Day Fifteen: Mehitabel says "Toujours Gay"

First let's start with a little Mehitabel, cause I'm feeling a little like a dame with a little dance left in her. Toujours Gay. 

This is an Orange Cockwomble.  You may note a distinct resemblance to a familiar figure. If I live through this, I will send you a copy of this impressive figure, should you desire one. Leave me a message in the comments at the end of this post. 

After drawing this very early this morning,  I started writing on a real tear, if you could picture someone typing on a manual typewriter at cartoonishly high speed with papers flying up in the air around me, that was kind of what it was like. I went back to work on my paying job which kept me busy and distracted for a while, and later spoke to my grandchildren for the first time in weeks (they're young, talking to Nana on the phone is not exactly their go-to fun thing on the regular). While talking to them, I dampened the huge lump in my throat. My God I miss them in a way that's leaving me breathless. 

Here's what my grandson, 11,  is doing: "NOTHING", he says,"JUST SCHOOLWORK." and proceeded to smack his sister in the face with a pina colada-scented butt wipe.  

My granddaughter, 8,  however, told me about a project she did about "weird creatures" including the Goblin shark, Dumbo octopus, Blue Mexican alligator lizard, Blue dragon sea slug and the most squee of all, the Venezuelan poodle moth. I present you with said creature: 

Isn't our world just fantabulous? Squeeee!

Then I read two posts on Facebook and came to a full stop. Erase. Start over. 

First, my old pal in New York City, Jeff Moche, magician, wisecracker, entrepreneur, wrote something that grabbed me by the heart. 

He wrote: 

"I think we should actually all be thankful for this coronavirus outbreak. And I’m being 100% sincere.
(I realize that this may make some people angry or upset, but maybe it’s important to say.)
There have been warnings of a global pandemic since at least 2010, and of how we were very unprepared for this. Bill Gates gave a well-known TED talk a few years ago, speaking very direly about this. And in a recent interview I saw, he said that nothing had really been done since then to deal with it.
So, I guess this was what was needed for us to wake up and take this threat very seriously. Of course, I hope that we will get through this without too much pain. But it probably had to be this severe, or we’d have continued to ignore it. And for god’s sake, I hope we don’t just forget it.
The forecast now is that 100,000 or more people may die in the U.S. alone. And I might be one of them. I’m also truly sorry that many of us will lose someone that we know. But then I guess, that was a sacrifice for the team!
THIS IS A FIRE DRILL! It had to be this real. And we had to know in a complete way where the weaknesses were." 

See that little bolded part? Yeah that's the part that should stop you up, but the rest of the message is even more important, truly. If I live, I hope to whatever Powers there are in the Universe to see that we have learned something from this and alter how we live, change how we prepare ourselves, and frankly, stop treating this planet and its non-human inhabitants like worthless shit. Treating people less like shit would also be a boon. It's all symbiotic, and if we don't learn from this, we deserve to be doomed. 

I honestly just want to see my grandchildren again. That's all I'm asking here, God/Goddess/Universe. When are we going to stop and see that we are absolutely destroying ourselves and our planet? This little virus with the corona-like hook that can't be shook loose is growing and mutating and soon to be taking people out by the thousands, not hundreds, maybe hundreds of thousands, and it is our fucking fault. 

Another person, who I often do not agree with wrote a post from an entirely different perspective, but this resonated. 

"Confinement, isolation, conformity and the encouragement by our governments to fuel our disapproval of others is a slipper slope and I'd start thinking about the long term consequences of that. One of the most consequential of which will be that Trump's re-election is almost guaranteed..."

This is probably true. Conformity to government orders and encouragement of public disapproval of other people by way of implementing public restrictions historically does result in the re-election of the government already in power. I don't want to go Godwin's Law again, but harken back and see if it's not true.  She mentioned another troubling list of behaviors that increase during times of stress and confinement, and I've expanded that a bit. I know that social studies have shown to be true that (I know that I should provide citations): 

• Drug and alcohol abuses increases
• Domestic violence increases
• Child abuse increases
• Opportunistic crimes of theft increase
• Violent crimes increase
• Animals are abandoned/sheltered in high numbers

While it is reasonable to keep people from harming each other, are the restrictions too much? This Facebook poster appears to think so. However, this virus is cannier than we are at survival, I think. It clearly could take almost all of us out very quickly, maybe that's what needs to happen. But again, I want to see my son and my grandchildren: I don't want to die yet.  

What is the happy medium? Is there one?

I ventured out today as I had to buy crickets for Kallista's lizard, Cutie. Since I was already out, I went to Safeway, masked and ready to cower from humans. No toilet paper, no cleaning products. Wiped out by 10 a.m. apparently, even with a purchase limit of one.  I picked up some fruit and vegetables, a pork butt and some cornish game hens.  I want some kalua pig, and I already have poi and rice. The chicken and biscuits I made the other night was awful, not really a fault of mine, but so disappointing. I'm trying not to snack very much and eating a lot of oranges which I crave for some reason. 

