“This looks like a nice house. I wonder if it is available?” DeeDee Blackcap wondered.
“Oh! It says it is for rent! I hope it’s not too expensive!”
“Excuse me, are you the landlord? I’d like to take a look at this house. Can you tell me how much the rent is?”
“Well, you don’t talk much, do you? The sign says it is available for rent. I’d really like to take a look.”
“Well, it has a few spiders and bugs, but we can eat those. I really need to know how much the rent is. I wonder if I can just grab a snack and go? That’s why they put out the bugs and spiders during an Open House, right? I’ll send Mr. Blackcap back to talk to that one-armed landlord.”
Are you stir crazy? Convinced the government is lying to us? Convinced the government has overstepped its boundaries? Hoarding guns yet?
How about allergies?
Are you planting your Victory garden?
Learning a new skill?
Is life the same old, same old, but with less going out?
Are your kids getting on your nerves? Your spouse?
Have you braved the line at Home Depot to get a project finished (or just to complete a job you’re getting paid for)?
Are you ready for this pandemic to be over already and can we just get back to normal?
Tired of playing games on Facebook that require you to list the things you might use as a password hint?
Are you creating a list of things to be thankful for instead of things to be angry about?
What are you thankful for?
I am thankful I can cook from scratch and bake from scratch (I can read a cookbook). I am thankful I have been dirt poor and know how to improvise and substitute. I am thankful for the internet and social media (although the latter is a questionable blessing). I am thankful I have books to read that I probably will never get to and an attic to clean out. I am thankful the weather has been nice. I am thankful for antihistamines. I am thankful for blogs I can follow and read. I am thankful that there are many news sources and you can fact check what is being reported or passed along on social media. I am thankful for Instagram which is more about artsy photographs and family memories.
I am thankful for an old and beat up washing machine (I have washed clothes in a wringer washer… and in the bathtub). I’ve washed dishes in the bathtub. I am thankful for nice weather and a clothesline. I am thankful that I lived in poverty and I learned how to cope and how to improvise.
I am thankful that I have been homeless.
I am thankful for cameras, art, paint, fabric, colors, and eyesight. I am thankful I have a little left over to give to someone else. I am thankful for online church and a decades old collection of Easter decorations i have to put away tomorrow.
I am thankful we are not under martial law where I live, with National Guardsmen having to enforce the new restrictions. I am thankful to have a governor (and this pains me to say this) who has put her constituents first and who has made painful decisions to collaborate with other nearby governors on how – and when – we will open back up for business. That really hurts me to say: I don’t like this governor and I would not vote for her, but she has unequivocally stepped up to the plate when other leaders have refused to. I am thankful she is our governor.
I am thankful for my children and their survivor’s sense of humor because they grew up poor and know how to survive. It’s a wicked sense of humor.
I am thankful for electricity, public water, garbage collection, recycling, natural gas, and the US Postal Service. I am thankful I am able to vote by mail in the upcoming primary and the upcoming general election.
I am thankful for creative friends who made cards for me so I could send them out randomly to cheer people who don’t have a thankful list.
I did not go to church today. I have not attended church for several years. I do meet with God daily.
I met with Him today. I always meet with Him.
Today, I even dressed up.
I put on a sundress and put earrings in. The sun warmed my legs and arms and face.
I talked to my God.
“How is it, Lord,” I asked, “That we hear a different answer from you? One side will claim they hear from you and they are assured they do. I can’t judge if they do or not, but I certainly hear a different answer. And I know in my heart the Voice I hear is yours. We don’t agree, these two factions within Your church.”
And then I went about my day, distancing myself from other human beings while others I know went into a building with many other believers and prayed a congregate prayer. I accepted the inconvenience of the times and others argued that it is ‘the government’ to blame (whatever entity ‘the government’ is) for the inconvenience.
