CW: COVID. If you're just tired of this topic, feel free to skip <3.

I went to the store to pick up groceries the other day. I definitely go far less than before, but I'm the designated person in my family to go get the shopping -- it seems sensible for one person to do it, rather than all three of us interact with strangers.

It was especially busy on Saturday morning and the queue stretched back into the store, which I haven't seen since around March/April, at the start of the pandemic (as seen from Canada, at least, sorry China). I remembered wearing a mask back then (something handmade and not very good) and feeling like I might get stopped and asked to take it off -- given that walking into a store with a face covering is not _normally_ okay.

There were definitely other gruff folks around giving me weird looks. It's not like I was so early that I was the only person wearing a mask (or a scarf pulled up, or a bandana -- this was early days), but it was probably still seen as a bit panicky. The whole reason I was wearing one was not so I didn't get infected, or because I thought I might be a carrier, but to do my part for normalizing mask wearing.

So, yeah: fast forward to October in Ottawa and nothing could be more normal. It's the law now, so every does wear a mask, and _most_ people are wearing them correctly, more or less. Every little helps. It's strange how totally normal it feels to stand on a red line, 2m away from the next person, with my face covered while I do a grocery run.

It's still unpleasant, I think that a lot of people, maybe even me, will end up with some subtle trauma from living through this, but it doesn't actually feel like we're apocalypse adjacent -- which is what it did in Springtime.