COVID-19 has  hampered my ability to do online grocery shopping. It has virtually come to a standstill. I have been purchasing my groceries this way for the last couple of years and loving the ease and convenience. Plus, as a person with a disability it has been a God sent. No more dealing with public transportation or trying to get a ride or paying for an Uber. No more waiting patiently for a store representative to take me up and down the aisles to help me find items.           I even had same day delivery so I could order in the morning and my groceries be at my home by late afternoon or early evening. What a breeze!

But now my favorite grocery store app is no longer working because of the high demand. Each time I tried the app an alert would say items are no longer available and pick a substitute but sometimes the substitute is not available either. Or the item appears to be available but when I tap on it for some strange reason it won’t go into my cart.  I have to have a $30 minimum to checkout and I can’t get enough in the cart to make the purchase. I had even signed up for their annual subscription for delivery thinking with COVID-19 happening this would be a wise thing to do. But during the 15-day trial period I cancelled it without penalty.

I am back in the store again. But this time feeling a little stressed because we are dealing with a pandemic and I should be at home sheltering in place and practicing social distancing. It is kind of hard to do that in the grocery store as a blind person because you need assistance. A friend took me and we both dawned our gloves and homemade scarf masks. We got there first thing in the morning when the store opened in hopes of avoiding large crowds. I held on to the shopping cart while she pulled it from the other end. This would give some distance although it was not completely 6 feet. As we went down the aisles, I began to get hot. I had worn a sweater because it was a cool day. I took the sweater off thinking that would help. But I remained hot and began to sweat. I realized the scarf mask was the problem. While taking a tissue to wipe my face; I am thinking that people are going to see me and think I got the virus! Then I really began to sweat! LOL! I finally had to take my scarf mask off because I was just getting too hot and feeling agitated. I needed to calm down and breathe. Relax and clear my mind. Tell myself that everything was going to be okay and that I would get through this. My friend was encouraging as she told me to do what made me comfortable.

We were amazed at the lack of body soap on the shelf in the health and beauty section. there literally was little to no soap! What was up with that? Of course, we had to hunt around for toilet tissue. We finally found some no-name brand. But who can be picky? We grabbed 3 packets and asked at the checkout how many because we didn’t want to hog. All the food items I needed I was able to find and I was grateful for that. At the checkout my friend explained the 6 feet distance markers on the floor. I had heard about that. I also had heard several ways to keep my credit card clean–from wiping it down with sanitizer to using a tissue to wearing gloves. I opted to just clean my hands with sanitizer and go from there. I brought my own cloth earth bags I had washed beforehand and we loaded up my groceries in them and headed out of the store. Once I got home, I changed my clothes, ate breakfast and then began the process to sanitize my groceries before putting them away.

Beside dealing with my Scarfe mask situation the experience was not too bad. It was more mentally exhausting than I realized. Perhaps just because of everything going on and trying to keep social distancing and being blind and touching things too. But what else could I do? This is all new, different and challenging. How are you grocery shopping now? Are you shopping online or physically going into the store? What has the experience been like for you?