I went out on Monday. It was eerier than the last time I was out and about, but I did manage to score a pack of toilet paper and another box of tissue. Tissue is an essential in our home this time of year when pollen counts start to rise. It’s been rainy and cool, so the allergies have lessened considerably but I still have the nagging post-nasal drip. It’s my normal.
I also found some of those tuna packets my son likes. I was mailing him a care package so I grabbed a few to add to it. He’s deployed right now and far from family. I sent him a care package and one to my son-in-law who works on the North Slope of Alaska and is grounded for the foreseeable future (Alaska has closed her borders and he lives in Phoenix so would not be able to return to work if he went home). Both of my “girls” are single moms right now and it’s hard. You mothers out there doing that thing know what I mean: single motherhood is HARD. You love those little critters but they consume you. You make jokes about hating your kids on Facebook and people come out with all sorts of criticism about how you’re raising children to have no self esteem because you can’t stand your kids. they don’t understand that a sense of humor (albeit dark) is essential to your survival.
I get it – a dark sense of humor formed my childhood, my teen years, and my adulthood. My family doesn’t send sentimental cards – we send borderline cruel and hysterically funny cards. The funnier the card, the more you are loved.
One thing I learned when I went out on Monday is that there is a lot of debate (and I mean A LOT) about the wearing of face masks. WHO recommends one thing and the CDC recommends another. You can’t win for losing. WHO recommends that no one wear face masks unless they are actually ill, a First Responder, or caring for someone with COVID-19. CDC recommends that EVERYONE wear a mask when they go out.
I wear nitrile gloves, but most people don’t. And a lot of those who do, discard them in their grocery carts for the grocery people to dispose of. That latter part is rude. Wrong. Filthy. Dispose of them yourself in the safest way possible. I take mine off in such a way that I don’t touch the finger parts. then I still sanitize all the surfaces I touched during my outing. I hate the waste, but it is our new reality.
Here in Oregon, single-use plastic bags were banned across the board and stores were mandated to charge shoppers for paper bags. It’s all about using your reusable shopping bags Then: novel coronavirus. You can’t use reusable bags anywhere. You either carry your groceries out unbagged and bag them in the privacy of your car or you buy ANOTHER reusable bag at the store or you pay five cents per paper bag.
Another change that has 48 other states shaking their heads over: we have to pump out own gasoline now. New Jersey remains the sole hold out against self pump now. Oregon finally conceded because of the virus (and I fully expect self serve to remain the law when we are out of this because the pundits have been pushing for that for decades). I saw a lot of gas station employees standing around while people pumped their own gas. Okay. Change. *I know how to pump my own gas. I hate to. I used to work as a gas station attendant. I’ll miss that luxury.
I have to go out again tomorrow. Our Credit Union was acquired by another Credit Union. Tomorrow is the day we have to activate our new debit/credit cards. I have a lot of automatic payments that will be going through tomorrow – and have the wrong information. I have to order new checks. I can’t do it today (or couldn’t as it is now after ten PM). I have to stuff this all in on April First on top of the stress we’re all living under. And guess what: I DON”T WANT to go out. I’d be happy staying in isolation another week. But I have to so I can pay bills.
I feel like I have gotten a bit whiny on this post. Let me tell you something positive. There was this oak tree in my neighbor’s yard. Not a native oak, but some kind of oak they sell in tree nurseries as “decorative” and “approved” by whatever city or county regulations. I love the native oaks: tall, thick, many branched. The leaves fall early in Autumn. This other variety doesn’t have those heavy limbs and grows in an inverse “V” instead of the arc that native oak grows in (look at the horizon to understand). This tree also does not shed its leaves all at once. It sheds them – slowly – all winter. The shedding isn’t finished until the new leaves come in sometime in late May. All those leaves end up in MY flower beds. They don’t harbor insects – they harbor slugs. And slugs devour my flowers.
Well, today – HALLELUJAH! – the landlord cut the damn tree down. It was only 20 feet tall. It has ceased its reign of terror on my flower beds. And I am very happy about that.
