CORONA-CATION DAY 16: "I just need these two chickens....."

I was walking with my wife yesterday day, because that is what we do now, and I said “chickens are probably THE most amazing animal in nature, maybe in line with the Sturgeon!” She bit.  “So they are pretty amazing,…”she said to humor me “…but sturgeons?”.  Me: “Right ? Chickens and Sturgeons literally gives birth to an edible product, every single day and nobody has to die for it! Right?!?!? " to which she said "You probably should also have a bottle of water.  Caviar is salty."

So like what other animals do that, produce ready made meals?

I mean there are lobsters and crabs, but who in their right mind would go for the lobster or crab EGGS ,when you can go all Flash Dance-Jennifer Beals and just eat the lobster straight up!

In the event of a Pandemic…., what am I saying, during THIS Pandemic (notice how I always capitalize Pandemic out of respect) you can literally survive with two chickens and a bottle of water. Now, if you had two chickens a bottle of water and a Sturgeon!  OMG, the party is on!  Scrambled eggs and caviar!  Dang!  Can you say Sustainable Easter Brunch, like every day!  AND the dystopian lemon tree!  Don’t get me started.

Remember that movie, The Jerk, with Steve Martin and the amazing Bernadette Peters ?   

Steve Martin’s character believes he was born a poor black child in Mississippi. He is distressed to find out that he is actually white, and in an effort to “find himself”, he heads north to St. Louis. Martin’s character (Navin) discovers his name printed in the new phone book.  Anyway remember the scene where he is leaving his wife and home and he starts picking key necessities up? "I don't need one other thing, not one - I need this. The paddle game, and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches, for sure. And this. And that's all I need."  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2X3vVMdh-s

 I know how he feels…. “I just need this chicken and this chicken and this bottle of water and this lemon tree….and this sturgeon…and this copy of Flash Dance“.

Go whip up some scrambled eggs and caviar, and sit down with a good stream of The Jerk, or Blazing Saddles….or Flash DanceJ.

 Mountain Pig out.

CORNA-CATION DAY 15: The Demise(?) of the Harlequin Romance.

“…And that's why birds do it, bees do it. Even educated fleas do it….” – sung by Cole Porter, 1928

I am a bit concerned about the demise of the Harlequin Romance.  Maybe that is exaggerated. Maybe it is fine and healthy, but HR really does play a pivotal role in child rearing. It is kind of the Playboy of the female puberty world, and I would hate to see what might happen if HR were no longer around.  My mom, rest her blessed soul, read HR when I was growing up.  She and my Aunt Robbie traded them like baseball cards.  “Have you read Passion in the Night?” “No, I’ll take that one and you can have On the Winds of Love.” I still remember my Aunt Robbie lying in her bed (she and my Uncle Fred shared two “June and Ward Cleaver-style” single beds in the front room of their home) beneath the window air conditioner blowing a summer gale, and the police scanner periodically calling out some police activity – whatever that might be in an Arkansas town of 3200 people.  She would hand over her most recently read HR to my mom, who was sitting on my Uncle Fred’s bed across from her.   There were literally paper grocery bags of used HRs in my Aunt Robbie’s closet.   No clue what she did with them.  There was a big HR black market in that town.  Every woman who went to bingo or got their hair done down at the beauty shop was a part of it. Think Steel Magnolias times 10!

 Every girl child grew up sneak-reading HR.  It was how they learned that some beefy, moneyed up guy was gonna come through town and have his car break down, stranding him in the local hotel, immediately across from the café where she was working, so that they would see each other several times a day until she offered to show him the “sights” while he was waiting on his car to be fixed and they would kiss on the lookout up on Mount Nebo, and she would marry him because he was so loved by everyone and he was super good to her parents…..and her cat.

Of course my scenario was a little different than that one, but we will save that for another time.

