(no subject)
Oct. 28th, 2024 10:12 amThe post office doesn't deliver to the door here; you need to go in with proof of address and they hook you up with a post office box which most of the world doesn't deliver to (including the postal service that removed door-to-door service and replaced it with post office boxes) and then you need to go in when there's someone behind the wicket to get packages.
Lately the post office has been understaffed, so we've only been able to pick up passages between 11 and 1, and 2 and 5:30, on weekdays-which-are-not-holidays. The closures are announced by handwritten paper on the post office door.
For me this means two things:
One, if I go in to get mail as part of doing other things before 11, I don't get my mail, because I have a two hour window of activity per day and so I can't wait around for it to open, nor drive back out later that day. So I can get my mail another day, but that is basically my full window of activity two days in the week instead of one because of the drive out etc. And I can't plan around it because it's not posted online, just on a piece of paper in the post office. After 2 weeks they send your stuff back.
Two, there's a long lineup of people in there when I go in. Before I could hit midmorning and pretty much miss most folks, but now I both spend longer in there because I'm waiting in a line and am exposed to more people. In fact, I'm exposed to every single person in the town, because we all need to go into this little room to get our mail. I've been pretty chill about my post office covid exposure because I pretty much only see one person a week for more than ten minutes, and my post office trip was very short and there were basically no people in it. The situation has changed some there.
Meanwhile the one grocery store in town has significantly reduced its offerings and raised prices. In the last six months prices have close to doubled, and many of the things I used to get are no longer available. I'm not sure what the store is full of, but it's sure not things I'm used to buying. There's also nothing reliable, something that's usually there will just sometimes not be, and then will maybe be back next week, or next month, with a blank spot on the shelf. They've cut things like cornmeal and seasonal veg, and they don't reliably carry any particular brand of cat or dog food anymore, so I'm mail-ordering those.
The other grocery store is kept by the local First Nation, and it's got an eccentric set of stuff as it always has, and also a dollar produce cart that's let me have some treats like a bunch of bell peppers more than once. I probably need to shift most of my grocery shopping there, but they don't have online shopping and curbside pickup -- again with covid risk and also energy, but also thinking on my feet to put together meals from what the store carries.
All this has led me to try once again to reschedule my covid booster, which is overdue by something like six months. Our gov sends us a text message when we're able to get our next booster, along with a helpful link. Many times I've clicked on this link, walked over to get my medical card number (this itself actually requires some stairs, so the attempt isn't low-energy) only to find that there are no available dates in town. Pretty sure I actually did my last booster a couple towns over because of this. I'd even gone in to the pharmacy to ask about it, and the pharmacist said I could just book online, they had frequent boosters there, but again, it kept showing nothing.
Well, I've been gardening and not much else for the better part of a week and a half so my mind seems ok, and someone was coughing in the line to the post office the other day, so I gave it another try. Tap the link on my phone, no appointments in the calendar thing for the forseeable future. Wait, I thought, what if I try this on my laptop?
Turns out the link they send to text message has a mobile mode which prevents seeing, and thus toggling, a thinger which then allows the available dates to show up. Now, I have not had the ability to figure this kind of thing out for quite some time, but in my earlier life I likely would have persisted and managed.
Do normal people get their text messages on desktop/laptops? Like government ones from phone numbers? Does everyone else not have this issue? Does no one get a covid booster anymore so it doesn't matter?
Anyhow.
I can feel the town gently decay as the mills all close down, and as the network of services -- post office, doctors, transport which is everything from busses to airlines to major connecting roads -- also begins to come apart. The biggest, best-run First Nation is taking up the slack when it can, like with grocery stores and even apparently a bus to the big city. None of it is online or, I want say, predictable and reliable, but it's there.
(Incidentally I think you get the bus by calling some guy, but I don't know the number to call offhand, and I also feel pretty weird gambling that the bus will run in time to get me to and back from a flight or anything. There's a paper with the number... somewhere in town on a cork board, but it's not the main cork boards for communication used in the grocery store or post office, so I can't remember where and go back and take a picture to capture the number. But other than the bus there's driving for a 4-hour roundtrip or hitchhiking, so)
I got someone to come look at fixing my deck the other day. He's booking into 2026.
I just planted a hundred baby apple trees, with daffodils underneath, and 78 survived last winter. I have another couple dozen to plant, along with peonies which might not flower for years (and which I need to go in to the post office to pick up). I don't want to leave.
I also don't think I can live anywhere else, really. I can't drive in the really big cities at this point -- I think my cognitive tics are not safe for it, where I can't follow through on decision-making quickly -- and I certainly can't take transit there. Living closer in but still somewhere relatively small is significantly beyond my financial reach -- I'm not even sure I'll be able to renew my mortgage on disability payments, if I do actually get disability payments. (Canadians need to "renew" their mortgages at the current interest rates every five years minimum, so they need to be re-approved for the mortgage, and my income is either down or nonexistent and interest rates are up).
Anyhow, this is a lot of atmospheric rambling from someone who's spent all its time and energy gardening and been very happy to do so.