Oranges were coming to my office bagfuls by coworkers who have orange trees. The fruits were so amazing, sweet, juicy, bursting with the scent and flavor of orange. If color had a flavor it could be orange. Lacking my coworkers wonderful orbs of love, I'm making due with store-bought ones and they are good. 

My mom would approve as she believed Vitamin C cures everything. Colds or flu? Vitamin C, Sore throat? Vitamin C. Herpes? Vitamin C. Broken arm? Vitamin C, and so forth. My mom kept plain, sour 1200 mg vitamin C's in her car and sucked on them like Lifesavers. If she were here today, she'd be sucking on them till Kingdom come and she'd probably never get this virus. 

My last stop was Walgreen's for distilled water for my CPAP machine. I have very severe sleep apnea due to a congenitally 'crowded' throat, as well as soft palate issues (probably due to the 80s and associated abuses). It occurs to me that my many years of smoking and the sleep apnea put me at high risk.

The White House projects there will be 100,000 or more deaths coming up in the next few weeks. That scares me a lot, because it can't be me, and it can't happen to anyone I love... and yet it can.  

Inspired by the poodle moth, I leave you one of my favorite pieces from Archie & Mehitabel, by Don Marquis: 

“From 'the lesson of the moth':
and before i could argue himout of his philosophy he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter i do not agree with him myself i would rather have half the happiness and twice the longevity

but at the same time i wish there was something i wanted as badly as he wanted to fry himself”

That's all I got for now.

peace, love & health, 

Heather/Hanai'ali'i 

  

Day Fourteen: Oh, it's Weird Enough Alright

Before I even start this mess today, let me give you something to make you smile. I may be easily amused, but I am particularly charmed by miniature scenes, like this pictorial about snails. The artist is Vyacheslav Mischchenko who kindly gave me permission to use his photographs. 

Unlike snails, this virus is working through us at an extraordinary rate. The number of Covid cases here in California is at 7173  lab-positive results and 143 deaths as of this evening, and today marks the end of the two week Stay at Home order. Joke's on us, though, because Berkeley just extended it to May 1st. I don't know what we'd do without our local virtual rag, Berkeleyside to keep us informed.  Speculation by some people who claim to know things say we are looking at a lot longer than that, maybe three months more. Virginia and Maryland have extended their order until June 1st. We will see.  

The upside is that California acted fairly swiftly and in doing so, the number of cases here is much lower than expected. I personally thank our Governor, Gavin Newsome for acting decisively on our behalf. I think Trump's arrogance and ego may be the demise of us in some ways, worse than under any U.S. president in history. I grant that we've never seen anything like this before. Oh, except for the flu pandemic of 1918, but then... I rest my case. Stick a fork in us, Trump has cooked us for dinner.  Case in point, for the first time in it's entire history, the United States Postal Service might have to shut down. 

I don't know about you but all of that news just put me into a tailspin of despair.  Earlier today I started thinking about driving out and going shopping. I need things and I want to go get things. I talked myself down from throwing myself off the front stairs (all three of them) by drinking a glass of wine. That's the best I could do as I'm saving my Xanax for a more dire emergency, like trying to sleep at some point when the lack thereof puts me in delirium.  No one is sleeping these days, and don't think I don't get it.   

Being reluctantly realistic, this was expected as numbers climb, people die, and hospitals are veritable warzones as the entire world is hit with this. No where is spared and we're all in this together; the entire world. 

No one is spared perhaps, except this Native community up in Arctic Canada where a youngish couple fled after selling all their worldly possessions. The TL/DR is that with hopes of escaping the virus, they decided to pick up stakes to try to live like The Grizzly Adams Family up in one of the most brutally hard places in the Americas, showed up virtually on the doorstep of this small, insular community and the First Nation people who already live there said "not today, Satan".  Good for them. 

I managed to do something ludicrous yesterday afternoon while pulling out my step-up equipment thinking I could do a little low-impact exercise in the back yard. I stepped my previously fractured left foot into one of my grandson's many half-dug holes and it twisted. I felt it quietly pop and immediately thereafter, pain. I think this may just cause a little set back with one of them teeny bones. There's nothing to do about it, really. Given our current stay at home predicament, it's not worth a trip to the ER for an x-ray or a doctor's opinion.  I can tough it out by staying off my foot and using a walking boot if necessary. 

Lesson: be very careful what you do these days because getting emergency medical care is not what you want to be doing right now. 

QAnon apparently projects the government is going to shut off the internet from April 1 - 10. I set absolutely no store by anything that comes out of that whackaloon organization (are they even organized?) but the idea that our internet could go down right now is horrifying. A friend was living in Varanisi, India a while back and the government shut down the internet to the entire country for a week with a ten-minute warning. Separated from friends, family and country, she said she fell into a state of despair.  I can imagine. 

Anyhow, shut down my internet I'll find something do, but I won't like it. 

