Scarcity

  

I went shopping this morning at the Maple Leaf Gardens Loblaws store. I still wore a mask, but for the first time since March 2020, the ends of the baguette bags were not taped shut and the olive bar was actually an olive bar, and not a stack of plastic containers with olives in them.

Something's going on. 

Yesterday, Doug Ford announced that by March 28, 2022, after a staged ratcheting down of restrictions, and so long as COVID trends are good, any remaining public health and workplace COVID safety measures in Ontario will be gone. 

It was March 17, 2020, when Ford declared the first COVID state of emergency in Ontario. So, it will be two full years of on-again-off-again lockdowns, massive unemployment and more government debt expenditure outside of wartime than the nation has ever seen, plus a lot of sickness and death -- but the privations of the former will have lessened the magnitude of the latter. 

I've got mixed feelings about lockdowns, but they have a better body count than the available alternatives. See Brazil ... or Florida ... or Alberta.

At the beginning of the pandemic, toilet paper was scarce. At pandemic's end, everything is scarce. There's a lot of pent up demand out there, while goods are in short supply or expensive or both. Just check out the price of propane. 

At the end of the third wave lockdown in May, we put together our own list of pent up demands. Creeping up on the end of October, most of the items on our list - a new HVAC system, new computers - have been taken care of, though most took longer to get and cost more than we thought. 

All we've got left is getting our furniture reupholstered which will cost about what we thought, but is taking longer than we expected.

David, a charming frenchman (from France) who apparently doesn't have a last name, is making his way through recovering our dining room chairs, two occasional chairs, and our couch and armchair. He brought back the dining room chairs this week, a few days later than he said he would.

Acclimatized as we are to delays, and also very happy with his work, we didn't ask why delivery was late. David volunteered the explanation that, while riding his spiffy BMW motorcycle last week, he'd been sideswiped by some guy in a car. He was OK, but his bike was a mess and his insurance company was being a complete jerk about honouring his claim.

Looks like things really are getting back to normal.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Circa 1910 

Eatons Catalogue 

oak chair with 

old upholstery