This much typing and my fingers are slowing down, all the letters are doubling and I'm hitting thr wrong keys. So, enough for now.
Lately the post office has been understaffed, so we've only been able to pick up passages between 11 and 1, and 2 and 5:30, on weekdays-which-are-not-holidays. The closures are announced by handwritten paper on the post office door.
For me this means two things:
One, if I go in to get mail as part of doing other things before 11, I don't get my mail, because I have a two hour window of activity per day and so I can't wait around for it to open, nor drive back out later that day. So I can get my mail another day, but that is basically my full window of activity two days in the week instead of one because of the drive out etc. And I can't plan around it because it's not posted online, just on a piece of paper in the post office. After 2 weeks they send your stuff back.
Two, there's a long lineup of people in there when I go in. Before I could hit midmorning and pretty much miss most folks, but now I both spend longer in there because I'm waiting in a line and am exposed to more people. In fact, I'm exposed to every single person in the town, because we all need to go into this little room to get our mail. I've been pretty chill about my post office covid exposure because I pretty much only see one person a week for more than ten minutes, and my post office trip was very short and there were basically no people in it. The situation has changed some there.
Meanwhile the one grocery store in town has significantly reduced its offerings and raised prices. In the last six months prices have close to doubled, and many of the things I used to get are no longer available. I'm not sure what the store is full of, but it's sure not things I'm used to buying. There's also nothing reliable, something that's usually there will just sometimes not be, and then will maybe be back next week, or next month, with a blank spot on the shelf. They've cut things like cornmeal and seasonal veg, and they don't reliably carry any particular brand of cat or dog food anymore, so I'm mail-ordering those.
The other grocery store is kept by the local First Nation, and it's got an eccentric set of stuff as it always has, and also a dollar produce cart that's let me have some treats like a bunch of bell peppers more than once. I probably need to shift most of my grocery shopping there, but they don't have online shopping and curbside pickup -- again with covid risk and also energy, but also thinking on my feet to put together meals from what the store carries.
All this has led me to try once again to reschedule my covid booster, which is overdue by something like six months. Our gov sends us a text message when we're able to get our next booster, along with a helpful link. Many times I've clicked on this link, walked over to get my medical card number (this itself actually requires some stairs, so the attempt isn't low-energy) only to find that there are no available dates in town. Pretty sure I actually did my last booster a couple towns over because of this. I'd even gone in to the pharmacy to ask about it, and the pharmacist said I could just book online, they had frequent boosters there, but again, it kept showing nothing.
Well, I've been gardening and not much else for the better part of a week and a half so my mind seems ok, and someone was coughing in the line to the post office the other day, so I gave it another try. Tap the link on my phone, no appointments in the calendar thing for the forseeable future. Wait, I thought, what if I try this on my laptop?
Turns out the link they send to text message has a mobile mode which prevents seeing, and thus toggling, a thinger which then allows the available dates to show up. Now, I have not had the ability to figure this kind of thing out for quite some time, but in my earlier life I likely would have persisted and managed.
Do normal people get their text messages on desktop/laptops? Like government ones from phone numbers? Does everyone else not have this issue? Does no one get a covid booster anymore so it doesn't matter?
Anyhow.
I can feel the town gently decay as the mills all close down, and as the network of services -- post office, doctors, transport which is everything from busses to airlines to major connecting roads -- also begins to come apart. The biggest, best-run First Nation is taking up the slack when it can, like with grocery stores and even apparently a bus to the big city. None of it is online or, I want say, predictable and reliable, but it's there.
(Incidentally I think you get the bus by calling some guy, but I don't know the number to call offhand, and I also feel pretty weird gambling that the bus will run in time to get me to and back from a flight or anything. There's a paper with the number... somewhere in town on a cork board, but it's not the main cork boards for communication used in the grocery store or post office, so I can't remember where and go back and take a picture to capture the number. But other than the bus there's driving for a 4-hour roundtrip or hitchhiking, so)
I got someone to come look at fixing my deck the other day. He's booking into 2026.
I just planted a hundred baby apple trees, with daffodils underneath, and 78 survived last winter. I have another couple dozen to plant, along with peonies which might not flower for years (and which I need to go in to the post office to pick up). I don't want to leave.
I also don't think I can live anywhere else, really. I can't drive in the really big cities at this point -- I think my cognitive tics are not safe for it, where I can't follow through on decision-making quickly -- and I certainly can't take transit there. Living closer in but still somewhere relatively small is significantly beyond my financial reach -- I'm not even sure I'll be able to renew my mortgage on disability payments, if I do actually get disability payments. (Canadians need to "renew" their mortgages at the current interest rates every five years minimum, so they need to be re-approved for the mortgage, and my income is either down or nonexistent and interest rates are up).
Anyhow, this is a lot of atmospheric rambling from someone who's spent all its time and energy gardening and been very happy to do so.
This much typing and my fingers are slowing down, all the letters are doubling and I'm hitting thr wrong keys. So, enough for now.