In a clown show of defiance, somewhere down in Oakland last night a ton of people got together for a sideshow. Of all things, a sideshow. Not even a BBQ or block party or something communally constructive. All it takes is one person coughing within 20 feet of someone else to spread this nasty virus and these dumbshits are congregating to watch some assholes spin their cars around. Well there are actual Darwin awards and I'd make them a runner up to this dipshittery by a Florida evangelist, who got himself arrest for holding a very large congregation. Jesus, take the evangelist preachers first! 

A woman in the Oakland neighborhood posted a picture of a group of sideshow voyeurs on Facebook with words that sounded a little despairing, "I just wanted to walk my dog...." and I felt sorry for her. 

A friend of mine made a comment that the ice cream truck is driving around his neighborhood in the middle of this pandemic. I am reminded of The Happy Paki who drives our neighborhood truck, which is so derelict it should have been in Shameless, or at the very least, a drug ring bust on the local news. The Happy Paki drives his truck at breakneck speed with the Confederate tune, Turkey in the Straw, blaring at a tick over the right RPMs so when he passes it's a scene out of a bad movie. I'd buy a Strawberry Shortcake bar from him in a New York minute if he came by, and if I could limp along fast enough to catch him. 

Hunter S. Thompson once said, "It never got weird enough for me" but I think maybe this would have been just weird enough. He did give us a way to get through life's completely trippy turns and switchbacks, though:   

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro"

Thank you, Gonzo

Day Thirteen: Is it Worth the Risk?

I read an article this morning which opines that hanging out while 6 feet apart isn't coronavirus social distancing and this gave me pause for thought.

People are still going to the local city parks, which have only closed the play structures and water fountains with yellow caution tape (picture owned by Berkeleyside).

Their kids are playing ball, their dogs running around, they are running laps, doing yoga and sitting on benches reading newspapers. Some people cluster in their familial groups, sitting on blankets, playing guitars. They are in fact staying six feet or further from other people. My neighbors are driving over to Marin County regularly to walk and shop over there. I've seen a few contacts I know who are complaining about not being able to walk their dogs off-leash, because other people aren't behaving themselves, but they are. Well howdy, people -- everyone else wants to do that, too! Unless you have a special access badge, why is it you think you should even have some free-range out there? It's because a lot of people are responsibly staying at home. Why aren't you?  On the other hand, if everyone went to the parks to run their dogs around and exercise their kids and if all of us stayed 10 feet from each other... well you see the problem there. It's not possible for all of us to use the parks safely. Ha, maybe a Lottery should be implemented.  Maybe Shirley Jackson was on to something there.

The concept of social distancing isn't about your day to day life, people. It's about how to conduct yourself when you are out doing essential business, like at the pharmacy, grocery store or your local cannabis club (which by the way, I highly highly recommend for anxiety amelioration, and many of them do delivery for a minimum purchase).

Social distancing does not mean we are okay to gather in public and simply distance ourselves. No, that's why we're on a Stay at Home order. Staying at home means staying at home. Not having a block party where everyone on the block gathers but everyone is 20 feet apart.  Not having tailgates, like I did last week before considering this.  We don't get to pick and choose what safety elements to implement and exactly when those rules apply. Either we do this thing or we don't. It's pretty simple.

I am a later convert to this concept, honestly as I started visualizing when large groups of people gather anywhere how much spread of anything coming out of their mouths there is. You cough or sneeze... and you spread your germs to someone or some thing up to six meters away, which is almost 20 feet.  In our individualistic society, just reframe that as when someone else exhales, sneezes or coughs you will be the unwitting recipient of their out-spray. Obviously, the closer we are in proximity to one another, the more rampant our germ spread, but my point remains.

Link to article here

As of March 27th (it is now the 29th), there were 16 lab-confirmed cases of Covid19 here in Berkeley. Actually this is what it looks like.  I should have drawn this in landscape, obviously.

So here are, let's have a distance block party, go take our kids to the park for some "fresh air" and a game of ball with the other social distancers.

Here's a story my mom told me years ago about going stir crazy. When I was a baby, mom put me down for a nap in my crib and would take that quiet time to run down the street and put some laundry in at the coin-op and would do a quick load while I was sleeping. She timed it so she knew how long she could safely be gone before I would awaken.

She saw a therapist during this time and told the therapist that she was getting some down time while also getting her laundry done. Her therapist replied, "would it be worth it if you went home and something terrible had happened to Heather?" My mom never did it again, because no, it was not worth the risk.

I pose this same question to you people: Is your time at the park with your kid, or your dogs with the other dog people staying a "safe distance", or your girl/boyfriend's health worth it when you get home from your social distancing time away? I know a few people who are evidently visiting other homes with a variety of excuses as to why it is okay to do so.  I am not saying it's not okay. I am saying this is your life and the lives of your loved ones that are at risk.

Is it worth the risk? 

Yesterday, as my son's concern for my mental health trebled on the scale of "mom, it's okay" to "mom, ARE YOU OKAY?", he offered to come with all safety gear on to visit me (ie check on me). I ruminated over this and lost some sleep because God all I want is to see him in person and feel him and listen to his heartbeat as I hug him.

