Yesterday, I did the grocery shopping for the first time in the last year and a half. I did it because Beloved was completely exhausted from running errands at o' dark thirty for some relatives. So, I took the shopping list and headed out. I was nervous about it because it is the weekend of Black Friday and I'm a social phobe. I was also nervous about driving because of the fact that my astigmatism makes headlights look like starbursts and sometimes make me temporarily blind when I'm driving at night. With sundown being around 4pm now, I had a tight time table and multiple stores to hit.
I'm pretty sure that the random acts of kindness that I ran into as my nerves were beginning to ramp up weren't quite as random as they seemed. When you're involved with a chaotic deity, randomness becomes suspicious when it follows a pattern. In this case the pattern was a combination of people complimenting me on my hat and just moving out of the way right as I was approaching from behind. They didn't see me coming, I didn't have the cart with a squeaky wheel, and there was no indication that anyone around them noticed me. I did warn them as I passed behind them that I was there, because they were so focused on their shopping that I didn't want to startle them. Most of them didn't respond. It was a little eerie because most people respond when I do that with either "Oh! I didn't see you there!" or "Ok, thank you."
I was able to find just about every major item we needed at the discount grocery store. It was a good thing because when I saw what the prices were at the regular grocery store, my jaw just about hit the floor. I had an abstract knowledge that the price of things had been going up but actually looking at it was an entirely different experience. I was power-walking through the grocery stores because I was uncomfortable. When I was forced to slow down, I encountered people who randomly offered me compliments on my hat or my mask with the roses all over it. I made a point of being as polite and pleasant as I could be despite the urge to just move on as quick as I could to get away from strangers.
It was an uncomfortable experience to be out grocery shopping. I could feel Loki with me, just walking along. He pointed out that the store had a set of black cable knit sweaters. I almost stopped and bought one but I had milk in the back of the car that needed to get home and into the fridge. Today, he's been encouraging me to call the salon and set up a hair appointment for next weekend and insisting I really should go pick up one of those sweaters before they're out of stock. At this time of day, that'd mean part of my drive home would be at dusk. I guess I could do it because it wouldn't be full dark and my vision wouldn't be completely screwed by someone having their high beams on. But I'm real leery of the concept.
It going to be hard in a few weeks when I have to take the car for some appointments and possibly be driving at night to get Beloved from work. I have a problem. My night vision has been steadily getting worse over the last few years. And my astigmatism is enough to fuck that up badly too. Unlike some idiots that I'm related to, I'm not going to get a pair of sunglasses to wear when I drive at night. Because I know the problem isn't the brightness of what I'm looking at as much as there's something physically not right in my eye. Sunglasses isn't going to fix that and it will make it an order of magnitude harder to watch for wild life running out into the road.
After I had gotten all of the shopping done and was home, Loki said he was proud of me for going out on my own for a longer time than I had in just about a year. I think that Loki kept nudging nice people into my path to give me encouragement to keep going. He does things like that.
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