The narcissistic primarily autobiographical blog of the pseudonymous d.b. echo
Some twenty years ago my office mate told me he had just picked up his free turkey with the coupon our employer had given us. Because he was getting it last minute, all that was left was a single small turkey, but he figured that would be enough since it was just him and his wife having Thanksgiving that year.
"Awww," I said. "You got the Littlest Turkey. Now it won't be left behind all alone for Thanksgiving!" And thus a story was born.
Enjoy this extra special 20th Anniversary Edition of The Littlest Turkey! (Originally published November 16-17, 2005.)
Once upon a time there was a farm where turkeys lived. All of them were young and plump, big and strong and proud. All of them except one. He was smaller than all the other turkeys. He was called the Littlest Turkey.
The Littlest Turkey wanted to run and play with the other turkeys, but they didn't want to play with him. "Go away, Littlest Turkey," they would say. "Come back when you've gotten bigger."
But the Littlest Turkey was sure he was as big as he was going to get. He tried to eat as much as he could, but he never seemed to get as big and plump as the other turkeys. And he knew that unless he got big and plump like the other turkeys, he would never get to go to the Laughter House.
The Laughter House was a wonderful place. The Littlest Turkey had never been in there. He knew that only the big and plump turkeys would get to go inside the Laughter House. He had seen them go in once, and had heard their squawks and gobbles of laughter for a little while. It must be wonderful in there, the Littlest Turkey thought. All those turkeys go in to laugh, and none of them had ever come out again. How much fun they must be having!
The Littlest Turkey decided that, big and plump or not, he would get into the Laughter House the next time they let the turkeys in.
The weather started getting cooler, and the leaves on the trees started to change colors. All the turkeys knew that soon it would be time for the biggest holiday of the year, Turkey Day.
"Just before Turkey Day is when they take the big and plump turkeys into the Laughter House," thought the Littlest Turkey. "But this time I'm going to get in there, too!"
It wasn't long before the big day came. All of the big and plump turkeys lined up to go into the Laughter House. The Littlest Turkey waited near the entrance of the Laughter House, then squeezed in between two very big and plump turkeys. No one noticed him because he was so little.
The Laughter House was dark inside, and there was a sort of moving sidewalk there that was taking turkeys into another room, where he could hear gobbles and squawks of laughter. One by one the turkeys hopped up to ride the sidewalk. The Littlest Turkey hopped up, too.
The turkey in front of him, whose name was Tom, turned around. "Go away, Littlest Turkey," he said. "Come back when you are bigger."
"Yes, go away," said the turkey behind him, whose name was also Tom. "They do not want little turkeys at the Market. Only big and plump ones."
"No," said the Littlest Turkey. "I want to go to the Market with you." He had never heard of the Market, but he realized that it must be even better than the Laughter House.
A Man spotted the Littlest Turkey. "Go away, Littlest Turkey," he said. "Come back when you are bigger."
"Oh, please, Mr. Man," said the Littlest Turkey. "I do so want to go to the Market with the other turkeys."
"Very well," said the Man. "We've got a quota to meet, anyway."
The Littlest Turkey rode the sidewalk into the other room. He wondered what things would be like at the Market.
The Littlest Turkey was cold. He was colder than he ever remembered being before. But then again, it was hard to remember much since they had chopped his head off.
He was in a case with the other turkeys, the big and plump turkeys. Turkey Day was coming soon, and people were coming to the Market to pick turkeys to take home.
They always seemed to want the big and plump turkeys. One time a little girl had seen him in the case. "Mommy, mommy, look at the little turkey," she said. "I want to take home the littlest turkey."
"No, dear," her mother said. "We are having many people over for Thanksgiving. We need a big, plump turkey."
One by one the other turkeys left the Market to go home with people. Turkey Day was coming soon, and people were taking away more and more of the big and plump turkeys. But no one wanted the Littlest Turkey.