And I told him that I cannot be that selfish and I am okay and no, I do not want him to visit. It is not worth the risk to my baby. 

I am not without guilt in being lax in some areas. The millennial who rents a room from me is practically Howard Hughes level self-righteous about this specific topic, and I can't tell if he actually cares about community health or he's just paranoid. On the other hand, he seems to have zero problems with incoming mail, cardboard delivery boxes and things like that. Like everyone else, he has a measure of fluidity in what lowering infection potential is, too.  I've been spraying the incoming mail with Lysol, because it's troubling me that I can hear the mail carrier coughing the last couple of days.

That's what I have for now. Take this into consideration. We're all lonely. Some of us more than others, but we will get through this. People have suffered worse than being on lockdown in their homes. We can do this.

** steps off soapbox**

Day Twelve: Am I Blue?

Day Twelve: Berkeley is covered in rain again. Why the wave of weather causes it to rain on the weekends is beyond me. I was hoping to dig around in the garden after working all week in the house, but nope. 

Instead, I cleaned up my bedroom, Maria Kondo'd my closet, put clean sheets on the bed and reset my bedroom Smart TV to the new internet service. Then I watched several movies. The best one was Blue Hawaii, Elvis' 1961 film. It's a bit of a surprise I've never watched it all the way through before with any attention. It's full of machismo, racism, misogyny, sexism, and some serious double entendre. I cringed everytime Angela Lansbury called for her houseboy, 'Ping Pong'. But the scenes of Oahu and Kauai in technicolor are exactly the Hawaii I keep in memories albeit highways less congested and rivers more accessible. 

The Coco Palms hotel on Kauai, the main set for the movie is now crumbling under the earth which is consuming it with vines and grass, wind and rain. What happens when mother earth takes over what Man has built? 

Stephen King wrote The Stand in the 1970s and when I was 16 or so, I had dropped out of high school and my friend  Beth Price was sharing my basement bedroom suite and one night I stayed up until 3 a.m. reading The Stand. It scared the shit out of me then, and it's doing so again. 

I get this isn't a war of Good versus Evil, God versus the Devil... but it is an argument for how we are living our lives. Some will live, many will die. 

↔↔↔

My dog is a tempo regulator. She comes over when I'm sitting down and taps her toenails, crunches her teeth. I keep asking her what is wrong?  She has no answer, but nervously paces around and then collapses in the dog version of numbing out. 

A neighbor up the street, Charis an outspoken Cypriot who somehow landed in Berkeley, California, has an old husky and he posted this picture today. It portrays what it feels like to have this kind of love next to you. The heartbeat of a creature who is paying attention and loving us in our best, and worst, moments.  We humans could learn a lot from dogs, but we won't. 

Day Ten & Eleven: Beauty and Terror

I am reaching real deep and nothing's coming. There is no theme today. It was a stunningly bright, blue day with ice clouds big and crisp like heavenly volcanic eruptions yesterday. It saddens me that there is no photo to share. Today again, such beauty and no planes in the sky and the songs of birds and the lack of sound when humans aren't consuming all the space. 

The U.S. topped 100,000 cases of the virus today. For once, I had avoided the news while sitting on my sofa at work, but that didn't matter after all, because it still happened anyway. 

About 3 p.m. my composure kind of exploded with the need to move. Lola and I took a walk. My broken foot walked and walked until somewhere around two miles the limp got so bad I wasn't so much walking as gimping along pathetically, so I came back home.

100,000 cases in the U.S.

Why does it seem as if it's happening somewhere else? In spite of feeling isolated and alone, and frightened that I can't see my family, the virus itself feels very remote. Like it can't happen here; not here. 

Yet it is. It is happening everywhere. To say I'm scared is an understatement, yet it's not just the virus that scares me. It's the economy, too. People being laid off in such numbers that the idea of recovery is too daunting even to think about.

This is so tiring. I cook, and tidy, and do laundry and work and work and work. The yard wants work, but it rains on the weekends when I have the time and the sun shines when work requires my attention. 

I pray for this to be over, but it's going to take more than the blink of an eye, or an announcement on the news, or prayers. Prayers can make you feel there is hope, perhaps, but prayers are not going to fix this ugly. This is a deep, stagnant hole and it's going to take awhile. Buckle up, it's still gonna be a bumpy ride. 

My son is safe, my grandchildren are safe, my brothers are safe. They are all I have. For now, everyone I love is safe. That remains so and yet will there ever be the worry in the pit of my stomach and a fluttering everpresent ache in my heart.

Let everything happen to you

beauty and terror

just keep going

No feeling is final

- Rilke

Day Nine: There's Magic If You Know Where to Look

I've had some messy emotions the last 24 hours and can't go into specifics but I'm feeling extra isolated from my people today. I mean my kids, primarily.  Been discussing installing Zoom with the kid's mom so I can have regular face time with them.   

