some…normalcy?…in the time of covid
after months of stagnant weekends of staying in a 30-mile radius and only going to see people if it’s intricately planned around social distancing and mask wearing, this weekend my sisters and i decided just go “eh” and do our annual antiquing weekend.
liz was the hesitant one, but that’s mainly because she lives in a hot mess of a state called wisconsin where they don’t care about covid and walk around coughing on each other with no masks. i guess. i don’t know. wisconsin’s bad.
anyway, she asked me specifically about eating establishments, and i’m like, they’re all distanced and we have to make sure to wear our masks in then we can take them off to eat?
oh, well, then, that’s a huge step up from WI. so we went “antiquing” in our somewhat normal way.
first, i put antiquing in quotes because i think we only went to one or two true antique stores.
this year we ended up going to northfield, which was an excellent decision. main street is full of little shops, and there was even a march/protest for biden, which is totally a college town thing to do. (northfield is home to both st. olaf and carlton, two of the most expensive colleges in the state. [seriously – carlton is $75K with room and board.])
so we checked out a fantastic book store, a little norwegian shop, a nerdy shop, a couple used/antique places, a shoe/clothing store, ragstock, a brewery, lunch where i got TWO bloody marys, and a cake store.
i got myself a couple puzzles, some christmas presents, and an excellent work uniform (below). then we headed north a bit into the south cities to check out a home goods, michael’s, and marshall’s for some holiday decor. jane was lucky enough to find some halloween plates AND plenty of gnome paraphernalia.
i might wear this every day at work.
it was nice to be out and doing things that are part of a routine in a normal year. everyone was wearing a mask, and it seemed to be correctly. i didn’t necessarily feel unsafe at anytime, which was good.
it would be nice if covid would just stop, though.