Observations About February Money

It is March 14 as I type, midafternoon, and looking out the window I see...snow.

I have been late in writing about February expenditures on groceries and eating out because, frankly, COVID-19 has shoved aside a lot of things, especially in the last two weeks. It shoved aside Pi Day (in that I did not even remember it was today!), although, ironically, when my sister-in-law wished me Happy Pi Day, I had just taken one out of the oven for supper with friends tonight.

Our Court is moving to a skeleton staff and most of us are working remotely from home for the indefinite future. Our schools are closed until at least the start of April and will likely be closed further after that. Our library closes Monday night, not to reopen until April 5 at the earliest. Warren is working on COVID-19 plans for our Symphony; the Mansfield Symphony, in which he plays also, cannot put on its concert next week as our governor, Mike DeWine made some sweeping closures (including the schools) when announcing the state of emergency in Ohio, winning admiration from many of us who never voted for him to begin with (me).

Our March Legal Clinic is canceled; our local Hunger Alliance met in this week in a lengthy session to ensure that those without food get it in these times.

The Methodist church two blocks from our house just canceled all services for March, hoping to reopen in time for Palm Sunday.

These are strange times. And to borrow from my judge, who is keeping Court staff and the bar on top of things, by the time he types an email with the latest updates and hits "send," it is already outdated.

And that doesn't even address my personal situation, except for me to note in quick passing that I see Tim, my oncologist, Tuesday for infusion and he is to weigh in on whether I should even be in our Court building, even on a limited basis. Given the infusion drug I am taking and have been taking for two and a half years, a powerful immunosuppressant that every myeloma specialist identified weeks early as putting one at high risk for serious COVID-19 reactions, I'm expecting the answer to be along the lines of "You even have to ask?"

In short, it is not business as usual and it will be months before it is business as usual, if ever.

So what does that have to do with what we spent in February? Quite a lot. Because when I look back at February spending, everything was pretty much on track to keep spending under $180.00 with ONLY SIX DAYS TO GO in the month until I did some stocking up for what was clearly going to be a long haul with the COVID-19 outbreak.

How much stocking up? Well, our grocery expenditures finished the month at $214.49, with almost $67.00 of that in the last two days of February. Add another $17.11 for household purchases (including, yes, toilet paper) and we finished the month at $231.60.

Yowsa.

The only ray of sunshine is that our eating out expenditures continued to be rock bottom low: $3.60 for a hot chocolate with espresso when I joined a dear friend for a long overdue talk.

So here's the thing: March is going to be worse. Because we did some more stocking up this month, based upon my concern that supply lines will be interrupted when the employees of distributors and freight haulers fall ill. It turns out I have a siege mentality in me after all. And, frankly, with my wacky health, I don't want to be stuck at home and out of food. We have already gone past the $180.00 monthly mark (although presumably except for perishables, we don't need to buy any more food). It's not pretty.

But I get it and I don't regret the dollars. I'm grateful we have them to spend. What I worry about is our community: all of us staying as healthy as possible, all of us getting our basic needs met.

I try not to worry about myself, even though I am so high risk. I video-chatted with Ramona last night; her school district (Vancouver, Washington) shut down yesterday until April 25. As a savvy 2nd grader, she knew why. So we talked about staying healthy and then she looked at me and said in a very quiet voice, "I don't want you to get sick, Grandma April."

Oh, sweetheart, I'm trying not to.

Let's get through this.