exactly where we need to be at just the right time in history. We came to Wittmann, AZ March 4th to spend 4-5 weeks for totally different reasons than exist today.
Click on Map to see where the COVID-19 virus cases are, and note how few are in rural America. See how few cases there are in states west of the Missippii, and east of the Pacific coast states! Out 50 states, 21 states have more cases than Arizona....if you throw out Maricopa County, we drop to near the bottom. It becomes obvious where you would want to be living right now in this moment is time.
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