Finally, the day before Turkey Day came, and the Littlest Turkey found himself all alone in the case.
"How sad," he thought. "No one wants to take me home."
It was late in the day, and the Manager was about to close down the Market for the night. Suddenly a Man came into the store.
"I have a coupon," he said, "for a free turkey. Do you have any left?"
"You're in luck," said the Manager. "I have one left." He showed the Man the Littlest Turkey, all alone in the case.
"It's a little small," the Man said. "But I guess beggars can't be choosers. Besides, it's just me and my wife this year. A little turkey might be just what we need."
The Manager took the Littlest Turkey out of the case and traded him to the Man for the coupon he was holding. "Happy Thanksgiving!", he said to the Man.
"I'm not going to be left behind for Turkey Day," thought the Littlest Turkey happily as the Man put him in the trunk of his car. "I'm so happy. But I'm so cold." He rolled around a little as the car pulled out of the parking lot. "I sure hope I'm going someplace warm."
First of all, let me make this perfectly clear: this was a wonderful Christmas for me and my family. There were no disasters, no tragedies. It was the second Christmas without our mom, and that sadness looms over everything, but the memory of her love offsets it.
No, the darkness this year was not a metaphor, not an abstraction. It was a literal, if weird, darkness.
In part it's something I noticed when I've been out and about at night: Far fewer houses are lit up for the holiday. I observed this in Wilkes-Barre, and it made me wonder if all the dark houses are also vacant, since they seemed not to have lights on of any sort. Even in my neighborhood, houses that used to be garishly lit up are dark, or have much more subdued displays. This year the night is not filled with the sound of blower motors keeping inflatable Santas and Grinches and snowmen inflated. Laser projectors no longer play across the faces of houses - my mom was often delighted at the stray light points that trespassed onto our house and yard from the neighbors' projector across the street. On the drive out to my brother's house Christmas Eve, I noticed that many of the houses that were reliably lit up year after year were now dark. (To be fair, several that had previously not been worthy of note were lit up elaborately this year.)
It also seemed like the roads themselves were darker, as if half the streetlights had gone out. I don't know if this is really the case. Nanticoke's Main Street was completely undecorated, though this may be related to the recent replacement of streetlights throughout the downtown. The schools in Nanticoke were also missing a holiday display of any sort. (Patriots' Square has the city snowflake decorations hanging around it, and the traditional Christmas Tree is on display.)
But the weirdest aspect of the darkness was the sky. The sky itself seemed unusually dark. The Moon was not scheduled to rise until about 2:00 AM as a waning crescent, so its absence was understandable. But there were no stars showing, nor even bright Venus in the Western sky or Jupiter in the East. This could have been explained by clouds, of course. But there was none of the usual skyglow, no reflection of lights off the clouds, which should have been made worse by the presence of snow on the ground reflecting any downward-aimed lights into the sky. (Thanks to a minor snowstorm the weekend before Christmas and sustained cold temperatures, we actually had a White Christmas this year, though it all melted by December 27.) All these factors combined to have an effect like a black fog permeating the area, blotting out anything beyond some close radius.
My Christmas lights remain lit, and will stay lit for as long as I feel like lighting them. At least until New Year's Day, perhaps until the Epiphany, or Russian Christmas, or Candlemas Day. The days have been growing longer since the Solstice on the 21st, but I am in no hurry to darken the lights of Christmas.
My mom was transferred from the hospital back to the physical rehab center on Sunday, February 12, 2023. I had picked up some dollar store roses the night before, along with a pretty vase and a Happy Valentine's Day balloon on a stick. I made a little arrangement out of them, and took them to my mother's room, along with a Valentine's Day card my sister had sent. I spent the afternoon with her, and turned on the Super Bowl for her. We watched part of the first quarter before I kissed her goodnight and left for the evening.
