Life Is Not a Choose Your Own Adventure Book

On Friday, I did something that is slightly discomforting.  I went grocery shopping on Friday night.
I'm sure there have been times I've grocery shopped on a Friday night in the past, but the entirety of the situation is where the discomfort lies.

The normal Saturday routine is up early, pay bills, buy food for the week.  During the day on Friday, the weather forecast was dynamic - changing from a little snow, rain, and sleet to several inches of snow and most falling overnight but lingering through Saturday.  Weather has rarely, if ever, interrupted the contentment of the Saturday routine.

Compared to the casual Saturday morning grocery shopping, Friday night was a cacophony of people, carts, milk-buying moms (pre-storm) and beer-buying college students (also pre-storm).  It probably doesn't need to be said that it was unpleasant.

Saturday, indeed, came with several inches of snow before dawn.  The radar suggested more snow was going to continue, but the bulk of it was past.

Maybe I should embrace the decision to avoid the 25 mile round trip to grocery shop on intemperate roads since the routine can sometimes be too comforting.  Yet last weekend, I made a 700 mile round trip to Michigan, enduring a much more serious snow storm in Michigan and a smaller, but still difficult one closer to home on the return.  The fact that this is really the first significant snow storm in the immediate locale shows how mild the winter has been.

It is hard to argue that the unspoiled Saturday morning snow scene looks amazing.  But, that postcard scene is easier to enjoy on December 23 than it is when our average high should be solidly rising and in the mid-40's; winter should be slowly relenting to spring.

Two people I've worked closely with for years are retiring next week.  I can only imagine their thoughts as they look ahead to a time in the very near future where the need to get up and traverse treacherous roads is replaced by less urgency.  Their retirement is creating a reduction in workforce, without a clear reduction in work.  That is not something to be contemplated on a Saturday morning though.

The decision to grocery shop on Friday presents an interesting life dilemma.  We almost never know if a decision we made results in eliminating a catastrophe.  Life is not a Choose Your Own Adventure book where one can make a decision and then look to see what an alternative choice would have resulted in.  A bad decision that results in a car crash or permanent injury can be easy to identify in hindsight.  It is impossible to look back and say that the decision to grocery shop on Friday to avoid bad roads on Saturday prevented something terrible from happening.  Chances are high that a grocery trip on Saturday would have meant a slower than average drive and safe return home.  But, maybe, just maybe, the decision to not leave the house on a snowy Saturday morning meant that a slide off the road, into a ditch and bouncing off of a tree was avoided.  It isn't likely or even probably; it is, however, possible.

The trivial trade-off of a minor weekend disruption with eliminating the improbable accident seems to be about contextually correct.