I had such big plans for this weekend, Simple Year friends. On Friday, media outlets (including my own) were reporting that we were in for a big snow/ice storm and the Oregon Department of Transportation, not to mention our county’s emergency services division, had warned us to stock up on food and candles and stay the heck off the streets unless absolutely necessary.

Bear’s not sure what that white stuff is, but he finds it endlessly fascinating. P.S. Turns out Bear is a he, not a she.

My first thought was, staying home all weekend sounds awesome!

My second thought was, huh, I wonder if we have candles?

My third thought was, I am going to get SO MUCH DONE.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t get anything done.

Instead, I read all weekend. When I wasn’t reading, I was cuddling with kittens and hanging out with the fam and looking outside at the falling snow.

It was amazing. The promised winter weather didn’t end up materializing — or rather, it did, just not as terrible as forecasted. (Apparently the west coast is really hard to predict. The Pacific Ocean, etc. Science!) And we did stay home, and it was awesome.

But that doesn’t give me much to write about.

Well, I guess I have one story: I left work a little early on Friday to hit the grocery store in case the roads really did get bad and/or we lost power, which was apparently everyone’s plan in the entire town. I was lucky to find a parking space, even luckier that someone was leaving as I was heading in and gave me their cart.

It was complete pandemonium inside. Well, it was orderly enough, just packed. I’d never seen such long lines at the checkout counters, not even at Thanksgiving. I stood in line for 10 or 15 minutes just to get tare on my jars. I won’t lie, I did think about leaving the line and using paper bags, but whatever, I was in it to win it.

And just so you understand how amazing it is that I stayed in line: I have anxiety. Those crowds made me want to run for the hills.

I stayed. Got tare on my jars. Walked through the store and crossed items off my list. Saw about 50 people I knew. Tried not to think about limited access to exits. Appreciated the quiet of the bulk aisle. Then got back in line again.

Put my cloth bags of produce on the conveyer belt, followed by my jars of bulk items, then the canned food and milk. (At the beginning of the project, I wanted to eliminate EVERYTHING, even recycling. I’ve since come to peace with aluminum cans, since they can be recycled indefinitely. Plus it makes preparing for an emergency easier — they’re sturdy and they last a long time. With the threat of the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake breathing down our necks, it seems kind of reckless not to prepare, at least a little.) It was sort of interesting to be in such close proximity to so many people and their carts. What I really noticed, more than anything, is all the produce in plastic bags. Maybe someday people will embrace reusable produce bags like they embrace reusable grocery sacks here.

A girl can dream.

I guess the only other part of this story is that I spent a half-hour in line waiting to check out, had a nice conversation with some people behind me, volunteered to bag my own groceries to give the harried checker a break and also because I knew I’d get out of there faster, and then tried to get my cart unloaded and my car outta there so some other poor sap looking to get their shopping done ahead of the storm could take both.

Anyway, while I don’t have much to report on the zero waste front, I am the most rested and relaxed I have been in a long time. Eh, I can always do meal prep and baking today, right?

Thanks, books!

The end.

Next up: Um …