I watched the rest of the game at home, eating a terrible supermarket pizza. The Eagles and the Chiefs traded the lead constantly. It was anyone's game until the last moment. It was such a tight game, I worried that my mom might have a stroke watching it. (It turned out she had fallen asleep after Rihanna's halftime show.)
The next day she tested positive for COVID-19. She was furious. For three years I had kept her safe, kept her a virtual prisoner at home, tightly restricted her outside exposure, tightly restricted my own outside exposure. For five weeks at the hospital and the rehab center we had carefully threaded the needle of COVID exposure. And now, on what might have been an unnecessary return trip to the hospital, it had finally gotten her.
We had no illusions over what it could mean at her age, in her condition, with her specific issues. This might be it.
I visited her that day, now restricted by full COVID protocols: a gown, mask, face shield, and gloves. She was similarly garbed. We were both angry and frustrated at the situation. I only visited for an hour or so. I had taken the day off from work, so I called her later that afternoon, after she had had dinner and had gone to bed. We talked about Rihanna's performance. and she vented more about bastard COVID. I told her I loved her, and would see her the next day. It would be Valentine's Day, after all.
The next morning, Valentine's Day, my brother called and told me that our mother had had a massive stroke sometime that morning. They had rushed her to the hospital, and he was on his way to see her.
It was obvious from the start that this was a devastating stroke. My brother saw her shortly after they had applied clotbuster, had gotten the last coherent words out of her. My sister had raced up from her home two hundred miles away after my brother called her that morning. By the time I got to see our mother she had already slipped back into the depths of the stroke. Brain scans showed a huge blockage at the base of her brain and essentially no blood flow throughout.
We spent the day trying to sort out what the next few days might look like. We all knew her specific instructions: if she were ever in such a state with no hope of recovery, she did not want to be hooked up to machines that would prolong her death. So now the task was to determine if there was any hope of recovery.
It sure as hell looked like the answer was no. We put out the word of what had happened, made arrangements for people to say their goodbyes. We took turns at her bedside in the Critical Care Unit. I was there when our old parish priest stopped by. Her eyes opened wide with recognition as he said hello to her - the most dramatic reaction she had had since the stroke. I left him so he could speak to her in private.
That afternoon a surgeon approached us. He was young and enthusiastic. He had studied her brain scans and thought it might be possible to clear the blockage and restore function. My brother, sister, and I looked at each other: she had specified no heroic actions to keep her alive, but a simple surgery that could reverse the stroke - that was something else entirely. Not that we believed that would be the outcome for a moment. But, what the hell, it was worth a shot. We agreed to let him try.
We waited in the same waiting room where we had waited for her leg surgery to be completed six weeks earlier. After several hours, the surgeon came out and told us he had tried his damnedest, but the blockage just couldn't be budged. We thanked him for trying.
She was returned to the CCU. Now it was time to arrange for hospice care, and the final chapter of her life.
I spent the last day of 2022 in the hospital visiting my mom. She had just had the surgery to repair her leg, which included replacing her artificial knee joint, and would now begin the long, slow, arduous process of healing, recovery, and learning to walk again.
I stayed with her as late as I could, but eventually the hospital wanted all visitors to clear out. I made my goodbyes, wished her a happy New Year, kissed her, and told her I loved her, as I did every time we parted. I rode the elevator down with a collection of strangers, all at the hospital on New Year's Eve for their own reasons. Not all were headed for the ground floor. But as the elevator stopped at each floor, we all heartily wished any departing passengers a happy New Year.
My mom would be gone in less than two months, but we had no way of knowing then.
She hasn't been gone a full year. She came back home February 3, but was whisked back to the hospital on February 8. It was during that ambulance ride with a fully unmasked crew that I believe she contracted COVID-19. She tested positive on February 13, and had a massive stroke the next morning, the morning of Valentine's Day. She went into hospice the evening of February 16, passed away on February 24, and was not buried until March 1.
