Notes from Exile: Week Nine

Carrot as Pandemic Metaphor

Well, it's been a minute.

Or has it been? I'm not even sure. What I do know is that this humble carrot that grew too close to another carrot in our garden is a perfect metaphor right now for where I am in this pandemic. We took it out of the ground and pulled the other carrot from its grip, and it still looks like it is pointing at me, accusingly, for ruining its cozy life in our garden.

My choices over the past nine weeks been called paranoid. Nervous. Extreme. Excessive. And yet, I don't have symptoms and as far as I know, no one that has been in contact with me does either - that is why I'm doing what I'm doing. That is why, on the COVID Risk Tolerance scale that has made the rounds on social media, I'm about a 1.5: 

• Leaves the house only to go for groceries and other essentials
• Works 90% from home
• Orders non-essentials online
• Eats takeaways only, no restaurants for dine-in or outside seating
• Fairly strict etiquette including hand washing, masks, and social distancing used 80-99% of the time when outside of the home
• No socializing outside of the home

And yet, in spite of my numerous introverted tendencies, I am that carrot, wishing for the closeness from what Hubs and I are now officially calling The Before Times. I'm holding space for my Girls Night Ladies, my family, my beautiful and brilliant niece, and everyone else with whom I wish I could still share hugs. But I am just not willing to change course yet - I am trusting in the science and data that tell me that this virus is much more dangerous than any flu we have seen. I'm trusting in those with more knowledge and ability that I have to tell me when it is safe to move back toward what was normal before.

I've been thinking more about that this week - what will normal look like in a month or six months, or a year? When can we get back to Girls Nights and Renn Faires and all the things that have been pulled from our grip, like that poor carrot up there? I don't have answers, but I think we are seeing things opening up faster than they should, and we are headed to a time when we see The Before Times disappear for good.

A Democratic Debate and a Drunk Mother Nature

Now, how many women have signed NDAs for you, Mike?

Anyone that knows me well can tell you that I am an election cycle junkie. Gimme those attack ads so I can scoff loudly at the telly. Don't mind me, I'm just checking the News hashtags on Twitter this morning. Let's forgo binge-watching The Man in the High Castle so that I can tune in to the Democratic Candidate debate.

That last example happened just last night, and poor Hubs had to sit and watch the DNC Roast of Michael Bloomberg - sorry, I meant the debate from Nevada. I was sad that Tom Steyer wasn't on the stage because I wanted to see how he would do up against a fellow billionaire, but as it turns out, we didn't need him to tear down the Stop and Frisk Mayor of New York. All we needed was a primed and ready Elizabeth Warren, and from her opening remarks, she turned Mr. Bloomberg into an ill-behaved child in a classroom - and I am SO HERE FOR THAT.

I have long said that I like Senator Warren because she has a well thought out and detailed plan for just about everything that I have researched. She cares about the middle class and the poor and everyone else, and she seems to have made it her life's mission to make life not just better for all Americans, but to make sure we are all living our best (and most healthy) lives. Now, I say this with no loss of love for Bernie, please understand. I continue to #feelthebern to this day - but I'm finding that different from the 2016 cycle, we have a host of progressive-leaning candidates. It isn't Bernie or Establishment, it's Bernie or Bernie Lite (Warren) or Bernie Until I Got Massive Donors (Buttigieg) or Bernie and I Worked Together In Congress (Klobuchar). It is a fantastic thing to see.

Take a step back, though, and things aren't as rosy as they seem. Just like our poor drunk auntie, Mother Nature, who drops 70F temps on the budding trees followed not three days later by SNOW, I was losing my faith that Senator Warren would step up and be the fighter that I know her (from her voting and activism records, both) to be - until last night. She put Bloomberg in his place. She warned Buttigieg against bullying Klobuchar. She nearly came out of her skin over an inference that only Biden had worked with Mitch McConnell. And when it came to the issues, the real point of the debate (though her calling Bloomberg out for his "horse-faced lesbian" comment was delicious to watch), not only could she relate the details of her plans coherently but she had done her homework - I don't think Buttigieg or Klobuchar were ready for her assessments of their health care plans: a "PowerPoint" and a "post-it note saying Insert Plan Here," respectively.

She can clearly take on Trump on the debate stage and win, and I am SO READY FOR THAT. So ready. Meanwhile, I will be holed up in my house, watching the weather and hoping for another good debate. The primary here in South Carolina is a week from Saturday, so I shouldn't have to wait too long.

Second verse, same as the... Nevermind.

Sometimes I am overwhelmingly glad that hubs and I did not have human children.

Students leave the building, Parkland High School.
Image courtesy of USA Today

Yesterday was one of those days. I cannot even imagine what the parents of the surviving students had to talk about last night when they got home - or the silence in the homes of the victims. My thoughts and prayers go out to the idiots who think that it is all right for a country with so many problems - often touted as the true causes of this kind of mass violence - to give access to weapons that can fire that many rounds that fast to anyone that passes a background check. I passed my astronomy tests in college but I am no astronomer nor do I have even a rudimentary understanding of physics. Keep your handguns if you must, this is the Wild Wild West after all. Keep your hunting rifles if you have to and you don't have the skill to hunt with a bow. But for the LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY can we NOT just say, finally, that having a weapon capable of this kind of carnage is NOT OKAY?

Or, is it okay with you that these sorts of things occur? Don't get me wrong, it is not an either or by any stretch, but I have to wonder. Dunblane happened in 1996. Firearm restriction legislation happened. Go and google how many mass shootings have happened in the UK since. I will wait.

And you, over there, waving your hand madly to add that once they took away the guns there were deaths by stabbing and that people are being run over by cars...of course, these things are happening. Our world is populated with horrible people and with very sick people who do horrendous things. That falls under that other category of issues that need fixing. Those types of events can be tied, I think, to violence being so prevalent in our culture. Those types of people are the ones being failed by mental health care in this country. But the numbers don't prove that a knife or a car can take out as many people as quickly as an AR-15 - believed to be the type of firearm used in Florida yesterday. 

Y'all, I'm so left leaning that I've almost fallen over. I'm basically a socialist. This is not news to anyone that knows me well. I spend as much time being sad for the state of our world (yep, the whole world and not just the United States) as I do being afraid for the world. What happened yesterday is not okay, and there is international evidence to support the idea that if we could just stand up to the NRA and the other lobbies and restrict the KINDS of weapons available, we would be safer. Why is that such a hard thing to do?

30 mass shootings this year - 18 of those at schools - and we aren't even two months in yet. How much is too much?