The Old Pandemic Cake and Walking on Sunshine

Saturday, March 21, 2020

Global Status: 307,037

Active Cases: 198,795

Recovered Cases: 95,795

Fatal Cases: 13,034

That was the biggest earthquake I’ve ever been in!, Mom said instead of ‘hello’ when I answered the phone last night. Earthquake?, I asked. The earthquakes moved out of Utah and Northern California and worked their way to three miles from my Mom’s house. It was a 5.0. Some books fell off her shelves and things fell from the top of the entertainment center, and the rolling thunder of the earthquake went on and on and on. 93,000 people (or maybe some other number of people) collectively and initially believed a truck hit their garage. *Just in case they weren’t scared enough already. The COVID Earthquakes. Specially Designed Icing for the Old Pandemic Cake.

Kenny Rogers died. Not from COVID. He just died. Everyone is sad about that but no one seems to have much grieving energy left to send his way except the occasional ‘What was your favorite Kenny Rogers song?’ posting on Facebook. Everyone only seems to have enough energy to worry about Tom Hanks and his wife, since they contracted it but are recovering.

And then another earthquake this morning but everybody didn’t get fooled into thinking a truck hit them twice. Of course, maybe one of them was right and it really was a truck. Who knows?

I swore to Aidan I didn’t need a jacket but halfway to the petroglyphs, I was already complaining. Why do you always dress for the weather you want, not the weather you have? He laughed. Dave and Angie wanted to get out of the house and what better place to go than hiking around out in the boonies with nobody in sight? But apparently everybody else in the world thought it was a great idea too. There were so many cars we had to park way in the back on the road in a slightly questionable area, hanging the ass end of the car on a curve. When we got out of the cars, everybody’s dogs went wild with delight, squeaking and yipping and tails going around in giant circles.

The walk was lovely and the other people on the trail were polite and everybody stepped six feet off the path to go around one another. And all the people told us how amazing and beautiful our dogs were, so we liked that. The sky pretended it was going to rain a few times. Grey bubbly clouds jumped in front of the sun and everything went cold until the sun pushed them out of the way again for a bit. The petroglyphs were pretty neat with their little squiggles and zig zags and circles and I felt small in the face of history. We’d all read the same articles and heard all the same stories about the state of the world, so we basically just all agreed with one another constantly for the whole walk. Sherlock found water puddles and made sure he was good and wet before we got back into the car.

We blasted “I’m Walkin’ On Sunshine” with the windows down and sang as loud as we could while we drove slowly in circles in the Raley’s parking lot. No one seemed to totally appreciate it. We apparently desperately needed to buy sugar-free chocolate and snacks and two bell peppers. I wore gloves. There was no hand sanitizer for sale, even though 75% of distilleries are making hand sanitizer now. I’d love to get my hands on that Limited Edition Rum Hand Sanitizer and save it until I’m 85 and then sell it to pay off all my hospital bills before I die.

There’s almost no covid testing now. They say if you feel ill, just assume you have it and stay home. If you go in for testing, you’re making hospital staff use a gown and a mask that could be saved for someone needing it in ICU. They aren’t doing testing unless it “significantly alters the trajectory of care” you may receive. Read: Don’t go to the hospital unless it’s by an ambulance because you’re about to be dead. Plus, they say they’ll waive hospital costs related to covid. So they can still charge you $2,000 a pop just for going if they don’t test you.

Italy is stacking bodies in churches and there was another earthquake at Mom’s house this evening. I sat in my warm dining room, snug as a bug, looking out the window at the back 40. I watched those sunsety-bubby-rainy clouds way, way, way up on the hill behind the house. And the silhouettes of four people up there too. Black against the orange sky. Throwing Rocks For Fun.