The cats have all attached themselves to me. Amber, who would never let me touch her previously, constantly wants to be with me. Spooky, her littermate, is by my side whenever Amber is not, and has decided to be my bedtime enforcer, letting me know when my time on the Internet is over, sitting by my face as I fall asleep, and checking on me when he judges that it's time to wake up.
Tomorrow marks the 14th anniversary of me grabbing Spooky from where he was sleeping on our back porch. He and Amber were born sometime in early or mid 2009. Peaches was not related to them, at least not through the mother, but was born about the same time. She passed away in October 2023. Both Amber and Spooky are showing signs of age, but I will continue to let them be cats as long as possible.
Mama Cat has also attached herself to me. She always wanted to spend time with my mother - mama-to-mama, I always said. But now that time is spent with me, and her surprise jumps cause me to wince with pain much as they did my mother.
Bojangles has always been my little buddy cat, even as he has grown to enormous size. He continues to be the Diplocat, having friendly relations with every cat in the house (though sometimes he will have epic battles with his mother.) He is especially friendly with Amber - jealousy of this closeness may explain why Mama Cat is especially hostile to her -, and Amber will sometimes beg me for treats only to then run away until Bojangles comes to eat them. (He usually leaves a few for Amber.)
Spumoni continues to be a schnook, wanting only to be with her mother Mama Cat.
Nobody can say what 2024 holds. I can only hope that deaths and disasters are kept to a minimum.
Best wishes on this, the last day of 2023.
The day after Thanksgiving marks the unofficial start of the Christmas season in the United States.
Technically, it's not even Advent yet, the season of preparation for Christmas. That doesn't begin until Sunday, December 3 and runs through Sunday, December 24. Christmas is December 24, and the Christmas season runs through January 6 (Epiphany), January 7 (Orthodox Christmas), January 8 (Feast of the Baptism of Jesus, who was baptized by his cousin John at the age of 30), or February 2 (Candlemas/Feast of the Presentation).
My mom's leg broke December 27, 2022, resulting in a series of hospitalizations and sessions of physical rehabilitation. She came home February 3, 2023, but had a fall February 8 and was taken back to the hospital by an unmasked ambulance crew. She tested positive for COVID on February 13. The next morning she had a massive COVID-induced stroke. She went into hospice the evening of February 16 and would die on Friday, February 24.
I had planned to turn all the lights on for her February 8 when I took my lunch break. She had her fall five minutes before that happened.
I never took the tree down. So now I've just plugged it back in.
With Greta Gerwig's movie about how the beloved doll Barbie became Death, the destroyer of worlds* coming out soon, there's a lot of Barbie discourse going around. I am reminded of my own Barbie story.
No, I never played with Barbie as a kid. My sister had Barbie dolls, as did my cousins. I think my sister even had a Ken doll, with preposterous stick-on facial hair. But my own Barbie story comes many years later.
It was probably 1999 or so. The CD/DVD manufacturer I worked for was still classified as a profit center, meaning our role in the corporate ecosystem was to maximize profits. (Years later we would become a cost center, where our goal would be to minimize costs.) We were all flush with cash, and the company expected us to be good corporate citizens and contribute generously to its charitable efforts.
Every year at Christmas we had a "giving tree" covered with tags bearing the names of local underprivileged children and their wishes for Christmas. You could grab one at random, or you could shop around for something that interested you. That year there must have been a major video game system release, because half the tags were kids asking for the expensive, ephemeral system. Others asked for other expensive gifts. But I found one that just said "BARBIE." This one, I thought. This one will get more than she asked for.
I stopped at Toys 'r' Us on the way home, the destination for toy shoppers, which had outlived other toy stores like Kidz and Kay-Bee, though it would itself go out of business in little more than fifteen years. Toys 'r' Us had the legendary Pink Aisle, the home of all things Barbie. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and entered the aisle, an enormous man dressed all in black, pushing a shopping cart, surrounded by pinkness.
I first grabbed a classic Barbie. Blonde, pink skin, blue eyes. About $7. I was prepared to spend much more.