These are just notes jotted from isolation. I don’t mean for this to be a post that follows through logically. There’s no plot, no climax or denouement. It’s just life in the suburbs during the novel coronavirus pandemic of 2020, 102 years after the 1918 Influenza pandemic. I keep track of county numbers; there were 17 cases in my county on March 25 and no deaths. There are 50 cases and 3 deaths today just 7 days later. That’s more than double the IDENTIFIED cases. No one gets tested unless they are on their death bed here.
And in other news, a 6.5 earthquake hit north central Idaho today. That’s big. It was felt as far away as Battle Mountain, Nevada. I trust you can all use Google Maps: Challis, Idaho to Battle Mountain. That’s not a small distance.
As a friend of mine says on our private email group: “We live in Interesting Times”
Buckle up. It’s only just beginning. And keep your sense of humor. That’s one way you survive.
The past couple of days have been exhausting emotionally. I reduced my saved memorabilia by two thirds. That was easy. No one cares if I went to see John Mellencamp and saved the ticket stubs or that I saved *every* piece of literature from our Yellowstone vacation. I filled two boxes with stuff I recycled.
Before
Recyled
Saved
Then came the saved letters. THAT was emotional. I saved letters from my Great Aunts, my Gramma Melrose, my Aunt Phyllis, my sisters Deni and Cyndi, and a few from my parents. They are all gone now: Great Aunt Cindy, Great Aunt Doris, Gramma, Aunt Phyl, Cyndi, Deni, Mom, Dad. I decided to pass on the letters from Cyndi to her oldest daughter, who is still reeling from her mother’s passing last summer.
I read through the few I saved from my sister, beginning with the one she wrote from Idaho State Penitentiary. My parents had been silent on the issue of my sister, so I was completely blind-sided by her location. It made sense, even without knowing the story. My sister leaned a lot toward the outlaw side of life. She was a self-confessed “black sheep” in a family with a history of law enforcement. She was also witty, smart, funny, and genuine. She simply had very bad taste in men and an addictive personality.
Her letters are everything she was: struggling poor, a loving mother, an optimist, and a sucker for men who didn’t care about her or the babies they fathered. I’m passing those letters on to one of her children.
I started writing penpals in the late 1960s. There was a column in Western Horseman Magazine where you could connect and find other kids as horse crazy as yourself. Most of those penpals drifted off through the years, but I have stayed in touch with two of them for – what? 52 some odd years. And I saved almost all of those letters. Two years ago, one of those dear friends suddenly – and angrily – unfriended me. It was heart-wrenching, confusing, and completely out of the blue. I didn’t “like” a comment she made on Facebook and – just like that – our friendship was over.
I didn’t save any of her letters. I can’t bear to read them, to taste the sense of deep fellowship that I thought we had, knowing how abruptly she chose to end it all.
Today was better. I moved to photographs, starting with all the loose ones. I trashed duplicates, photos of kids I don’t remember, and recycled all the metal frames I used to display enlarged photos. I checked photo albums against the loose photos, filling in the gaps as I could. I’m missing photos. I tossed photo albums that were falling apart.
Ignore the unicorn. These are the photos I tackled today.
I scanned photos of my childhood, especially any of my sister, tagging my niece and nephew as I did so. They have nothing of hers, the precious few photos I have of her are gems for them.
Finally, I tried to make sense of a timeline for the loose photos. My mother dated hers – that was easy. My dad’s weren’t dated but I can make an educated guess. The photos of my kids, however… WHY didn’t I date them?! I can guess based on their faces, but… I guess it will just be “close enough”. Fortunately, from 2004 through 2005, I previously sorted and dated the photos.
After 2005, I went digital.
Now all I need to do is to insert the photos into the three albums I purchased (probably in 2006 or 2007). Hopefully, I have less than 900 photos to deal with. If I have more… UGH. I just want this project over with.