The entire black market HR gang also read these other romance novels.  They were like HR on steroids – thick, 7 x 10 paperbacks that should have been rated X, but instead were left lying around for anyone who was digging through her mom’s closet to find.   Unlike HR, which were just “PG”, there were lots of naked people in these XHR books.  Often the main guy was involved in some nefarious activity like Pirate Capitan or Highwayman that resulted in some woman being kidnapped, or the guy being shot and her caring for him, until she realized that he was just the unemployed guy that she had been looking for all her life. At some point this relationship would go from the woman being disgusted at the guy to the guy “taking her” in some bed of flowers or barn loft.  Which brings me to my point (I really do have one).  

The newer books certainly don't generate the nostalgia that the older ones do.  Some newer ones clearly are working with an "outsized" sense of importance, but let them have their day I guess ("I thought you said it was a TEXAS-sized secret??") 

If HR goes down, or, god forbid, we lose these X-HR novels, then how will girls learn about the birds and the bees (interesting phrase! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_birds_and_the_bees).  How will they plan for the future?  How will they recognize their moneyed up future husband when they see him at the Auto-Shop?  Maybe I am making a mountain out of a mole hill. There is still Game of Thrones, or better yet the Scottish Game of Thrones…Outlander.  

On Outlander, women from the future and present are ravaged both willingly and unwillingly a LOT.  They are clearly romancing with people who have not had a bath in several days, something that I have come to appreciate more and more. But the Outlander guy has a Scottish accent, which must make it ok.

Good luck with your own Corna-romance.

Mountain Pig out.

CORONA-CATION DAY 14: Pig 101

My wife said last night "I am thinking four squares for a pee." After doing some research of my own, I said "I think three square for a pee is enough, but how many for a poop?" To which she said, "I am not ready to make a call on that."  I was struck by this conversation but I thought, knowing our family we could be having this conversations even if NO Pandemic was going on.  I am married to a German and they are very .....frugal.  One good thing is Bartley could survive an apocalypse with no TP at all.  He is clearly surviving the Pandemic in style. 

For those of you who might not know Bartley, he is the Pig Extraordinaire.  

He moved with us from Texas to Colorado in 2015 and proceeded to set up shop and build a real estate empire, and become “an influencer”.  He now has a solar house abutting the back of our own house, a cabin beneath the deck and an “efficiency” in the office, which we now call the ZOOM HIVE, and where he graciously is renting me space. 

He has a portfolio, shot by professional photographer Tricia Dunlap that he sends out for modeling jobs and as PR for various things. He drives a Tesla because ….well, Tricia recommended it several years ago, and after she got him sober, he always takes her recommendations.  

He has considered the new Tesla Truck and taken friends out for test drives, but they all say they prefer the car, "...to this stupid looking robo- piece of .....".

Bartley survived the last pandemic; swine flu, and he sees no reason to panic.

Bartley has already run some disaster drills, after The Abandonment of 2010, when he had to stock his cabin with anything that he could scavenge after his family left him to face the first cold front arrival of Autumn 2010.  When we showed up at 5 pm, he realized that he might have been a little overzealous, but at least the dog was no longer blamed or chewing up the potted plants.

Then there was The Abandonment of 2019.  This truly was a bad situation. Due to a miscommunication on his care-givers parts, he was left for a week to fend for himself, with only a single cup of food and the rain water to sustain him. He survived --nay, he thrived, on the solitude. 

The Pig will be here long after we are gone.  He truly knows how to socially distance.  His internet set up for gaming, and ordering take out are second to none.   He is building a lair where he plans to go during the next Pandemic.  Every pig needs a lair.  He is reading George Orwell's Animal Farm.

 And he requires VERY, little toilet paper to manage his business.

Mountain Pig out.

CORONA-CATION DAY 13: I need a hair cut

I am considering having my dog groomer cut my hair.  Look, you can judge me, but I can’t go for months on end without cutting my hair.  This look doesn’t just happen!!

I got the idea from a friend’s facebook site.  I thought it was hysterical, and then I thought “but by the grace of God go I”, so I am looking in to it.  