I'm realizing how much I've missed everyone else, too, though. The feels are that people are important to me and I've done a lot of "we'll get together soons" and "let's make a dates" and we all know how that ends.  

Let's go to the Winchester and wait till this whole thing blows over. 

Now when being responsible means not being in the same room with people for the foreseeable future means, well fuckera. I want to see almost everyone.  When this is over, I insist on seeing you and I will make it happen. 

It surprises me to be so busy with actual work right now. I seriously have at least eight hours to fill the day, and it's just weird to be doing it when the daily tally was what it was.

Louisiana just got steamrolled after Mardi Gras and has the fastest growing infection rate in the world, while here in Berkeley the tally is only 11 tested and confirmed cases, but that gives a false sense of security when there was an elder gentlemen tested positive after shopping at my local Safeway Saturday before last. God knows if I touched anything the following Sunday that he may have handled, but I have zero symptoms thus far eight days later. The small-town that Berkeley really is becomes reality when one has actual friends who say "wait, I was there that Saturday". Yeah, people call us a city, but without the students, we're nothing but a town. 

Higher density anybody? 

I was going to start in on politics and then got intensely fatigued. Mitch McConnell is droning on about the Relief Bill and what he wants us to believe is the Democrats have been selfishly holding back on signing it for no good reason.  

"Do you work here?" He snarked at journalist posing a question. It is disheartening how lack of simple civility has just flown out the window. What a scornful fucktwit he is, just like Frump. Who speaks to another person like that for no real reason? 

So that's just how it goes and I'm so, so weary of it. What banal, boring, predictable pieces of shit these people are.  

In all honestly, right now I want to do other things than hear this politicization of a rampant disease or working eight hours while sitting in my living room. I want to paint, draw, write and play the piano. There have been five zillion opportunities prior to now to indulge myself in creativity and it takes a fucking zombie apocalypse to inspire me? I think I've forgotten that I could be more like Peter Pan and fly sometimes. I have friends who live life like it's magical. More on that in a bit. 

My Carter didn't beat the devil in the end, but we had this poster in our house for a long time and it still charms me. 

⟺

Multiple talents are contributing their crafts, and it's one of the coolest phenomena I have seen in my lifetime. A few I've seen so far; live-stream Chick Corea practice sessions, a doll-making demo by my favorite blue-haired Cajun, Ugly Shyla, and live updates from one of the loveliest people/voices, Jenna Mammina, about the tempo of her life right now, with people like Narada Michael Walden chiming in (like whoa, that's pretty cool IMHO), and a crochet tutorial that I can't keep up with, and other live streams. 

I'd like to shout out Sunshine Alchemists soap company who is relying on two orders a day to survive. Master soapmaker and proprietress, Maaike Hurst, makes soap, body butters, candles, and other luscious things and has a lot of talk-story to share, but the coolest thing right now is that she is a newlywed to her Moroccan husband, Najib, who made it by the slimmest possible margin to the U.S about a week before the Zombie Apocalypse. How strange it must be for him in this new world with the current reality.  

The aforementioned Ugly Shyla makes some very cool dolls, one of which hangs in my dining room.  She also creates some goth jewelry, pendants, rings etcetera and for those who want to decorate themselves to take away the sting from having some seriously fucked up hair right now (you will not be seeing a recent picture of me for awhile, I'll tell you that), hit her up here at Ugly Art Dolls to check out her magic.  I'm kinda fascinated by her, so here's a pic. 

Impromptu segue. My Ugly Art Doll's name is Hermione, after my grandfather's first wife. She came to me as a porcelain head and I'm not being all woo-woo when I say she came with a spirit in her. For several months after I had her professionally shadow-boxed so I could hang her up, she would fall off her mounting when I was just standing looking at her. I kept rehanging her on her mount. One day, after a one-sided discussion with her, she now stays right where I put her. That was some spooky shit, but not entirely out of character for my dining room, where my ancestor altar resides. Things happen in there to sensitive people. 

Obviously, technology is keeping us connected which is entirely mind-boggling for those of us who remember having to stretch the phone cord to max tension in order to have private teenaged convos back in the day and meeting at the Downtown BART station waiting for peeps to show up with the down-low on where the hangout was. 

Those were the days.

I've lost patience at this point and while I don't necessarily mind being trapped in my house for the foreseeable future, I see zero point when this is over, extending my energy toward anything or anyone who doesn't add a little magic to my world. Life is just too short. 

All that and I still say we need to extend kindness and compassion to others because without it we're just doomed.

We need some magic, Goddamn it.  

My grandson wants to learn magic. He doesn't have the patience yet and maybe never will to be a master at it, but no one said you have to be good at anything in order to love doing it. Something as simple as a perfect Faro shuffle enchants him. I told him a little secret about the Faro shuffle and told him he has to be able to do a perfect shuffle in order to do the magical part. He obsessed over it until he got one perfect shuffle, but he has a long way to go before he can to the thing I told him about. I want him to search for that magic. You have to risk failure in order to find the magic and I hope he takes those risks.  