Who am I shopping for? I asked myself. Is she white, black, Latino, Asian? I had no way of knowing. Will she see herself in the doll she gets for Christmas?
No problem. Even then Barbie had a broad racial diversity. I grabbed one of each and tossed them in the cart. Now she will have one that will look like her, and she can share the others.
Barbie needs clothes. I grabbed a multi-pack of clothing, and then another. She would have lots of outfit options. Barbie needs shoes. I found a shoe collection, tossed it in the cart. Barbie needs a place to store all this stuff. I found a wardrobe case. Into the cart.
Then I saw a Barbie playset. Barbie as a veterinarian, with a little girl figure and a dog. Yes, that too. That rounds things out nicely. Into the cart.
I came home and arranged everything so I could wrap it together. I taped the tag to the package and took it in to work.
I hope some little girl had a great Christmas that year.
*Maybe that's the Oppenheimer movie, coming out the same day.
My mom's leg broke on December 27, 2022. She had hardly gotten a chance to enjoy the full Christmas decorations before she had to go to the hospital. (Almost full; there are still a few bags and boxes of decorations that had yet to be put out.) As the weeks ground on we agreed I should take down the decorations at some point. But I never had the time, and we later agreed I would take them down once she was safely back from Allied Rehab on February 3. Maybe the weekend of February 11, a week after she returned home.
I promised her I would light up the tree one more time so she could see it in all its glory. The cats had managed to unplug it, so it wasn't just a question of throwing a switch. I kept letting it slide, but as I took my last call before lunch on Wednesday, February 8, I made a note to plug in the lights at lunchtime. A few minutes later my mom fell. I had to abort my call, tend to her, and call 911.
She will never get to see those lights again.
At some point I have to take down the decorations. I don't know if I'll be putting them back up next year.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Once again I have failed to get out any Christmas cards, which, based on my Facebook memories, is more often the case than not. I have also managed to not bake anything this year, other than the traditional lemon meringue and coconut cream pies for my family. While preheating the oven to prepare the pie crusts, the oven suddenly emitted a frantic beeping noise and displayed an F code - F25, I think. A second attempt had a similar result, this time with an F11 code. Messing with the controls by trying to change the clock display produced more beeps. Finally I had the idea to let the timer run through a cycle - perhaps letting a normal function run to completion would get things back on track. I set the timer for two minutes. At the end of its countdown it set off its alarm tone. That seemed to clear any errors, and I was able to use the oven normally.
We are having the coldest December in many years, and much of the country is experiencing its coldest Christmas in decades. The weather pattern - and "Arctic Blast," different from the "Polar Vortex" of years past - produced a strange and dangerous pattern across many of the northern states: snow midweek, followed by rain and rapid warming into the 50s (Fahrenheit), followed by a sudden temperature drop accompanied by high winds, producing flash freezing on surfaces - including icing-up of cars.
My sister traveled to the area for the holidays and warned of the icy conditions. I had last driven our car on Thursday, making a final pre-Christmas run to the bank and the grocery store and to fill up the gas tank. Friday the car sat idle in the frigid temperatures, wet from Thursday's rains.
This afternoon, while getting ready to drive out to my brother's for the traditional Vigil Supper, I was able to get the car started with some difficulty. I spun the car around so I was facing the wrong way on the street, facing my sister's car. After a few minutes of warmup and waiting for my mom and my sister to come out of the house - we were going to take two cars - I noticed that the radio playing the local Christmas station was starting to cut out. Then the ABS light came on and stayed on. Then the battery light. I reparked the car facing the right way and we decided to only take my sister's car instead. Unfortunately, I had parked too far from the curb. When I tried to restart the car it would not turn over. Possibly an alternator failure, maybe something related to the alternator - a belt, the charging wires to the battery, something. Whatever happened I apparently drained the battery and will need a tow to our nearby service station. Fortunately I do not have to drive in to work until January 9 (we are closed the next two Mondays, which is my day to be in the office), so I have some time to deal with this.