Apparently Pet Smart is considered an “essential business” and hair salons are not, so why wouldn’t it work? What could possibly go wrong?   In the interest of my image, I didn’t feel like it was something that I needed to do without researching it a bit, so I went to the most reliable source for this type of thing….the internet.

I mean, these guys are cutting sharp and clean lines, under difficult conditions (right). (I am admittedly a bit squirmy.) I might not go for the full Brazilian (left) but a simple bowl cut might be good, and cheap!  

Then I hit on this….

Competition Dog Grooming.  Who knew?!?  I mean these guys are dog groomers on acid.  I am not sure I want an elephant on my ass, I have enough problems back there already, 

but the psycho-candy snail flower child, or the butterfly, crack-induced garden dog!?!  I am there.

Pet Smart here I come! “Could I please get a Hunger-games scale buffant with a nice Disneyland Cinderella’s castle coming out the top??” “$35 dollars? Of course. Is cash ok?” 

Problem solved.

Mountain Pig out.

CORONA-CATION DAY 12: “…go and hide yo crazy and start actin’ like a lady.”

I am a little concerned at how I am going to emerge after this Corona-quarantine.   At some point I am going to need a hair cut.

I love that song “This Ain’t My Mama’s Broken Heart” by Miranda Lambert.  https://youtu.be/7yg05svXp98

It was written by an LGBTQ songwriter, and those of us “in the know” could recognize it immediately with the opening line “I cut my bangs with some rusty kitchen scissors.  I screamed his name till the neighbors called the cops.”  Wow, that screams queen. It is spectacular!  I encourage all of us in house-arrest to watch the video.  It is where I finally appreciated Lambert.

A woman asked me one time, “Well, how would you know you were going crazy if there wasn’t anyone there to tell you?!?”. She said this in an alarmed voice, and I was thinking that it might be comforting to just be living in your own world every now and then.  “…go and hide yo crazy and start actin like a lady..”

My Granny had a ‘tich’ of dementia (that is what we call it in the South) and she would tell me about the woman and little girl all dressed up in their Sunday dresses that would come on Sunday afternoons and sit underneath the flowering plum, but when she would go down the hill to take them cookies they always seemed to have left already.  My Granny was always smiling when she told me this story.  I often said that we were way more upset with my Granny’s ‘tich’ of dementia than she seemed to be.  She was her happy self.  

When it is all over and we "re-emerge will I look like Robin Williams in Jumunji?

Or will I embrace the new me.  Lots of people have this "yoga", "self examination" vibe going on.

Maybe I will more closely resemble the Siberian hermit woman named Agafia Lykov, who lived alone in the wilderness since the 1940s, and said (in Russian) that “the solitude is just fine”.  She lived in the wilderness after her parents moved there in 1944 to isolate themselves. 

Lykov's mother starved herself to death to provide more food for the children. …… I need to make a trip to “the grocery”. “I numbed the pain at the expense of my liver.  Don't know what I did next all I know, I couldn't stop”.

Mountain Pig out.

CORNA-CATION DAY 11: Keep your dirty hands off my dirty martini?!

We went to the liquor store yesterday.  The Denver Mayor had threatened to close down liquor stores and dispensaries and what ensued was bit of panic.  

My wife decided that, although she was not a hoarder and did not have to have food to survive, the slight mention of possibly living without wine was too much to bear.  We went to just replenish our stores.

She was in the wine area when some dude violated the six-foot-corona-safe-zone.  She told me that he moved down the row and he followed her, way, way, way too close for Corona-comfort. She said “Why did he have to be in Cabernets?!?  There was a whole row of Chardonneys!  Why couldn’t he have been in Chardonneys?  Did he absolutely have to have Cabernets at that moment?!  I mean, my God what is wrong with people?!?”.  My sentiments exactly Dear. 

She went to check out and was in the process when the phone rang, and the clerk answered.     

Clerk: “You want a case of wine?  Yes mam.  What wines would you like?” 

Phone: “blah blah. “

Clerk: “You mean just anything? White? Red?  Does price matter?”