For proof of that, I present you with this video of a skin-crawling magical feat, performed by my dear friend and veteran comrade of the early 80s, Tom Frank. If you're interested in seeing my beloved friend impale his hand on a very sharp metal spike, please enjoy the Smash and Stab.


Other magic is simply whimsical and cartoonish and full of joyful childish wonder. For that, I offer to you Danny Sylvester aka Sylvester the Jester. I guarantee you will be amazed and amused and right now we really really need some of this. 

I'm full of sideshows. What would life be without wonder and magic? 

I've always believed in magic because if I didn't, nothing I've done would be as sparkly as it is. This is Jim Cellini, the late great master magician, busker, dear friend and all-around amazing human. Honestly, because of him and the love and care he brought into my life at a very uncertain time, I know there's magic everywhere. 

Be the Magic. 

Peace and Love, 
Eva/Heather/Hanai'ali'i

Day Eight: Where Do the Children Play or, Have I Lost My Mind Yet?

This is the face I would live in a cave for the rest of my life to protect. This was taken a tick over seven years ago, and a lot has happened in her eight years now on this planet, some of it really heavy shit for a little girl to handle. None of it as mind-boggling as what she now has stored in her memory. I'll get to the other one once his baby face pics show up, but for now can anyone tell me they can look at the face of their child and tell them you would not give every drop of your blood for them? Okay then. 

Here's the thing and doubtless you all have heard by now, Texas' Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, says he would give his life for his grandchildren -- but he's not talking about sheltering them from this disease. He's talking about saving the economic health of the country and using guilt-inducing rhetoric in an attempt to convince people that is the right thing to do.  

I think it's safe for me to speak on behalf of my grandchildren, even if they knew the economic impact this is 100% going to have, that they'd rather be dirt-farmers and scrap collectors before they'd want me to die for the economic well-being of the top 1% in this country. Fuck You, Dan Patrick. 

I fully intend to stay alive as long as possible even if I'm daft as a lamppost so I can help provide my grandchildren with my love, wisdom as much good health advice as I possibly can and a wealth of useful curse words for all occasions.

Like Creighton Bernette on Treme in his "Fuck you, you fucking fucks" Youtube diatribe, I am so damned mad.  Maybe I should livefeed my diatribe too.  

Today, Trump said he's ready to open the country up again at then end of his 15 day "flatten the curve" campaign. This flyer, which he waves around periodically, was apparently mailed out to people. A  friend of mine actually got a hard copy of this in the mail today. 

Oh lordy I just realized I got one too. 

Does anyone else but me realize that he hasn't implemented any directives whatsoever to help American citizens? It's all been up to the heads of each State. While this cheese-powder popcorn headed motherfucker pontificates on the podium every day, he hasn't done one damned thing for us. 

Look to the Governor of your State for guidance, because this foolish crimpletwod has got nothing for us. By the way, Grammarly is quite miffed at me for that new descriptor. I've added it to my personal dictionary. 

Let's fill the churches to the rafters this absurd cartoonish heretic said today. The least spiritually inclined leader I have ever seen in my 58 years of life has the gall to suggest the churches should be filled with people for Easter. Phew, at least he didn't suggest mosques and synagogues! 

Uh-oh, here comes a Godwin's Law intrusion: what's he gonna do, have them pumped full with the virus? He sure as fuck hasn't done anything else. 

Tally of Virus Wins today in the U.S: 52,934 infected, 721 dead. Today a young child died of it in L.A. County. Medical staff are cutting out protective robes out of garbage bags and using their masks until they're covered with hazmat.  

Oh, by the way, my doppelganger-friend and her husband in St Louis probably have the virus, and so most likely does another one in Michigan, which I mentioned yesterday.  Can't say more, since it's their business, but they seem to be on upswing, and I'm sorry and this is close to me now, and if I lose anyone it's gonna be such a shittier world. Goddamn it. 

Suck my balls, Frump you mangoheaded goon. Credit to Eric Arnold for def: contraction for Fucking Trump)

Casa de Eva is in a dark funk today (obviously). It's dark and cloudy again, it's rained almost sideways for about ten minutes earlier. Good, I didn't feel like watering my garden anyway, I am far too busy doing other things. Whut?

The city of Berkeley is doing something hella funny. This guy was walking down the street with a very large generator that was hella loud, and he hella stopped in front of my house and I went out and asked him in all the wonderment of Alice in Wonderland to the White Rabbit, "what in the world are you doing, sir?" 

"I'm with the City", he said,  "We are shaving the trip hazards on the sidewalk" Serious as a heart attack. He said shaving, not sanding. 

"Ah", I said, "well that is... I don't... okay, well you carry on then, sir," as he pushed his generator cart and big orange industrial broom down the street. 

Now just imagine me here like Granny Clampett when I say that I've lived here my entire durned life and never, ever have I ever seen the City shave the sidewalk. I'll be dipped in shit, as my old friend Ranetta used to say.