Anyway. Merry Christmas!
Well, Christmas is over, officially, by almost every measure. Today is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, and in the Catholic Church that's the end of the Christmas season. (Some older traditions push it to Candlemas Day, February 2nd, but I don't know if anyone follows that anymore.)
Yesterday was "Russian Christmas," Christmas as observed by the Eastern Orthodox Church, which uses the Julian calendar. By tradition this is the last day to have lights on, and many people in this area light everything up in solidarity with the Eastern Orthodox celebration. Traditionally it always snows for Russian Christmas, and this year was no exception. We had our first decent shovelable snow of the season on Friday, a light fluffy powdery inch of snow that brushed away with little effort. That was followed today with a thin layer of ice which required an application of salt to sidewalks.
Today was undecorating day for the Christmas Tree. I was very happy with this year's tree, even though in reviewing pictures from last year it doesn't seem substantially different from last year's tree. It was a pleasant thing to have in front of me throughout my work day, and I'll have to think hard of what to put in its place.
All now carefully sorted, boxed up, and going into storage until the tree goes up the weekend after next Thanksgiving, November 26 or so. God willing.
When last we met, I had just said goodbye to another of our cats, and we had gotten word that the church I had grown up with would be permanently closed. COVID infections had plummeted, though the "Delta variant" of the disease seemed to be threatening a late-Summer resurgence.
Then I went silent.
But not really. I responded to the church closing in the way I usually do: I created a blog. I intended that it would be a place where I could share all of my photographs and memories of the church, and where other parishioners could do the same. But I quickly discovered that I had far fewer photographs than I remembered, and no one else was really interested in sharing theirs. I took my shot, said what I wanted to say, and stopped.
Babusz was the last of my animal friends to die in 2021. (Ray had died in the Spring, on the same day I got my second COVID shot.) We are now down to three older cats born in 2009, and Mama Cat (most likely born in 2017) and her babies who were born in 2019. All are ferals. Few of our ferals have lived much past 12 before cancer killed them. Feral cats select for fecundity, not long life.
None of my close friends or family have died of COVID so far. One person I know did die, in early September. (She is technically the second person I know who has died. I never met Fr. Tom Carten socially, at least that I was aware of - he once was a lurker at a gathering of bloggers - but my sister knew him well, and I was a big fan of his blog.) I met Joyce Dombroski Gebhart through one of the blogger/politician mixers that we used to have many years ago. She was running for public office on what looked like a pure Tea Party platform. She didn't win. We were on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but somehow she became aware of my interest in space and backyard astronomy. She would frequently contact me through Facebook to let me know about interesting events, from planetary alignments to bright passes of the space station. I reciprocated far less often. I have no idea if she was vaccinated, but her politics leads me to believe she was not. She went on a family vacation in the Summer. She and one or more family members contracted COVID. They recovered. She did not.
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Later I went to a family gathering held outdoors at a cousin's house. At that point the Delta upswing had begun in earnest. But other countries had experienced the Delta variant, and had seen a rise followed by a fall. Sure enough, the Delta spike peaked in September, then began its downward slide.
I got together with my friends again in early November. Things seemed more uncertain then. What would the next variant bring? Booster shots had already begun, and I was the last of our group to get boosted.
Shortly afterwards the fast-spreading Omicron variant was announced.
On November 19 there was a lunar eclipse, exactly the sort of thing Joyce would have enjoyed.
My immediate family - with the exclusion of my sister, who lives out of state - gathered for Thanksgiving, our first Thanksgiving in two years. Shortly afterwards we met again for my nephew's birthday. The day after his party I met with some friends whom I had worked with from 1999 through 2007. We are all getting up in age - I am the youngest of the group - and all have pre-existing conditions that make us much more susceptible to the serious effects of COVID. Even though the Omicron variant had already been announced, the restaurant was fairly crowded with few masks in sight. This has been the rule since mask mandates were dropped over the summer: whenever I go out shopping, which isn't that often, I am usually one of a small minority of people wearing a mask. It is hard to look at these unmasked masses and not think of them as poor naive doomed fools.
