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In case you didn’t notice, Trader Joe recently sailed its way into the current culture war when it went back on its pledge to rebrand several of its ethnically-themed products. A petition (started by a high school senior) had taken the grocer to task for the perhaps pejorative way it names certain items, causing the grocer to at first promise reevaluation and change, and then to double down. 

Despite feeling like they keep everything in place and static, for the people under lockdown, quarantines are quite dynamic. Measures to address a pandemic, and the way people respond to those measures, change over time and seemingly on a dime. We did not all suddenly shift into pandemic mode and stop evolving and adapting. 

I recently heard a podcaster offer some free advice to listeners: Every couple of days, go try on your favorite pair of jeans. The sweatpants and pajamas most of us have made into our home uniforms (there is no away these days) conceal the ways our bodies might be changing under the coronavirus lockdown...but jeans, well, they tell the truth. 

This lockdown has made for some truly unexpected sights. I never thought I’d see South Coast Plaza’s parking lot entirely empty on a Sunday afternoon, or SoCal’s beaches deserted on the first hot day of the year. But here we are. 

In these times, grocery delivery can be stressful. An anecdote: Hearing that Amazon Prime Now grocery delivery windows were being released at midnight each day, last night (or was it this morning?) my man and I set our alarm and tried to time it just right. But the stress of rushing through our grocery shopping combined with miscommunications led to a late-night (or was it early-morning?) shouting match about shared responsibilities, mutual respect, and the difference between ‘want’ and ‘need.’