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.

Question Like Your Life Depended on It

Why do people stop asking questions?  Or maybe they just stop asking them “out loud”?  I am reading this book called “A More Beautiful Question”.  It is really interesting the change in the number of questions that we ask as we age.  Apparently by the time we are in our teens, we stop asking questions all together.  Until we get married, but that is an entirely other issue.

I think we stop asking questions, because we become too concerned with looking wrong.  This is definitely a “learned” behavior.  We are conditioned to think that being wrong is ….well bad.  The problem with this “wrong=bad” thinking is that it causes us to stop asking questions.  This makes us intellectual boring, always trying to show people that we are right or smart or just pensive by remaining quiet and aloof.  Stupid. 

Successful people ask a LOT of questions.  They might not have the answers to all the questions, but answers are only a small piece of the equation.  The equation is composed mostly of knowns and only a few key points that need answers.  The real excitement comes in "what is the question the equation is trying to answer?".

Questions are the product of a creative mind and we do not make enough effort to teach people how to be creative.  Creativity is where the true advances in civilization are made. Even Einstein, who probably had more answers than most people had questions, knew the value of the right question.

The Demon Weed

My band spent last weekend and part of the week with me.  They are three great musicians and three great guys.  We played music each night and ended up talking late into the night about all kinds of stuff including the Austin Music Scene in its hay day.  Combined my band guys probably have about 120 years of Austin music scene experience between them.  They have played with some greats and have known nearly every name in Austin music that was anyone over the past 40 years.

The new marijuana scene in Colorado fascinated them.  We went to the dispensary up in Bailey and they asked questions and visited for over an hour with the owner.  I think they just can’t believe how times have changed.  This is very real for them because they saw so many of their musician friends put in jail for 3, 4 years for possessing a single joint back in the 70’s. Back then the Texas State Police would arrest you for having almost no pot at all and sentence a person to the Texas Penitentiary, basically ruin their life for what? Something that is perfectly legal in several states now.  Amazing.    

Yesterday's demon weed is tomorrow's recreation.  How many things in life are regulated out of fear.  Ironically it was not the demon weed that ruined people's lives back then, but the regulators.

South Africa

I am sitting in the lounge at Capetown, SA airport. Waiting for an Emirates flight to Dubai, to connect to JFK New York, then connect to Austin. Way too long to travel for business. Like a gas, work has come along to fill all the space of the upcoming November accommodation.

South Africa is a truly, a stunningly beautiful place. The natural beauty that a country inherits anytime it is blessed with mountains in close proximity to the ocean is on display in South Africa. However, I still get the feel that one must have had following the U.S. Civil War in the South. When you still see that the cafes are populated with white people being waited on by black people. Free black people, but none the less the discrepancy remains. South Africa is a country rocked with ongoing struggles to go beyond the words of racial desegregation and try to live the talk. That is a much tougher thing to do. It is no because people do not have their hearts in change, but the sheer economics of such equalization of the masses is next to impossible to deal with. You simply don’t have enough jobs and the people don’t have the educational foundation to fill some jobs that you will try to bring in, so you need to bring in enough business, tourism, etc. to produce a LOT of low paying, service sector jobs because that is what people are currently capable of doing. You have these massive shanty towns and a government desperately trying build more low cost houses, but it is like trying to put a finger in a dam of humanity. And the water of human need just keeps coming.

I wrote these previous words November 1, 2013. On December 5, 2013 Nelson Mandela passed away at the age of 95.