March: the lion and lamb are still fighting it out. Some sleet, some rain after a few good clear days of cold northerly weather. My office is a mess with everything that a puppy can chew, throw into the air, roll around on, tear up and spread all over the floor. Dot is under my foot at the moment chewing on my waterproof shoes. Minutes ago she bit the end off a bag of ground coffee and shook the contents across the entire room. But I kept writing… the hell with it. I have to get my words in. I will take her out for a walk in a bit where she will eat rocks and stare like a gunslinger at the two fat ravens muttering in the spruce tree above my office.

We are into the end of our first week of “Social Distancing,” All my Alaska readings have been canceled, even the Sitka one. This will go down as the worst book roll out ever for What Is Time For A Pig? but I have little to complain about. I am healthy and I have a warm space on an island in the Pacific where there are no reported cases of the virus and everyone seems very dutiful about following the new rules of our new reality.

Still the atmosphere seems grim for spring. There is not herring fleet in town. Whales are feeding in the bay so the herring are moving in, which is good, But I haven’t seen many gulls or eagles. I just notice more and more big fat ravens around, this could be my overactive and morbid imagination messing with me. The ravens in the grocery store parking lot where hoarders are wheeling out three and four shopping carts at a time… these ravens seem ominous. Chuckling at our folly perhaps. People who have never baked a loaf of bread buying twenty pounds of flower. Getting touchy over the last of the Cheetos. Really Cheetos? Maybe the ravens are waiting for a riot to break out and the parking lot to overflow with glorious orange cheese puffs?

Friends are grumpy when I talk with them, Ernie was complaining that he needed bleach to clean (I kid you not) raven poop off of his boat stored in his barn and all that was left was “splashless Clorox". “John, what in the hell is splashless Clorox? I mean Jesus Christ what is wrong with these people?!!”

I saw a woman I didn’t recognize walking two miles out the road with a sandwich sign (front and back messages that you wear over your shoulders) while holding up another sign saying “5G Killing Our Children!" and “5G Suppresses Immunity= DEATH” Wow… this kind of seems like slipstreaming one issue onto another… to me. As if this woman had been sitting around her kitchen thinking, “You know, with this world wide pandemic going on and everyone worried about their health it would be a good time to educate them about the health effects of electromagnetic pollution. Where is my poster board!!?”

Well, God bless her, is what I say. We all have our concerns. I’m worried about my puppy eating a battery… yes she did that you can check “Pet’s Choice Veterinary Clinics Facebook page and see her X-ray. (She puked the battery out along with ten rocks) I am also worried about Jan’s mobility which seems to be tanking. She needs a new battery(not the one Dot ate) for her deep brain stimulation unit, that might help, but it might not. But regardless its shitty time to go to the hospital in Seattle and it’s going to continue to be a shitty time to go to the hospital in Seattle for a good long while. And at the bottom of the list I worry about crappy book sales.

But you know what? There is nothing to do about it and I know there are a lot of you shut ins out there who are going through the same kind of things. Worrying about shit you can’t do anything about right now, and are not as bad off as other people and you are doing the right thing but are still a little pissed off about it and so you need something to keep your mind off all this pandemic crap.

I know how you feel. I think we should stick together in this. How about some mindless games and activities? I’m here to offer some things to do while in lock down:

Well I’m going to heed the call. I can’t do much but, instead of whining about splashless clorox I’m going daily on this blog… well five days a week at least, and I’m going to change up some of the format and try not to whine about splash less clorox in writing unless it strikes me as funny…. or meaningful in some way… which you know, it could… I know it did to Ernie.

Anyway…Stick with me. As John Darnielle would say, and say it with me: “I are going to make it through this year if it kills me.”

Check back tomorrow.

Rain on icy ground.

How do I love you when I

can’t get close to you?