This has been year, hasn't it?
Two weeks ago we had our first meal in a restaurant since March. It was, well, strange to say the least. On the one hand, it felt so banal and at the same time so profound. It was normal, but also not, and the clashing of those two feelings made me really question the whole idea of what normal is anymore.
Let's start with the weird:
We had to wait outside until our table was ready. It was fine on that particular day because the weather was phenomenal, but that is often not the case in this area, so I don't see that being a great permanent solution. I've heard some places are setting up so people can wait in their cars and get a text when their tables are ready, but I don't necessarily see how that's ideal, either. I suppose it's better than sitting in the rain, but it just seems strange that these are the things we have to consider now.
Once inside, we had to wear our masks until we were at our table. Seems pointless to me, since the most likely place for someone to catch the virus is in close quarters over a longer period of time, so wearing the mask while I walk past two or three occupied tables seemed unnecessary. What's worse, once at the table, we are quickly given drinks, then food not long after, so the masks came off fairly quickly once we sat down and didn't go back on until we were ready to leave.
I guess to mitigate the risk of the fact that there's a long period of time where people are sitting at a table without masks on, the restaurant has closed more than half of their tables and there were no groups sitting directly beside each other. I get the point, but, given this social distancing, and the fact that I'm taking the mask off as soon as I get to my table, I'm confused as to why bother forcing us to wear the masks at all. I could go on and on about masks, but I already did that in my last post. I'll probably add more on that later, because my feelings on masks continue to evolve as time goes on, but I don't want to get lost there just now.
As a quick aside, the service staff was fully masked. I could tell our server was uncomfortable in the mask, but he was also genuinely happy just to be back to work.
One more bit of weirdness: The service was fantastically fast. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but I don't believe we were in our seats for fifteen minutes before food was in front of us. I'm sure there's a multitude of reasons, including the less than 50% capacity of the restaurant, and the fact that we were getting breakfast, which is generally fairly quick and easy to cook, but it was odd to be done eating within a half an hour of sitting down. Usually we're just getting food around the point that we were finishing our meals. We experienced this a week later when we went out for dinner.
That reminds me, when we went out for dinner a week later, the strangest thing was that the entire restaurant was empty. We went on a Saturday night, right at dinner time. Prior to the lock down, this restaurant would be full and we'd have had to wait, but when we went this time we were literally the only people in the restaurant. It was quite disconcerting.
Now to the normal:
At least at breakfast, there were other families at the restaurant, and it was nice to be out and see other people, even if from a distance of at least six feet away at all times.
The entire experience, sans masks and social distancing, was exactly like it always has been. It felt good to have a part of my life back that I lost in the previous three months.
Here's the thing, though, by the end of the lock down, I kind of stopped missing things like going out and eating at a restaurant. Maybe if we had gone somewhere and had food that I can't easily cook myself I would have felt differently, but there was nothing I ate that morning for breakfast that I couldn't have cooked at home. Yeah, I saved the 15 minutes of effort to cook and the 15 minutes later to clean up, but I didn't really gain much in the trade. It was weird for me and I don't honestly know if I liked it.
We've done a few different "normal" things since our county opened up earlier this month. We've eaten out (just those two times), gone to the mall (well, to JC Penny because it's closing), gone shopping at various other stores that were closed, etc. All of these feel somewhat hollow now. Money is tighter lately because I've been furloughed a few times, so spending money is physically painful to me right now and I haven't felt this way since we lived in California. I hate wearing this mask everywhere I go. So many places I've known for years are closing or just failed to reopen. Most importantly, I've been enjoying just being outside in my own yard with my kid and my dogs. I don't know. This COVID thing has really changed the world in more ways than I can wrap my head around. I think I'll be struggling with it for a long time.
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