Skip to main content

Five to Survive

 


And now for some thanks. Over the last five months I’ve lived away from my Columbia home and found myself here only when caregivers were scheduled. Now that I’m really and truly home I’m thinking about the HoColocal businesses that became a part of my daily routine as I struggled to keep my head above water. 

You’ll see that all of these places are geographically centered around my part of town. That makes sense, doesn’t it? When time is short and your ability to make choices is limited, you choose the near and familiar. I couldn’t dilly dally when rush hour traffic awaited me. 

A good old HoCo Holler to these folks who’ve been there when I needed them:

7 Eleven, Steven Forest Road 

Especially at the beginning, when I was too stressed and tired to even think straight, this was the place I could grab a cold sandwich for dinner on my way back. I had to learn not to always grab chips and cookies every time but this place was a godsend. The folks behind the counter were always kind and helpful.

Walgreens, LPP at Thunder Hill Road 

I can’t begin to tell you how many trips I made here over five months. Vitamins and over the counter medications. Paper goods. Home supplies. Frozen dinners and chicken soup. New art journals and black sharpies. Lots of Ensure. 

To all the people who tried to prevent this store from opening - - I am blowing a raspberry in your general direction.

Dunkin/Baskin Robbins, Route 108 near the new Courthouse 

Iced coffee, the occasional doughnut, and the blissfully impractical mint chocolate chip ice cream cone for my drive back to Baltimore County. Convenient to both my home and getting on route 29. Maybe too convenient.

Wendy’s, also Route 108 near the new courthouse 

Most salads I have eaten since February came from this place. Expert tip: you can’t really eat them while driving. You can’t actually consume chocolate Frostys while driving either but that doesn’t mean I didn’t make it happen through bad judgment and brute force.

These last two weren’t conveniently located to my daily commutes but going there became a necessity both for body and soul.

Queen Takes Book, Snowden Center Oakland Mills Road

For art activity books and stickers and the feeling that it was okay to splurge on myself a little.

Bon Fresco, also Snowden Center Oakland Mills Road

At a certain point I bid farewell to the junkiest of fast food choices and saved my quick dinner runs for Bon Fresco once or twice a week. (The rest of the time it was easy enough to live on fresh fruit and Lean Cuisines.) Bon Fresco sandwiches became the reassuring gift that made life worth living. The service was always excellent, the people behind the counter friendly, the food reasonably priced and just…outstanding. 

This particular cookie meant everything to me on hard days. My car probably still has the crumbs to prove it. 

Image from Bon Fresco Website


Now that I’m back my spending habits will probably revert to something more like what they were before.  I just couldn’t let the opportunity pass to give these places a shoutout. They were companions on a rough road. And now for some home cooking and leisurely trips to the library.


Village Green/Town² Comments

Comments

  1. Julia A. McCreadyJuly 25, 2026 at 5:18 AM

    Please do not submit comments here. This function will be disabled shortly. Use the link above instead. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...
1 comment
Read more

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

  A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word.  Days passed.  They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts.  Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public.  So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that.  But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...
2 comments
Read more

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...
1 comment
Read more