A Small Pandemic Fixation

I got a three pack of Clorox Wipes. 

It sounds utterly mundane if I say it out loud. It feels ridiculous to tell you, to spend a whole blog post on it even, but here we are, April 2021 and I'm kind of excited to have gotten three tubes of wet wipes. 

Last March, we were also out stocking up for the staying at home, which led to a few more unusual purchases such as some of the less familiar [to me] grains I bought. Does anyone have a favorite spelt recipe? 

Wet wipes, though, are something I keep on regular order. A case of four tubes arrives every 6-8 months , with a roll going with me to the office, another roll for the car or the Philosopher's office, and some here at home for the more egregious demonstrations of feline regurgitation. In late February 2020, I'd gotten the most recent shipment, which was in our home office closet. 

Only, then in mid-March, I and everyone else couldn't get more. Those shelves at the grocery weren't refilling. I heard about and tried out the Amazon and Target search tricks. I saw  generic ones in large buckets showing up in strange places; the local grocery where we now do almost all our food shopping still has end caps of them. 

It became a game, checking a few different sites to see if they had any in stock. One day I managed to score a couple sets of rolls on Amazon. It was June 2020, what else was I going to be doing. And those didn't even come upstairs at Chez Hedgehog-- they were delivered and I immediately handed them off to a small local business owner who didn't have the same time to check all the sites at 3:27 on Tuesday. We were good, we'd just barely broken into the home case. 

As the orders from Target were placed, I'd check for more wipes. Sometimes there'd be a roll! One whole roll -- Purchaser limit of 1!  I started reading the listings more carefully when the roll of 30 wipes rolled in and it was tiny and I paid how much for that? Lysol and Clorox and a couple of the Target-brand ones. Nothing of the very strange industrial looking brands. And I'm working from home and can do laundry a little more easily/frequently, which facilitates reusable solutions.  

So we don't need them but I kept checking to see if they were available. It was my hopeful talisman that the supply chain was more normal, that the pandemic affecting things less, that the world a bit more on track. Surely if there was just a goodly supply of wet wipes, right?  And on my most recent order there was a 3 pack of Clorox wipes available! Just...right there. On the site. *click*

Okay, so once I got to my cart it said not arriving til mid-April. Well, I mean I'd just opened Tube 3 of 4 from the Feb 2020 Case... again, we weren't short of wet wipes.  

The box arrived yesterday. I grabbed it at the end of the day, as usual one of the neighbors had thoughtfully shoved it into the locked part of our entryway -- we're all very good about that for each other and it was particularly appreciated as it says CLOROX WIPES on the outside of the box. And I will put those tubes into the Feb 2020 case box that is still there in the closet, with the remaining tube. At this rate, I should be set through the beginning of 2022 at least.  

It's April 2021 and we know now that fomite transfer for COVID-19 isn't as high as we'd feared, it's much more about aerosols-- all the more reason to pass on indoor dining and to continue wearing masks as we progress towards getting everyone vaccinated. But it's also a small weird little fixation that I think is going to stay with me for a while. Are there Clorox Wipes on the shelves at the grocery? I have to check. Do I have wet wipe options in the house along with a healthy amount of rubbing alcohol? Must be sure. Will I be able to not immediately be able to tally what supplies I haven't been able to find? That will hopefully come soonest.

We're not out of this yet, the variants have shown us that, but as we look forward let us also capture what weird things are now with us, brought on by this strange year.