The storm

Things seem to be getting smaller, cheaper, simpler.

For the first time in years, the pharmacist handed me a prescription bottle with a cap so simple a baby monkey could have figured it out.  The free bread at La Madeleine has shrunk to bite size, the once-abundant butter packaged in tiny receptacles, the strawberry jam a whisper of its former self.  The grocery clerks are no longer packing single items in plastic bags and Wholefoods gave me a piece of propaganda filled with budget recipes.

Gone are the days of one-sided printing and mid-day cappucinos.  I am bringing a thermos of my own brew to the office and a lunch bag with a sandwich.  I heard some of my colleagues discuss the price of bread last week.  Someone suggested coupons.

Every day brings a flotsam of resumes to my inbox: car salesmen, real-estate brokers, marketing managers,... so many, I've had to ask for help scanning and sorting.

I've stopped reading the quarterly statements from the investment companies.  Those statements, with their depressing bracketed numbers, tell me that the nice cushion I thought I had is shrinking by the second.   It's telling me that there are no certainties in life.  That I better be cautious.  That I better hunker down and save all I can of dry crackers, this storm is not over with. 

I am aware that my anxiety is adding to the issue, that my refusal to spend does not benefit my community.  But I am not willing to budge.  Not yet.  Never mind the stimulus spending and the rescue packages, the sky is still looking heavy and gray to me. 

I am staying home.