By Shannon Williams
Well we all have ways to deal with COVID, to help us “cope” so to say. For years when I worked in mental health, I would suggest to people that had trouble sleeping to play the lottery ticket game. It is very easy; you buy a $1 lotto ticket and when you cannot sleep you dream of what you would do with the winnings. Only rule was you had to give ½ of away. It was a good exercise to get one’s mind to slow down from the worries of the day. So…my coping skills during COVID has been Publisher Cleaning House. For months now, I have been buying unnecessary items in the hopes that I will be the big winner. I would look each time I got an email telling me of all the products that I just could not live without and then stay within my $20 per budget. Then at night when the reality of watching over senior housing during a pandemic would keep me awake, I would play my lotto game of how I would spend it and following the rule of giving ½ of it away.

Well, the pandemic had gone longer than I thought it would and thus I have a ton of junk!!! Now do not get me wrong, I got a few cool things, like the pot dish holders for a cast iron skillet handle and the machine that reseals potato chip bags. BUT I did get a bunch of junk !!! Like the cream cheese storage, that won’t fit a standard size of cream cheese and the butter stick holder was the same !! I love to find new succulents, but I paid $20 for 3 “plants” there were barely even a leaf!! However, I still have hope for two of the bulbs that I planted.

The game did work for a while, but as the items started coming in and I discovered just how cheap they were, the game was not fun anymore. I was just upset that I had ordered the junk in the first place. I was trying to stay away from Amazon (where I can really do some shopping)! So I have broken up with Publisher Cleaning House, even though they promise they were coming to find me at Crystal Beach and had already ordered flowers and balloons for me! I have tried to unsubscribe to their emails, but dang they use so many different emails addresses that has been a challenge.

As I write this, I am trying to ignore the fact the PRIME DAYS are this week. I am in a fight with Amazon. I have a pantry order that brings my tea and several other items each month on the 30th. Well September was not delivered and they told me it would take “a week” for them to figure out what happened. In addition, now when I order anything to be sent to my home, it tells me it will be up to 3 weeks, regardless of what the item is. But I fear, I must just come to accept that Amazon is having some COVID fatigue and they will go back to send my items in a timely fashion, I just don’t think I can break up with Amazon, so we are just “having some time apart” even during Prime Days!!!

So I am going to dig up a novel from my stack of unread books and read when I cannot fall asleep. The only problem with that is, I cannot stop reading once I start and will stay up half the night “just to get to a stopping point.” I hope you all can find your little coping skills as it seems we might need them for some time to come.

[Oct-12-2020]