Last night the Chaplain and I were catching up on John Oliver and Trevor Noah, and saw a clip of an Amazon worker, pleading for non-essential items to stop being sold. He is risking his life, he said, to package and ship dildos.

How are employees having to work at a time like this in order to package the unnecessary stress purchases of others? I am anxious and afraid, and I’m a nurse. I cannot imagine being told I was an essential worker, showing up for work, and then having to do something like taking care of patients who had had elective surgery to get horn implants. Or a tail.

If you want horns, fine, but it can wait.

Years ago, I inherited some of my paternal grandmother’s handkerchiefs. I took some of my favorites and kept them in my sock drawer. I made a few additional handkerchiefs, and started using the collection of handmade and inherited hankies, stashing them in bags and coat pockets so I would always have one when I needed one.

I kept buying facial tissue, though.

Tissues are convenient. I have allergies. I use a lot of tissues, and I figured, so does my family. Won’t it be a mess without them? Kids wiping boogers on the walls? The baby smearing even more snot on my clothing and his? Me, looking everywhere for a hankie to blow my nose?

Well, we have been out of tissues for over two weeks now.

And you know, since we ran out I haven’t found ONE used tissue on the floor.

I don’t miss them.

There is no evidence the kids are using the walls instead.

I’m using my hankies, and they are serving me well. In a pinch, a small rag from the rag bin will suffice. The worst week was the last week we had tissues, as I watched the boxes we had around the house one by one empty and disappear.

We’ve had to reassess our need for a lot of things. We aren’t picky about what kind of pasta or beans we get anymore. When the Basmati rice was sold out, we ended up with a brand that invariably cooks up into a gelatinous clod. I still haven’t figured out what I’m doing wrong, but we have 50 more pounds of weird rice, so I have some time to figure it out.

We’re trying out a different brand of spread butter. We have an assortment of brown and white eggs. We’re slowly working our way through our six industrial, wheel-sized TP rolls, one perched awkwardly on the back of the downstairs toilet like an albatross, another hunched like a gull on the edge of the upstairs tub.

When I give the Chaplain the grocery list, I no longer know what he’ll come home with, but it’s always OK. These days, I’m a little more clear-eyed about what I need.

The crocheted butterfly is sewn onto the corner of one of my Grandmom’s hankies.