A warm day. The weather service promises seventy degrees. The sky still holds clouds moving past and the grass is wet yet occasionally the sun is burning bright. Lovely. But where are all these migrating birds I’m hearing about? The woods around our house are almost silent. The hummers have given up on our feeder and are all flitting over to Susie’s next door. What’s up with that? Jan suggests we change the sugar water and I say “What the hell? Our sugar water isn’t good enough for them?
Life goes on in the season of Covid 19. The fishing tourists seem to be on vacation from worrying about disease. They wander the stories without masks for the most part. Most of my friends are hyper alert. My custom when going to the store is to eat my lunch in the deli, but they don’t like us to sit there anymore. I eat my lunch because when I shop hungry I always buy more crappy easy to make food. I don’t mean to, it’s just my stomach is doing the thinking. The other day I was eating a chicken wrap and drinking my lemonade and I bumped into a good friend who was wearing a t-shirt, shorts and two masks. my mask was hanging off one ear while I drank my drink and filled my basket with pasta… okay not exactly health food but nor the frozen pizza I was out for. He started in on me in a LOUD VOICE for not having my mask on, which was fine we were the only two people in the isle. I started right back on him by saying in a LOUDER VOICE that i was looking all over the store for ORAL SEX, AND THIS LOOKED LIKE THE RIGHT ISLE!. Luckily he laughed but the man with the frontier beard and suspenders who had just turned the corner into our lane did not look so amused. My friend had his back to the interloper and so didn’t see him and just kept on saying to me, “Well you aren’t going to find it here without a MASK ON!” Now the guy with the beard looked more upset about me being harassed about needing a mask than about my comment re: oral sex, and I thought he was going to jump in and take my side in the argument with my friend…. which would have been awkward, so I just pretended to get into a deep discussion about venison spaghetti sauce and how long my meat had been in the freezer, which was both appropriately manly and so deeply personal that it didn’t invite a strangers opinion, so he breezed right by.
Just another pandemic day, and another reason I don’t go out much.
Dot is still feeling punky and my back too. But I’ve taken plenty of pain killer and have melted enough ice on my butt to just about make up for the Greenland Ice Fields that have wandered off. The good news in our life is that Finn Straley and his perfect wife Emily and coming to Sitka, Alaska for a few months to perhaps a year to help with chores around here. They will both will continue their jobs remotely and will likely go back to LA when live shows start happening again and when it is actually safe for people to go hear live comedy again. Until that time we will ride out the winter, play a lot of mahjong and other games and help Jan get to all her appointments on time. This is such a blessing for both Jan and me. Finn and I have spoken about working on a writing project together but I’m going to keep that under wraps so as not to jinx it… that too… working with him has been a dream of mine ever since he fired me from “Genuine Mouse Radio” back when he was 13. (little bastard, I’ve never forgiven him… he actually asked me to go on a WALK and he let me go saying he was going to “make some changes,” Jesus.) But I don’t hold a grudge.
Late summer salmon berry patch. All photos taken the day of the posting.
We all got up early today. Jan cleaned Dot’s surgical wound and I took care of some correspondence then I snoozed a while. Dot jumped up on top of me soaking wet and stinky. Then we listened to the news while Jan made pancakes.
I was happy with the speeches from the Democratic Convention. I miss the Obama years. Dot was restless, being an Anarchist I think she naturally leans more towards Bernie Sanders. When she wants change she wants Big Change. She wants a lot of it. NOW! I get that. I used to be that way too and I understand the impulse partly because it’s easy to think that everything is going crazy all at once. But I’m a lot older than Dot. She is almost ninety pounds now and almost nine months old, but I’m a lot older and I have more aches and pains I’m not going to get over. I just liked the dignity and the calm resolve of the Obama years. I remember his big scandal was when he wore a tan suit into work one day. I know he wasn’t perfect. I wish Obama had gone to march in Wisconsin to help out the Government Labor Unions when that mess was going on. I wish he hadn’t been so timid to be pro Union when they were going to paint him as a Maoist no matter what he did…. Dot doesn’t remember Obama’s other big scandal… when he saluted his Marine guard with his hand that was holding a cup of coffee in it. Oh Boy I never thought the Republic was going to survive that. But now of course when we learn that Putin was paying bounties on the lives of American soldiers, that just sort of slips by our current President. Or it never happened, or it did happen but Trump didn’t know about it. Or he knew about it but the Russians never actually paid out a bounty so it was okay. I also know that none of Obama’s top people were ever indicted for felonies. Not one. Even the Republicans agree that Paul Manafort, if he was the only one to commit a crime he posed a serious threat to America’s security. But of course he wasn’t the only one to break the law. Trump greatest supporters will say Obama was propped up by a Deep State conspiracy and Trump is doing battle with them. Well how’s that going for him? He’s the President and he has his hand picked Attorney General, where are his indictments of all these Deep State evildoers? You think Mitch McConnell would have gotten some of them when Obama was President, while he was obstructing everything else? Okay Enough…. I have to agree with Dot that Joe Biden is my grin and bear it guy…. but he is the man of the moment. I just know I slept better in the Obama years, and I can’t scream at the radio for four more.
But getting back to something I really know about: I love pancakes. I think I might eat pancakes for every meal for the rest of my life. It might get boring BUT you can put anything on them. You can make them really thin and they are extra fancy. You can make them sweet or make them savory. You can pile them up or just eat one huge one. You can make them in different shapes. In fact I think the pancake should be the food of the Democratic Party: diversity with butter and syrup. Who wouldn’t love that? Dot loves them, Bernie surely loves them. You know Kamala Harris loves them.
Pancakes Every Day: The Change You Can Believe In!
Warm breeze off the Bay
with a black dog on my lap:
pancakes for breakfast!
jhs
Here is a recording from Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family. I also included his wonderful poem “The Cinnamon Peeler.”