Did I mention this guy was awfully darned cute and really young and walking around lek dis wuz normal in da normul daze.  I think I've lost my mind already, and we're not two weeks into this stay at home thing. 

Nana

I'm back to my Nana-would-be-so-proud-of-me right now. I'm still hoarding my eggs for the greater good of oven-baked deliciousness. Breakfast is toast, jam, cream cheese what the heck else there is to put on it. Cheese toast is my favorite thing maybe in the world, so that's a go-to. I hoard cheese, too, so I have a veritable le grotte de fromage to choose from, no joke. 

I poached some chicken breasts I got from Hellofresh yesterday. I hate chicken breast, which to me is just dried up flavorless meh. But I poached it with some soy sauce, ginger, garlic, chili paste and added a boullion cube.  The point of this was not really to impart flavor to the chicken, which is hopeless, but rather to suck out any bit of flavor might be in it, which then infuses the broth and thus you have... soup. 

Half the cardboard flavored meat went into a slaw of desperate to be used cabbage and carrots, some limp green onions, and the unmushy part of a red pepper. The ginger sesame dressing made me forget about the chicken. 'Twas tasty. 

The other half will be shredded out of recognition and put back into the soup along with the rest of the cabbage for dinner tonight. 

Why do I go into this detail which probably has you squirming like you have to pee your pants? It's because my Nana, whose teeth fell out due to starvation during the depression and who wouldn't have thrown a rotten apple away without investigating it for potential use somewhere... would weep with pride for my thrift. 

I still cannot clean a window with vinegar water and a chamois cloth. I just cannot do it, sorry Nana, Windex is a thing and it works really well. 

We need to lock down the country. For the sake of our children, for ourselves, for those we don't know, and for those we do. 

Let the mangotwat go to the church with the rest of his cult-followers, I don't give a fuck, but lock the rest of us down to save us from ourselves. 

A little levity: My grandkid's mom made them do a 45 minute long CrossFit WOD yesterday and sent me a video. They looked miserable and I laughed (bad Nana).  One has to think outside the box these days. 

Excuse me, the sun just decided to come out and I think I'm melting. Time to close the curtains and get back to being a hermit. 


Eva/Heather/Hanai'ali'i





    

Day Seven: Eat The Rich

I'm not going to start with preposterous and disastrous and tragic news yet. We've all heard most of it and it can be left for later in the post as a reminder of what happened today. 

At Casa de Eva and Environs: 

I'm just now starting to know people with the virus. A friend in another State went to the ER where she was told she very likely has it but is not ill enough to get tested. She was traveling a couple weeks ago and has been sick for 9 days now with all the right symptoms. She is really sick, but not sick enough. I think she was sent home to recuperate. Or not. I sincerely hope she comes out okay, she's an amazing person, young, talented, and well, she's my friend. 

A co-worker's mother was tested, without any particular reason given (the source may not be entirely accurate here), but she sent pics of the test kits to my co-worker. I haven't heard news of the outcome, but if they used a test on a 70 year old woman in Las Vegas there's a damned good reason for it. 

A neighbor friend posted on FB that someone was selling toilet paper out of their car today a few blocks from our houses. Apparently, they had customers. Toilet paper is really a thing. While I have backstock because I always do, I'm starting to wonder if I even have enough although I almost certainly do and when I don't, well then is the time to worry about it. 

Weird things are getting to me. Today I had an internal dialogue about running out of dental floss of all things. I have plenty, and haven't had to buy any in over a year because I always have two of everything. Now though... 

I'm also having a bizarre relationship with the number of eggs I have on hand. I have three  and half dozen eggs and because now I'm hoarding them for special purposes have stopped eating them for breakfast except on weekends. I even warned my roommate about eating eats for breakfast once a week instead of more often. They're my eggs after all, I get to say when and how they're used. WTF is my functional problem?  

Well, honestly part of it is that my roommate is a young millenial and he's taking this so seriously it's almost a Howard Hughes level of paranoia, is 27, very healthy, a vegetarian (whatever that has to do with it) and he has not been to anywhere except short walks with the dog for over two weeks. 

I am the one who braved the grocery store and pharmacy last week, while he just sat here in mute admonishment. I could see it in his eyes, "you go anywhere, lady, and you're getting sprayed with Lysol,  wrapped in  Saran Wrap and I'm gonna wear tissue boxes on my feet" is what his eyes said. So I went anyway, and now he has the nice treats I make because stress baking is my thing, and he gladly eats the vegetarian options I make too much of. But he's not going to go out and replace those eggs.  No sirree Bob.  

A few have commented that well, it's great someone is there in case you get sick or need help. I'm like "no if I get sick I'm going to die in my bedroom gurgling on my own lung butter or of starvation because this millennial won't come near me". 

Anyway, he's another human in the house and that's good. Maybe he'll call the coroner if I start to smell too bad. I should give him the number of a couple of morticians I know. 

