A Germaphobic's Trip to the Grocery Store

Saturday I figured I was out of the contagious stage of my norovirus or stomach flu---whatever label that correctly applies to having a fourteen hour long episode of vomiting and diarrhea followed by two days of holding the bed mattress down. I hadn’t eaten much since the “event” plus I purged most of the contents of my refrigerator just in case there were germs creeping round inside the deli containers and on the fruits and veggies ready to jump out attack me again. I bleached the heck of that appliance and I disinfected everything I’d touched around the house. I even threw out my lipstick, Chap Stick, toothbrush, lanyard, shower puff, toilet brush, slippers and assorted clothing and I washed all my cloth grocery bags because I’ve heard they’ve been known to be a safe harbor for germs. Call me paranoid but I never want to be that sick again.

I needed a trip to the grocery store. I was out of everything plus I needed some probiotics because Dr. Google said they would help to get my system going again. Before I left, I wiped down everything inside the car that I might have touched before I got sick because I was sure I was fitted with special lens in my glasses that allowed me to see viruses and germs EVERYWHERE. Once at the store I attacked wiping down my shopping cart like it was a metal slab in the morgue. Normally I love grocery shopping and I’ve never been germaphobic there but this time was different. I noticed everything. When I saw an employee spraying cleaner inside an empty meat case I thought, Oh, no! They know they’ve selling viruses and germs with their hamburger!  The food demonstrators who I normally love to chat with seemed like heroin dealers trying to lure me into dark alleys. 

By the time I got to the liquor aisle where they were giving away samples of tequila I was tempted because my nerves needed settling down and I’ve never had tequila. I figured if the old-time doctors could use whiskey to clean out wounds, then alcohol would be safe. As I stood there deciding if I would or wouldn’t a woman my age was badgering the demonstrator to give her more than the half ounce portion he was allowed to serve. I walked away in disgust. Who tries to bully a food demonstrator into giving them more of a controlled substance! Next Up: The bakery section where I was happy they weren't giving out samples because Dr. Google says sugar and dairy are off limits until after the probiotics does its job of building the good bacteria back up in our systems. Too bad because ice cream and cookies sounded better to me than anything else in the world and they’re often featured samples. I’ve never used or took much interest in probiotics before but after several days of post norovirus belly bloating I figured it was worth a try. Trying to force farts wasn’t working and I was about to jab an ice pick in my belly button to let out the air. 

While I was at the store I decided to look for an elbow guard to protect my Popeye’s Elbow. The health and pharmacy department didn’t have any. So off I went to the sports department where I found a shooter’s sleeve apparently used by basketball players that had a padded elbow. It looked like it would help but when I saw the $39.95 price tag I decided I’d Duct Tape an empty pudding cup over my elbow before I’d pay that much. And I do need something. Since I discovered the golf ball sized lump I’ve become aware of how often I lean on my elbow. Like every time I’m sitting in front of the computer screen for starters. I stop typing I lean. I’m reading on the web, I lean. I realized that I’ve been leaning on my left elbow since childhood and I have the photos to prove it. But all was not lost. As I was leaving the sports department I spotted a part of fingerless gloves in the yoga section. (Whichever blogger friend gave me that tip, thanks!) Now I have a nice looking black pair that I could actually wear out in public. The fingerless gloves I live in around the house are an old, ratty red knit pair that are full of pilling no matter how often I use my handy-dandy sweater shaver on them. But my hands feel so much warmer and less arthritic when I’m wearing them. 

