Quarantine Diary #42 4/24/2020 I Went on Vacation this Morning…

I wrote this to my friend Karen who said I ought to share it here. She’s right. 

“Well, at Woodman's yesterday a man threatened to put a 9mm in a clerk’s face because store rules say he could only buy one pkg of ground turkey, not two. When cops went to his house to discuss this a little more, they discovered he doesn’t own a 9mm.  I’m hard pressed what spin to put on this tale, other than that clerk doesn’t get paid enough

I read somewhere yesterday comments from a woman who is a manager in a customer service dept of a big chain store. Target or Walmart or something. She says the level of rudeness is astonishing. That she’s done this job for a long time and has never encountered such mean people who will say such awful things to her store’s clerks. And clerks are not allowed to respond to that crap, so clerks feel harassed and stressed. She says if one is in a line and a person is being rude, feel free to defend the clerk a bit, since she (it’s so often a she) can’t.

I’m wondering if since lovely humans like you and me are going out of our way to stay out of stores, this leaves an unusually big percentage of shoppers who don’t believe in the quarantine, and my take on them is that many are sort of angry to begin with.

A guy on Twitter was arguing w Len and me (I’m sure he never connected that we are married) about testing. Long story, in diff ways we were saying that with testing people to see if they are positive for the virus, or if they have antibodies indicating they have had the disease recently and overcame it - with testing some (many?) people could go back to work right away. The govt could pay people to get the test.. so that freedom of choice exists yadda yadda. The twitter guy was was adamant that quarantine is stupid and unnecessary. Then he mentions he lost his job. To which Len says he’s sorry and is very good at filling out forms (AARP tax guide) and would be glad to help. The guy says no but thank you.

To stop a futile, heated argument that way. “I’m sorry. Can I help?”

I am totally welcoming here of your stories of things you have witnessed, experienced, done, or said where you responded to craziness with politeness or kindness.

All I’ve got is that when I was dropping a package into the post office lobby hopper (that sounds like a bunny in a mailman uniform) the other day, I saw a postal employee walking in to work. I thanked her for being the Post Office and she laughed all the way in. 

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This morning I went on vacation.  Yes I did.

We woke up to day #97 of gray, chilly, gloomy, foggy, almost raining dreariness. All three weather places I look (you can’t be too careful when one is still in bed) said it would be like this all day, although it wouldn’t actually rain.  Just 40ish and as gray as elephant underpants.

Well, hell. We aren’t Midwesterners for no reason. One gets up and does what needs to be done.

So we drove eight miles outside of town along the Drumlin* Trail. Len took his bike, I walked.  In short, all I did was walk 2-plus miles one way and then those 2-plus miles back. Hardly climbing a Highland mountain. 

But along the way I saw the osprey nest that Len has been watching. Later I saw a little footpath that leaves the macadam trail, so I walked up it and found myself alone in a quiet forest. It was still chilly and damp, but inside those woods that translated into a very good moment.  I was in a place that didn’t need me but didn’t mind me being there either. Places like that are magical for people who tend to overthink stuff. It was just quiet. I admired a burl on a tree that was fine being nothing but a bump.  I heard birds and the hum of air moving and the muffled sound of my footsteps on wet leaves. 

And then, when I was done there, I walked back out to the path and then back to the car. But now I saw the pearlescent early colors of spring. And tiny flowers. And hobbit moss. 

I was away.

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*Drumlins. A drumlin, from the Irish word droimnín ("littlest ridge") is an elongated hill in the shape of an inverted spoon or half-buried egg formed by glacial ice acting on underlying unconsolidated ground. Clusters of drumlins create a landscape which is often described as having a 'basket of eggs topography'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drumlin

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I noted this last year, I don’t know who said it or why.

“The inability to see failure as a solution.”

I like this a lot. One lives long enough and fails fabulously enough; one begins to see that failure is often the logical response to what was going on. Such as divorces that are good solution to poor marriages. Disappointingly calibrated cake recipes. Sending that kid to college. Not sending that other kid to college. The “new” car that breaks down every other week until you give up, call a lemon a lemon, and ditch it the best you can. The belief in and search for a comfortable high-heeled shoe.

Trying to put unfettered capitalism and justice in the same place at the same time.