I tackled the attic today. That’s a thoroughly frightening activity. We don’t have black widows here, but we do have the occasional brown recluse. I didn’t see a single spider, but cam across hints of spiders (cobwebs, egg sacs, and just general “I think it’s gonna drop down on me” feelings. Yes, my friends who think I am spider-invincible, I have moments of vulnerability. Those moments come when I suspect I may be in the eyesights of poisonous spiders. (Eyesights=they DO have eight eyes).
I attacked the right hand side of the attic first. I don’t know what is in that box labeled “Arwen’s Stuff” but I do know for certain that if it is ever moved again, her husband is going to be the one doing it. I think it had books. A lot of books. Arwen, you are grounded until you come home and take your things with you.
You, too, Levi. At least your boxes aren’t heavy.
My husband is grounded, too. I lost count of how many boxes I moved around that were labeled “Don’s Stuff”.
Unfortunately, I did not find what I was looking for on the right hand side of the attic and I had to move to the left hand side. Note that the attic is about 10×6′ and more of a crawl space over the addition than a real attic. I had to do this on my hands and knees. Insulation dangles overhead, the pink fiberglass stuff that used to have a paper cover and now just hangs free..
I moved everything to the right and discovered… <ahem> a number of boxes labeled “Jaci’s memorabilia and saved letters” possibly matching the number of boxes labeled “Don’s Stuff”.
I hauled them out, vowing to go through them and cull the less important stuff (I refuse to throw out the newspapers of November 23, 1963.). I was 7 years old, in the Third Grade, and I remember the day vividly. But i could probably trash a lot of other stuff.
I did find what I was looking for: our stash of slides. Film slides, for those of you too young to remember. A friend loaned me her digital converter and I wanted to make certain I converted every single slide to digital* (*assuming the photos are worth saving or have meaning to our heirs). I didn’t expect to find all the other photography stuff: negatives, lost photos, my first SLR (a Kodak), and boxes of my memorabilia.
Damn. Now I really have my work cut out for me. Fortunately, I have four empty photo albums to fill. And plenty of time. I stacked my boxes in the middle of my studio, spider egg sacs and all.
I did finish scanning all the slides. A lot were throw away worthy. I converted over 200 slides to digital. That’s done. I can return the converter to my friend (I wanted it to convert 120 film to digital, but it doesn’t work for that size film. But it worked for the 35mm slides). Will return when society returns to normal.
Meanwhile, I have this stack of boxes to go through. Oy vey. I won’t be bored.
Not “post- apocalyptic” as we are in the middle of the pandemic, or maybe still in the beginning, but being out certainly had the ominous feel of a bad post-apocalyptic film (ever see Zombieland, only we don’t have a shortage of Twinkies. Or maybe we do; I didn’t look).
There were aisles of empty shelves in every store I had to go to: canned goods, pre-made meals, paper towels, tissue, toilet paper, baby wipes… I didn’t look for hand sanitizers because I already had enough of those weeks ago. I could have used a package of TP, but we still have a week’s supply. My allergy-riddled sinuses screamed for tissues and I did score two small boxes of the precious nose-blowing material.
I went into the stores with latex gloves on. I keep them handy for certain art projects. No face mask as those are really only useful if you already have the virus and you’re trying to stop it from spreading to the people around you. A lot of people have this backwards or I shopped in a store with a lot of infected cashiers wearing masks. I did not go through their lines. I did note that most store employees wore latex gloves but scarcely any shoppers did. I don’t know what that says about people.
I did not touch my face once the entire time. I managed to not sneeze inside a store (in my car, yes). Hay fever was gracious to me today.
Some interesting takeaways: at a smaller chain store, they are refusing to allow you to bring in your reusable bags. This is interesting only in that our governor banned the use of ‘single use plastic bags’ and mandated a five-cent per bag surcharge for any paper bags you need at checkout. Basically, this small chain is forcing you to pay the five cents or to carry everything out in your arms, Oregon style.