Well, that’s all from Black and Blue City. Did I mention that I found a six inch round black and blue mark on my arm and a smaller one on my leg? Apparently when I fell during my fourteen hours in Sickness Hell, I fell pretty hard. I’m lucky I didn’t break any bones. ©

Ernest Hemingway, Sports Bras and Gym Germs

Young Hemingway finding his writing muse in Michigan

I sign up for lectures months in advance and on my day planner I just write, “lecture 1:00” and note the location. By the time a lecture rolls around I’ve forgotten what the topic is going to be but in the case of this month’s lecture I also wrote down the word, “Petoskey.” Petoskey is a coastal resort town in the upper part of Lower Michigan. If that sentence doesn’t make sense get out a state map where you’ll see we have a lower and upper Michigan connected only by a 26,372 feet long suspension bridge that stands 8,614 feet above the point where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron roughly connect. Once a year they open up the Mackinac Bridge to walkers and if you live in Michigan it's almost sacrilegious if you don’t do "the walk" at least once in your life. While you’re up in that neck of the woods it’s also a mini travesty if you don’t go forty miles to the west of the bridge to Grand Traverse Bay and hunt for Petoskey stones on the beach. If you don’t find any you can buy them at practically any area store but you’ll never find them on any other beach in the entire world except for those of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. They are fossilized coral colony heads formed 350 million years ago. But I digress.  

When I left the house for the lecture I had it in my head that I’d be learning about the history of Petoskey so imagine my surprise when the lecture turned out to be about Ernest Hemingway’s twenty-two summers spent in northern Michigan. His father, a physician and avid fan of photography, bought a cottage on Walloon Lake in the backlands of Petoskey in 1898---the year before Ernest was born. The speaker was the President of the Michigan Hemingway Society and he hosts scholarly Hemingway conferences and tours of the places that influenced the author’s writing. His life and times spend in the area are well documented through a glut of photos and letters. In one letter we heard, he apologized to a girl for using her real name in one of his books, in another letter Hemingway told his father he had rented a cottage in Petoskey and was going to become a “professional writer.” But the tidbit that intrigued me the most was how Hemingway became an alcoholic. He was rejected from serving in the military during WWI because of a "bad eye" so he joined the Red Cross where he drove an ambulance and was badly injured by a mortar shell. The Italian hospital where he was sent didn’t have enough morphine so they gave their patients cognac. Lots of cognac. For years after the war Hemingway carried around a bottle of cognac and a pocket knife to dig out the metal fragments that kept working their way to the surface of his body.

Change of topic: I bought a sports bra, my first one ever. Imagine that. At seventy-something years old and with boobs that could only look "perky" is if I assumed a Downward Dog yoga pose. Not that I can do one but I’ve seen pictures and my trainer is taking me through baby steps to get there. Yikes! I had to buy the bra because the latest round of exercises she has me doing was showing off my wares to half the gym patrons. The bra is surprisingly comfortable---no straps making inroads into my flesh, no straps sliding down. But every time I take it off I hear my mother saying, “Let’s skin the kitty.” What a weird and gruesome thing to say to a little kid! The phrase has been around since 1832 when the House of Commons' Minutes recorded testimony for a proposed bill about cruelty to animals: “There are two ways to skin a kitty---dead or alive." Thanks Mom, for making me think about that every time I take off my sports bra.

GERMS at the GYM: I am obsessed with analyzing a person’s character based on how they follow the rule about wiping down the equipment when they finish using it. You’re supposed to take disposal Purell disinfectant wipes from a dispenser and use them to clean what your hands touch. The true germaphobics-but-socially responsible people wipe them down before and after their time on each machine. Then there are the selfish germaphobics who only do a ‘before’ wipe down and the self-absorbed who wipe nothing down. The people who take the crazy-cake home use a terrycloth towel meant to wipe your body sweat---one towel, the same towel---to wipe down every single machine they use thus spreading germs all over the gym, like a bee pollinating flowers. And did I mention they also sit on those towels so their butt germs get added to the mix? Some people use Purell wipes on the seats and head rests on the machines but most don't, me included. I am, however, the only person I’ve ever seen who wipes the knobs we use to adjust the seat heights and set the weights. Before me, germs have probably been living on those knobs since the place was built! I've developed another strategy for fighting gym germs: the last thing I do before leaving the building is to wash my hands and the outside of my water bottle---not sure what that says about my character. ©

Petoskey Stones