Yes, I am showering every day. Today I almost just stayed in my PJs and then decided I have to stick to routine or everything's going to fall apart. However, because the day comes soon when PJs are my fashion du jour, I think about ordering something lovely from Amazon along with a cushy new bathrobe. Because you know, you want to present your best self when out walking the dog. Plus, my hair is growing too long, my dark roots are showing and damn it maybe a fashionable sleep ensemble will take the eye away from this hair. 

I took the dog out for a walk. It was cold and overcast again. The perfect day for an Addams family frolic. There were a few lovely flowers growing, including this odd ball. 

We ended up at the park where a widely spaced triangle of dog owners were letting their dogs play. Lola had an amazing time flirting brazenly with an unneutered fellow named Pickles, whose owner, Michael said they'd be up at the park around 6 p.m everyday, so maybe Lola will have a playdate for the foreseeable future. Now my arthritic feet have me hobbling, but I came home feeling a lot more relaxed than I've been all day. I don't even feel like baking... but that could be the Tullamore on the rocks I just sipped with dinner. 

This afternoon, I had my first big crying jag. A couple things happened that set me off, and then the hopelessness of being alone and unable to go to my favorite people or my Anam Cara person so went into the backyard and surveyed this little plot of land I know so well and have loved so long and ending this run-on sentence, I fell out and sobbed. I didn't want my roommate to see and I didn't want to be trapped in my bedroom, alone, crying. 

Reminded of the day after my husband died two years ago in February, when my grief literally hit me so hard I fell to my knees and sobbed as if the world had ended.  


My next-door neighbor brought me a piece of this amazing Meyer lemon olive oil cake. It was heavenly. I brought her a loaf of homemade sourdough last week. We trade the delights we are manically creating. That cake though. If you're a baker with eggs to spare, check it out. 

Working from home is both a distraction and distracting. It's hard to focus, although I've set my mind to it. After all, I did this for two months with a broken foot when I couldn't even go out without a lot of foofaraw and physical agony, so this should be a veritable walk in the park in comparison. Not so. Maybe it's the lack of potent drugs, maybe it's because the whole world seems like it's rife with fear, and we are governed by a man who wants to perpetuate our fear while also brazenly determine to save his own wealth. 

I need Edward R. Murrow to reappear with one of his potent journalistic pieces. On Fear, I think, has some relevance here.  

And speaking of, there's still more shit hitting the fan out in the world. Here's today's wrap up.

People are getting understandably very pissed off at how the wealthy seem to be getting Covid tested even when asymptomatic when the rest of us can't. Add to that that the Congressional swimming pool and gym was still open for their use at least a few days ago, corroborated by an article about Rand Paul who was swimming there last Sunday. Not sure if that's changed.

At the end of this horrendous cataclysmic pandemic we are all facing to some degree or another, we have something to think about: The rich are doing very well. They are getting tested. They are getting healthcare. They -- the businesses -- will get bailed out. Trump will save face in what is the most disastrous event to occur under an American President ever by bailing out business. But we all knew we would do that.

What about the cruise lines? Why is Trump even talking about bailing out cruise lines that operate under International companies and are not even connected to the United States?  Princess Cruise lines is incorporated in the Bahamas, though they keep a corporate office in California.  

It turns out that the Coronavirus actually stayed alive in the cabins of the Princess Cruise ship that docked in Oakland for 17 days. That's no fault of the cruise lines perhaps, but jeez.

Eat the Rich, damn it, I think they might make mighty fine dining. Recipes in the link to save for later. 

People in Assisi are singing from their balconies, finding community and solidarity balcony to balcony. Opera singers are singing arias from their balconies to those lucky enough to be able to hear them. 

China's horrific pollution has subsided to almost pristine, and now it looks like it might stay that way for a while because it appears they are about to be hit with a 2nd wave of this thing.

A few Italian local politicians have gotten uttlery fed up and pissed off because they want their citizens to abide by the stay at home mandate. These guys are threatening flamethrowers for fuck's sake, while here in California people are going in hoards to our local parks and popular oceanside destinations. Point Reyes is closed as are many accessways and beaches to prevent people from gathering there too close to

651 more Italians died in yesterday. I think I mentioned yesterday that 400 had died in that 24 hour period. The numbers I've been keeping in my head are becoming blurred. 800 died there, 600, 400.. whatever the actual number is and you're seeing the same data I am: It is too many dead people.

Today Trump, who a local journalist is calling Frump which is a contraction of Fuck Trump, referred to his 15-day Social Distancing plan as if it really is a finite thing he can put a date on. He said, "This was a medical problem, we're not going to let it turn it into a long-term financial problem." I'll just set that there because it doesn't require interpretation or comment. 

And here's a little tidbit a neighbor told from across the street: A company in Colorado has millions of masks, and a neighbor who is the Comptroller for a local jurisdiction declined their offer to buy half a million of them for $6.00 each. Now FEMA is going to go in and take the entire supply at a fraction of the company's price. I hope FEMA doesn't pay their invoice. 

Please, if we're going to get to the Soylent Green era of human existence, let's eat the rich first.


Good night and good luck. 

Heather/Hanai'ali'i