Shoppers at the same store were less likely to distance themselves from everyone else, crowding the entrance. I grabbed the two items I went in for (no TP or tissue!) and got outta there.
It’s weird to watch cashiers and baggers sanitize everything between every customer, even yourself. Remember cooties? It’s like you have the cooties.
Most people have a “well, this is our new world and we’re going to smile anyway” attitude, but there were the odd grouches. No doubt they were completely out of toilet paper, in which case they may have had more success at a Plaid Pantry-type store than any of the major chains.
My biggest takeaway is how utterly bizarre shopping is right now. this is The Land of Plenty. The U.S.A. where we have grossly over-supplied the consumer with toothpaste flavors, strengths, colors, and brands. Where we sell generic and name-brand products side-by-side. Ten choices of rice. Twenty flavors of yogurt and at least ten brands of yogurt. Soap – the kind that comes in a bar – is not sold out, yet that is the one thing we’ve been told to use the most (I purchased a lot of soap from a crafter last summer and have plenty left).
We are utterly, woefully, underprepared should this pandemic run the long haul (which I think it will). We are utterly incapable of making do with what we’ve got. There are apparently a lot of people out there who think liters of soda pop are an essential to their survival. (Hm. Maybe the Twinkies ARE sold out.)
My last stop was to pick up my asthma medication. ASTHMA. That puts me right up in the “most-likely-to-die-from” category, compounded with my “advanced” age (hey, when did being over 60 qualify me to be called “elderly”? I resemble that!). Asthma meds are essential to my survival (believe me, you do not want to experience the horror of not being able to breathe that this novel coronavirus can cause. Asthma has its own risks and not being able to breathe is right up there). Anyway, the reason I went shopping today is because I don’t want my husband to see how much a two-month supply of a stabilizer inhaler costs – with insurance. He’d die of sticker shock.
In the pharmacy line where the other customers aren’t practicing a cool six feet of distancing.
I like social distancing. My “personal bubble” is about six feet around. I want to throat punch people who crowd me when we’re not on a lock down. Imagine how I felt today with my latex gloves. Hi-YAH! (No wonder the pharmacist’s assistant was grouchy. Not only does she have an essential job, but she deals with idiots all day long.)
I am finally home and safe in my own little world. My husband ranted over the lack of toilet paper, but – honestly – we have 12 rolls left. It’s not the end of the world as we know it. Yet. There are alternatives and I don’t know why that bugs him: I do the laundry. He cooks, I do laundry.
Today was gorgeous. I think it got up to 63°F, but I could be wrong. I put my flip-flops on. Remember when we called those “Thongs”? Yeah, not any more.
The bees were out all over the place, especially the small carpenter bees. People freak out about insects: bees, wasps, and arachnids (which are not actually insects) are at the top of the freak-out list. A friend posted a photo of paper wasps on her timeline on Facebook along with a hint on how to trap ‘yellowjackets’. Nice try, but the meat on a stick over a bucket of water doesn’t really work for paperwasps (they don’t eat meat, just other insects) or for yellowjackets this time of year (they’re not aggressive until the late summer when they are stockpiling for the winter).
The birds were busy in the yard: song sparrow, junco, scrub jay, robin, and northern flicker. The turkey vultures are home from their southern migration. Anna’s hummingbirds are everywhere, which brings me to the point of the birds conversation: poor little male Anna’s hummingbird made a mating dive overhead today that resulted in a disappointing “whirr” of wings. It should sound more like a loud “CHEEP!” as he pulls up and the air flows through his feathers. Don and I gave him a thumbs down, as did any esirable mating age female within hearing. Poor bachelor Anna’s hummingbird.
One of the crows has been hauling long sticks up into the tops of the neighboring Douglas fir trees. We think he is wooing a potential mate. No idea if his gifts are being accepted or not.
Twice today, I watched a fairy flit over the Hawthorne in the back yard. Most people refer to them as mayflies, but since you can never get a real good view of them without swatting and killing one, I think they are really fairies. Swat and kill one and they turn into insects to hide their true identities.
