Remember when we all used to post our grocery receipts back in the dark days of 2008? Maybe that was just me and a bunch of Christian ladies with large families.

$126.00 is a lot for me for one grocery trip! In the before time, I would probably spend $60 during my weekly grocery trip and buy multiples of sale items, with the understanding that I could pick up items I couldn't fit into the big trip at another time. Now it's supermarket sweep. $7.00 for a pound of ground beef is probably an okay price if this was eating sustainably, but when I made my last trip to the butcher in early March, I got the 10lbs for $20 deal. LB asked for cashews, rice cakes, and Oui yogurts ($1.49/per!) and I always try to buy her extra snacky stuff to keep her busy.

I hit the limit of what I can carry with this trip, and that's taking the bus. I walked 1.5 miles to the store, and then once I have my groceries it's a couple blocks to the bus and another couple blocks from the bus home. I have an unreasonable hatred of taking the bus to or from the grocery store, but our current situation is making me really thankful for the option. Here, compliance with the Governor's order to wear masks in stores and one public transit seems to be about 99.9% this weekend was the first time I saw a guy duck into a convenience store with no mask, I didn't stick around to see what happened after that.

I'm so thankful for my closest bodega, although I haven't been in since the end of March. They don't have everything I want (and definitely not everything LB wants) but they have everything we need, including a full meat counter. They were also the first store in the area I saw that had a travel path mapped out on the floor. I need to get back to my regular shopping.

As of today, I see that both shipping places near my house are open-not that I personally need to ship anything to the Dominican Republic, but I like the signs of normalcy:

Chinese restaurant near my house is also open. They closed in mid-March even though they are carry out and could still operate legally. I was worried that they were afraid of being targeted for their national origin. Glad to see them open, and at first they had a pretty busted set up with plastic sheeting between workers and customers, but now they have a nice glass barrier:

From my work, which includes a few businesses and organizations and the rest is work/live units for artists. I miss my landlords!

Now I can hear the ice cream truck.

Washington Park Life

I'm having a pessimistic day. Yesterday RI released information about testing at different sites throughout the state. Wealthier towns are only reporting 3-4% positive rates. The site closest to my house is reporting a 35% positive rate. So while RI looks good overall, high rate of testing with an average of >10% that's masking the devastatingly high rates of positives in poor majority Latino neighborhoods. It's frustrating that even with a really strong public health team that takes health disparities and racism seriously, here we are.

The good stuff is that I had the foresight to move a few blocks from a lovely 427 acre park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (the Central Park guy). After being closed for about a month, the park is back open and I've seen a little turtle, a huge turtle, a heron, an oriole, a guy walking a hedgehog, a family in star wars costumes doing a photoshoot.