Some planets lined up in the post-sunset sky in December - Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter. Venus once again entered a crescent phase. Many people who might not have otherwise seen the crescent of Venus saw it because of the alignment. Once again, something Joyce would have enjoyed.
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| Crescent of Venus, December 19, 2021 |
Christmas came, and another family gathering, this time with my sister coming in for only the second time since we were all fully vaccinated.
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| My mom and my nephew's friendly rescue pit bull |
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I received my second dose of the Moderna vaccine on March 6, 2021, four weeks after my first dose. Two weeks later, on March 20, 2021, I was officially "fully vaccinated."
Like so many others, I celebrated with a trip to the dentist.
It wasn't my first trip to the dentist during the pandemic. It was actually my second. My first had been on February 6, the same day as my first Moderna dose. I hadn't planned on going until two weeks after my second dose, but a shattered molar - a very common stress-related phenomenon during the pandemic - caused me to bump up my plans. During the routine exam, the dentist spotted a few cavities that had taken hold in the two years since my last visit, and she scheduled a follow-up for March 6, the day of my second vaccination. I begged off and was able to get rescheduled for two weeks later, coincidentally the day I officially reached "fully vaccinated" status.
I had big plans for that day. One of the few remaining "gray lady" banks in Nanticoke had announced that it would be closing, and I suspect that it may be demolished soon. We have family history with this bank - my grandfather worked there as a maintenance man after his jobs as a foreman the local silk throwing mill and at an out-of-state auto factory ended. I planned to go out and photograph the three remaining buildings, much as I once photographed the churches of Nanticoke. I also planned to return to the cemetery where I took the photo of the crocus in the previous post. (Had I gone there, I might have seen some new flowers growing up huge on the other side of the headstone, flowers that looked like crocuses but three times the size of normal crocuses, flowers that would be withered by the time I got there a few weeks later.) I planned to go shopping at stores I hadn't been to in over a year. Maybe I would make a pilgrimage to Hillside Farms to commune with the animals. But first, I wanted to go grocery shopping.
The dental appointment didn't take long. Less than an hour, start to finish. After it was over, I walked to the post office next door and bought some stamps for my mom. Then I drove the car about a hundred yards to the grocery store across the street.
I had a lot to buy. I took my time, trying to feel more relaxed. I was fully vaccinated. I didn't have to be afraid anymore.
About an hour later I exited the store with my purchases, loaded the car, put the cart away. I got in the car, put on my seat belt, turned the ignition.
Click.
Nothing happened.
When I had the car inspected in January, the battery test came back with a 60% charge. This seemed low for a battery that had been installed little more than two years earlier, on October 31, 2018. The guy from AAA who came to the supermarket parking lot to give me a jump confirmed that the battery was now at 50% charge and should be replaced. I asked him how long batteries usually lasted these days. He said most lasted at least three years. I guess I was just lucky.
(The battery hadn't died because I left the lights on or anything like that. Starting a car drains a battery tremendously, and it recharges as you drive. Starting the car, driving it a hundred yards or so from the dentist's to the supermarket, and then trying to start it again probably drained it past the point of useful charge.)
After I got a jump I took the car on a forty-mile round trip, but then parked the car for the weekend. No outings or adventures on that battery. I was able to make an appointment to get the battery replaced early the next week at the same shop where I had had the inspection in January, a shop several generations of my family have used through several generations of the owner's family. I asked the owner - who is also the chief mechanic - about why the battery might have died so quickly. He said it was because the car has mostly been used for short trips once or twice a week for the past year, combined with cold winter weather. I asked it this was something he was seeing more of lately, and he pointed to a line of replaced batteries on the floor. Like shattering molars, dead car batteries are another side-effect of the the pandemic.