Phone: “BLAH BLAH!!” 

Clerk: “Yes Mam I understand the situation in Denver, but this is Conifer, we are absolutely NOT going to run out of wine and liquor in Conifer.  We will get a case ready for pickup.”

You can raise the terrorist threat level to Mach 7 and people will not give it a passing glance.  You can yell bomb, and people will clutch their martini a bit closer.  You can show them that projections have millions of people contracting COVID19 in the next month and they will buy toilet paper and party like it is 1999, but you close the liquor and pot stores and baby you got a riot on your hands.

Hang in there. 

Mountain Pig out.

CORONA-CATION DAY 10: Black Market Necessities

The Quicky Mart down the street has a Purell Dispenser set up at each gas pump, dispensing the golden corona-fighting elixir like it was water.  

I don’t even buy my own Purell but just swing through the pumps and top off my hand-sized bottle. I am not ashamed.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.   In reality, the price of a barrel of oil is ~ $22 dollars and the price of a barrel of Purell is about $20,000 dollars (seriously! At $50 a bottle?! Yes.), so you do the math.  That traunch of Purell sitting there is worth about $200.   So yes, someone will rip off the Quicky Mart’s hand sanitizing stations if they have not already.  People will just throw em in their cars and drive off.  All these vodka distillers have committed to stop making vodka (all the martini drinkers just fainted) and start making hand sanitizer out of the goodness of their heart?!?  Nope that would be because it is worth way more money to make hand sanitizer than vodka.  Tito ain’t no fool.

I am actually still amazed that the public restrooms have toilet paper in them, and hand sanitizer for that matter.  I think theft of TP from public bathrooms is the next low people are gonna stoop to.   People are already peeling their two ply apart in to one ply, using twice as much and calling it a day. 

One ply toilet paper, otherwise known as tracing paper to the geologist.

Mountain Pig out. 

CORONA_CATION DAY 9: MY DYSTOPIAN WORLD

Life has gone dystopian.

The bird is back.  There is a Robin that arrives every spring and proceeds to throw itself at my windows until I scream and pass out.  When I wake up, there it is again…. sitting on my truck.

Trying to break through the windshield of my F150.  It  throws itself at the window, fails to break it, then shits on it apparently trying to “soften it up” (excuse my French). It is clearly trying to drive me insane.  If I listen closely I can hear it saying “Just catch the virus already, you know it is inevitable.”

I have gone all Kevin Costner and am fawning over the lemon that we are trying to grow at 8500 feet elevation in the Colorado Rockies. The Robin is determined to get at the tree but I will die before I let it happen.  I will not lose my lemons, like Kevin lost his limes in the dystopian Waterworld.

When the final solution comes, I will still have Eggs Benedict, Lemon Bars and Lemon Drop Martinis.  The rest of the world can deal with it….AND 

Yes, I have the firepower to protect my lemons.

I went to the grocery store yesterday. I dodged and wove and distanced like I was diagnosed anthropophobic (look it up).  I managed to make my way to the veggie section, which was pretty stocked as compared to the frozen corn dog section. There was a guy who seemed to be intentionally trying to intersect me, so add paranoid on to the rest of my phobias I guess. I noticed him when I came in.  He had not taken a small white sanitary wipe and cleaned off his cart.  Neanderthal, or worse yet….politically conservative denier.  I ran from him, I figured if he followed then that would answer the question once and for all.  He didn’t chase.  I came back to get veggies and the PCD avoided me.  Clearly I was a person not to be crossed. 

It was amazing what was cleared from the store shelves.  Most of what I buy was still plentiful; fresh veggies, fish, but the tortillas, flour, eggs, butter and hotdogs had been ravaged.    The hoards had apparently already been through like a starved Viking landing party.  The sugary cereal aisle looked like a tornado had hit it, but the brans and whole grain cereals were still in good shape. 

So basically there are whole households out there, where all the kids are hyped up on cereal and the parents can’t poop. No reason to have all that toilet paper.