Lean back and watch, you know they are fairies.
New neighbors moved into the rental due north of us. We watched several U-Haul loads come and go yesterday. Today, there was no movement but there was a small trampoline in the backyard so either they have a small child or the woman is pregnant ant that’s her exercise stimulus. Bounce-bounce-bounce. BTDT. It didn’t work.
I conceived an idea yesterday but had to sit on it overnight. Today, I acted on it. I wrapped a pretty ribbon around a roll of toilet paper and hand wrote a note welcoming the new neighbor to the N’hood and introducing ourselves. Part of me thinks they might be very offended (“What? Our new neighbors think we can’t afford toilet paper?” or “what? We just moved in next to a TP hoarder?”
I really hope they get the irony of the gift: “There’s no Welcome Wagon anymore but we really value your presence in our community so much so that we will sacrifice a roll of toilet paper to welcome you”.
I was going to dry my laundry on the outdoor line, but I had a white rag disintegrate in the wash of (mostly) black items. Yeah, I had to rely on the dryer to filter that shit out. In my defense, it was supposed to just be a load of towels and I didn’t know the white rag was going to disintegrate. Yay for dryers.
Afternoon. I have moved planters out from their place of isolation and back into the flower beds where they belong. I have set out all the peony rings I own and counted to see how many more I could use. It hasn’t been hard work (I used a dolly to move the planters), and I haven’t moved at my usual frenetic pace, trying to get the most done in what time I have. I’ve uncoiled the sprinkler hose and snaked it through the north flower bed where it proves most useful.
Now, with the sun bearing down on me, I am sitting in a lawn chair, sipping on my water, and doing what I do best in the warm rays: bird and insect watching.
The paper wasps returned home a few days ago. We coexist gently: they don’t bother us if we don’t harass them. I take macro shots of them as they crawl out to sun themselves.
The mason bees are coming out now, and a few honey bees from someone’s hive are busy working the blue flowers of the rosemary. The long-horned bees are there, too, and some smaller ones. Bee flies hover over the grass, hunting. Gnats and other tiny winged things flutter about. I saw a Painted Lady butterfly rest on the side of the garage.
In the flowering tree northwest of us, a flicker calls. Over and over and over. He pauses, waits for a reply. Calls again. Some mornings, he bangs on the side of the house or the drain pipes, trying to make as loud a knock-knock-knock as he can. She is out there, whoever she is, and he is hopeful she will hear him.
The crows make their calls: caw-caw-caw or the strange purring call we refer to as “The Predator Call” because it sounds like the noise made by that creature in the Arnold Scwharzeneger film by the same name. One crow repeatedly poses a question: ‘ka-CAW? ka-CAW?’
I am alone at the moment, basking in the sun and feeling warmer than 58° F. My view is of a hanging bird feeder and several bird baths distributed around the back yard, as well as hummingbird feeders. Wind chimes and mobiles hang from shepherd’s hooks.
A dark-eyed junco (formerly Oregon junco) takes a tentative dip in a hanging birdbath. Another tests the water in the concrete pedestal bird bath. Within minutes, seven juncos have taken turns, dipping their heads under water, fluffing their wing feathers, and shaking their tail feathers in a shower of water droplets.
A low flying prop plane buzzes overhead, having just taken off from the nearby small airport and trying to gain height.
It dawns on me then, watching it rise into the sky, that there are no chem trails. We sit under the flight path of many major airlines as they make their descent to PDX International or they soar on past on their way to Sea Tac or San Francisco. There are always a few chem trails paralleling each other in the sky – and this afternoon there are none.
It feels as ominous as the days after September 11, 2001 – except for the small plane that buzzed by and a Lear jet that came in low on its way to Aurora airport to land.
And yet – the birds and the bees go about their daily lives, unconcerned. My heart soars like the sparrow’s.
Jaci Dawn 