A week later, March 27, I had to run out to pick up some Easter chocolate from a local candy maker. After I loaded up the trunk with chocolate, I decided to go on my delayed shopping trip.
I started with Barnes & Noble, the last bookstore in the area. Barnes & Noble had been badly damaged by a tornado in June 2018. (A corner of the building was torn off, though the structural integrity remained good, and much of the interior went undamaged - many tables stacked with books went untouched.) The store remained closed for the rest of the year while the damage was repaired. I missed the grand re-opening in January 2019, and then didn't go there for one reason or another for most of the rest of 2019. I last stopped in back in February 2020, and bought a softcover of Neil Gaiman's collection Trigger Warning, which I would read and reread throughout the next year.
I was nervous about entering the store. I didn't know what to expect. I immediately noticed that the bargain books section had been reduced to a single small table and an overloaded cart. The shelves had been rearranged in a strange way, with shelves butted up against adjacent shelves at right angles, creating a sort of labyrinth that made it very difficult to move quickly through the store, especially if you are trying to avoid other shoppers. I forgot why I was there and what I was looking for. Surely I wasn't just browsing? I decided to seek out more Neil Gaiman, only to find that he was absent from the Science Fiction section. I wound my way through the labyrinth to the adjacent Fantasy section, and located a few of his titles. I picked up paperbacks of Fragile Things and Smoke & Mirrors, each priced at half as much as the softcover I had bought a year earlier. Satisfied with my selection, I hurried to the periodicals department. I briefly considered picking up the latest New Scientist, Skeptical Inquirer, or Fortean Times, but in the end I just wanted to get out. I found my path to the checkout obstructed by other shoppers and had to swing wide. Finally I was checked out, out the door, and on my way back to the car.
Next up was Lowes for a new amber low-intensity LED lightbulb for my triple-headed light. Then to Michaels Arts and Crafts for some floral foam, and Dollar Tree for various items - most of which they didn't have. For all of these places, this was my first visit in well over a year. I was double-masked and running in every store, breathing as little as possible.
Finally I stopped at Burger King to use a coupon to get dinner for that night and the next few days. The drive-through there was extremely crowded, and this stop alone took nearly half an hour.
I got home about three hours after I had set out for the candy store.
Later that week I took my mom (who became fully vaccinated two days before me) to a appointment in a hospital. We rode in an elevator. I sat in a waiting area for an hour. None of this would have been imaginable a month earlier.
Last Sunday was Easter. We got together for dinner with my brother and his family (all fully vaccinated several weeks before us) at their house. No masks. No distancing. The first time we had been together indoors in close contact in well over a year.
I've made plans to meet with a group of friends over the Memorial Day weekend, and with another group the Sunday after Mother's Day - all fully vaccinated. I'm eagerly waiting for other friends to get their first shots this week, so their countdown to full vaccination can begin.
The downward plunge of cases has slowed, stopped, and reversed - and now case counts have slowly crept up to a level last seen in late October, or at the height of the Summer Surge. We're not done yet. Vaccinations are continuing at an admirable pace, but we still have a way to go.
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| The first Moon of 2021 looks down on Nanticoke - waning gibbous, two days past Full. What will the coming twelve Full Moons see? |
2021 is beginning.
The U.S. COVID-19 tally of 2020: (data actually lags a few days)
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| Jupiter and Saturn shine over Christmas lights |
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| Fiber optic tree with blue LED lights and a miniature LED tree. |
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| Crystal icicles and shiny ornaments capture the sunlight. |
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| Spumoni in the window |
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| Jupiter and Saturn, 5:20 PM on December 27, 2020, six days after their closest encounter in 800 years. We have had solid clouds since December 18. |
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| Sinking beneath the wires. This may be the last night I observe these two before they slip behind the Sun. |
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