What a horrible time to be in Arizona after the rains and a wild bloom of allergens. How are we supposed to differentiate a dry cough caused by coronavirus from a dry cough brought on by pollen? Add a bit of early morning headache due to slightly sensitive sinuses, and in minutes; one might diagnose oneself with full-blown COVID-19, never mind that there’s no fever. A couple of hours later, whatever hysterical symptoms we thought we were feeling subsided. By midday, after being home all day and snacking a bit too much, a nap starts to sound good, but is this a sign of fatigue? Better go for another walk. With all the walking and beautiful sunshine, it’s easy to feel pretty good over the course of the day.
Out on our walks, the landscape is still lush due to all the soaking things have gotten and the birds of spring are active and full of song. Caroline has taken to bringing our binoculars with her while we are underway, and along our path, she’s been spotting Gila Woodpeckers, Starlings, House Finches, Anna’s Hummingbirds, and Great-tailed Grackles. Occasionally, we spot a lizard in the sun, but not for long before it scampers out of view.
It being Saturday, this is typically a good day to connect with the Engelhardt’s and that’s what we did this afternoon for about two hours. Skype with video connectivity is a treasure, but jeez, do I wish we were in Germany right now? If they shut down that country, there will not be looting, but here in America, that’s a situation that authorities might have to contend with. Oh, how nice it would be to be somewhere where people are going to sing or simply accept the free time to dig deep into their hobbies and minds and not fret about the end of the world.
Caroline is busy over at her sewing machine trying out how to make face masks. It’s a slow process making the first one as she’s checking out what size to make for me and what size would be best for her. What works for me sits nearly over her eyes, so adjustments are being worked on.
Time for another walk while trying to avoid the larger world and its heavy questions.
How long until the call for the removal of an ineffective president? How long will we stand for those in office who profited off their knowledge of the pandemic while not warning Americans or simply staying quiet as they watched the storm approach? Who will work to reassure an America that is likely on the edge of panic?
Our current situation has been exacerbated by a narcissistic mirror image of who many Americans had become themselves: shallow and greedy, content to simply look better than someone else. We are on the precipice of reaping what we’ve sown. Years ago, in learning computer programming we were taught about GIGO – garbage in, garbage out. After fifty years of Twinkies, sitcoms, reality TV, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, celebrity for celebrity’s sake, and the worshipping at the foot of wealth, we are not prepared intellectually to understand the gravity of our self-obsession and preoccupation with banalities that make the group dumber and produces the damage of garbage in, garbage out.
We could rise out of this better, or we can wallow in the fear of uncertainty. Sadly, our leadership is directly responsible for creating much, if not all, of the uncertainty. Why nobody around the maniacal enfant fickkopf is sidestepping him to speak the truth feels like a catastrophe. I see kowtowing of officials as if Nero, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, and Kim Jong-il were all rolled into one man who has become a kind of Mango Mussolini. It is almost 30 days since this high school dropout, former drug addict, idiot savant, whose major questionable skill is talking, first wrote about the COVID-19 tsunami. Senators with firsthand knowledge of the implications of what was taking place moved two weeks earlier than that to liquidate stock holdings to protect themselves while toeing the line of Commander Sycophant by not saying a word about their impressions of the impending problems. By mid-day, most of the Senators were cleared of having acted in bad faith, but one still stands out, and while he says his decision was driven by what was in the news, it still appears untoward.
With Trump abdicating the traditional role as president, it appears we’ll fracture into 50 or so statewide presidents in the form of our governors while the Justice Department is trying to suspend certain constitutional protections, including habeas corpus, as long as they decide their definition of emergency warrants it. So while the rest of the world just deals with their shitty hand, we have a government that is apparently afraid that we’re going to have an unmanageable uprising with looting and other fuckery. That’s it; my daily political screed is over.
Today is the eighth day of eating at home, and while we certainly stocked up for a solid two weeks (actually a bit more), I’m curious how much money we are saving by not going out to eat. Then, just as I wonder how much we are saving, I also start wondering how places like Dominick’s and Eddie V’s are doing, considering they are on the top end of luxury dining here in Phoenix. Turns out that both are still open and offering food to go. Visiting Dominick’s website, I learned that not only do they deliver, but you can drive up, and they’ll bring your meal out to your car. Well, this, then, is one of the world’s most expensive drive-thru “fast food” joints I might ever have the opportunity to visit. The idea of eating a tomahawk ribeye and Caroline enjoying their amazing scallops after we pull around the corner to snarf our $150 lunch down as though we just picked up food at In & Out is an opportunity too surreal to pass up. I’ll post impressions after we visit Dominick’s Drive-thru.
Committed to not diving into another pool of bad news, I tuned into a documentary about Darwin, California, on the edge of Death Valley so I could be witness to their tragedy, which might make my own seem less impactful. Hmm, this is the first movie or feature-length anything I’ve watched since October when we took in Lighthouse with Willem Dafoe. Not sure I can finish it as at 22 minutes into the film the trainwreck is on a collision course with tragedy.
Walking took me 19,182 steps around the neighborhood. It took me 175 active minutes to cover almost 9 miles or 14.5 kilometers.