Mountain Pig, signing off.

CORONA-CATION DAY 7: The Hunt

CORONA-CATION DAY 7

I decided to leave the house yesterday.  

I packed up everything that I might need and headed out, full tank of gas, bottle of Peril, down to Home Depot.  I was on a hunt for the most elusive of creatures – the gallon of bleach.

As I headed out, I was determined.  My water system needed Clorox and I was the person to bag it.

I reached Home Depot.  No one there had seen Bleach in days.  It was reported Bleach would show up on March 24, but I could not just “sit around” waiting for Bleach to arrive.  I need to got out and actively look for Bleach.

I arrived at WalMart a little past 11 am.  I had hoped that most people would be lunching at home, or at McDonald’s drive thru.  I was disappointed at the sheer number of people.

I weaved my way back to the cleaning aisle, sticking to the sides of the store where I knew who was at my back.  I strategically turned my head away from every person that tried to cross my path.  I wove and dodged, avoiding all traffic. I managed to reach the bleach display.  There it was, one bottle, one shining white bottle, 

but a woman with her cart stood in front of it, mulling over whether to buy it.  She clearly didn’t need it.  With two in her basket mashed in between the 67 rolls of toilet paper and the 22 roles of Bounty, she had enough and was just being …… a hoarder.

I would have to use my wits and all my courage.  So I did the only thing that I could do.  .....I coughed. It was not overt, but just a short “dry” cough (a wet cough would have tipped her off). Then I coughed again and I moved in for the kill.  It was a narrow aisle, so I would have to pass very close to her to get by.  I coughed and decided to add “shallow breathing” for effect.  The woman looked toward me, and I saw her eyes widen like a deer caught in headlights.

I continued toward her, coughing and wheezing, and decided to add a slight limp for additional affect.  I was starting to look like a zombie or grandmother, either/or. Then her courage broke, like a dam of resignation she traded her health for her desires and she lit out. Like a shot out of a gun, un-socially distancing herself from me and the last bottle of bleach.  I grabbed it and contained my enthusiasm as I worked my way patiently back toward self check out.   Poured some Peril on the keyboard at checkout and made my way back to the sanctity of my car.  I think tomorrow I will go hunting for some muffins. Should be fun.

CORONA-CATION DAY 6: SHOWER TIME!

I am continuing to feed the animals, just in case we get to “that place”. I was thinking “if I actually had to eat one of my animals, which one would I choose?”.  

Would it be the old one?

 The most annoying but possibly the most succulent one.or….

Well frankly the Chiweenie is not an option.  Too small (not enough bang for the buck) and too cute.

If we had a cat then that would be the first to go.   Hopefully, we will not get there.

Ventured out to look for Bleach today for my water system.  There wasn’t any, except the bottle that I wrestled from another woman.  What is wrong with people?!?!

It is Saturday Shower-Time!

via GIPHY

CORONA-CATION DAY FIVE: WINTER IS HERE.

NOTE:  I can't believe that i have not posted on this blog for three years!  I should be stripped of my medals.  This Coronavirus things is the perfect opportunity to start again.  Here goes!

I have not had a bath in five days, but I have been in the hot tub.  Basically the same thing. I have had 327 zoom meetings.  There is an exponential increase in ZOOM meetings as people discover that they can have a “meeting” no matter how they look or how underprepared they are, because it feels like you are talking to your friends in Australia.

Winter is Here.  To add to the sense of isolation we have now been buried in snow.  I expect the White Walkers to come over the ridge at any moment.  I probably have a ZOOM meeting invitation from them in my inbox.

Me at the end of this thing.

The Pig has threatened to harm himself three times, but instead goes into his bedroom (which now doubles as a ZOOM HIVE) and passes out until he wakes up and begins to forage for food again.

My wife has jammed her toe, which means that she can not go snow shoeing.  This is creating a growing sense of entrapment and anxiety in her.  Look for my body in the snow bank by my truck. 

Mountain Pig out.