Small Pleasures: getting out

Kentucky has been hit unusually hard in the last week with a series of winter storms and freezing weather.  When it first hit, I’d had a bunch of days of not feeling that great, leading to failure to get to the grocery store.

We live at the final block of a street that ends in a cul de sac and our end of the street tends not to get plowed.  Finally on Tuesday I’d run out of a lot of stuff and felt stir crazy.  We figured the main streets probably were cleared if we could just make it down the block-and-a-half to the usually-clear part.

We barely made it past our strip and the condition of the rest of the roads was horrible.  Good thing I started drivers ed in Michigan at age 16 in January –something like the third time my group went out to practice it was in a blizzard and the teacher just shrugged, “Better get used to it…”.  Not my favorite kind of driving but I sure know how.

In spite of the bad driving conditions, we were so happy to be out!  Enjoyed dinner at local restaurant, The Ketch and then headed to Trader Joe’s for my long list of depleted items.

It snowed again that night and our road still wasn’t plowed so we were stuck again.  Thursday was beautiful and sunny and they’d finally plowed one lane down our street.  Since I left northern climes 20 some years ago I’m not used to heavy winter weather and there’s something oppressive about feeling stuck.  So I did some shoveling on the pile the plow left and we made it out again, dining at another local fave, Josie’s, and stopping for a few things at another grocery store.

Then freezing weather and icy road conditions hit –I really loathe driving on ice–and we stayed in for a couple more days.  Today things looked pretty melty and I had a long list for a third grocery store, so we made our way out to re-try a Mexican place near the grocery we’d kind of forgotten about for a while –La Marquesa.

Something about each of those trips to do perfectly ordinary stuff we do all the time seemed particularly sweet since it was a bit of a challenge to get out.  Even though I often don’t get out for a day or two, there was something about feeling stuck that really weighed on me and each outing seemed like a great escape.

In a number of places someone expressed surprise that we’d ventured out (undercurrent:  how did old folks like you dare to drive in this?).  Something about having braved the elements made it all seem more of an adventure.  All three restaurants are places I love, but these meals seemed especially good and I enjoyed everything about it more than usual.

Also made me realize how spoiled I am.  There was plenty of food in the house, but I ran out of a number of things that are part of my regular eating habits and it made me antsy to be out of a growing list of staples.  First world problems for sure.  Still, I got so much more pleasure than usual from grocery shopping!  And such gratitude for having a well-stocked fridge and pantry again.

For Small Pleasures