Survivor Stories

Good morning everyone. I hope you’re all safe and sound. And stuff.

For those of you that don’t follow me on the Facebook, I recently became a COVID-19 survivor. The only reason I mention this is because I tend to document and share almost everything that happens in our lives on my Facebook page.

It drives my wife crazy sometimes…

Seeing how we’ve been living with this pandemic for the last two years, everyone has a COVID survivor story or knows someone that does by now. And yes, I’m going to tell you all about my personal experience with the disease that shut down the planet. So I’m going to apologize in advance for doing that. This is what old people do. We tell everyone about every ache and pain we’ve ever had.

* * * *

Survivor, if you do a Google search for that word, will mostly provide information about an American TV show on CBS that I have never watched. Even once. If you’ve seen this show, I don’t need to explain anything about it. If you’re like unto me and you haven’t seen it, you probably don’t care anything about it either.

Survivor is also an American rock band based out of Chicago that hit the top of the charts in the 1980’s. They’re best known song is Eye of the Tiger, the theme song for the 1982 motion picture Rocky III. I’m not sure who Rocky Balboa fought in that movie anymore, but I do remember that song. It’s still a good song.

* * * *

I came down with COVID around the middle of June.

It started out with a fever and chills. Generalized malaise — aches and pains. And stuff. Those symptoms lasted about four days. On Day 4, I actually felt great! I thought, That wasn’t so bad, and I thought my bout with COVID was over. I’ve had common colds that made me feel worse.

This is the funny part, at no point in time prior to this did it even occur to me that I had COVID. Global pandemic — forgot all about it. And I used to be a nurse! You’d think it’d be the first thing I thought of, not the last… Another funny thing — COVID was the first thing my lovely supermodel wife thought of when I told her I was feeling ill.

* * * *

As an aside, we didn’t do any quarantining. By the time I decided to get tested, four or five days had already elapsed. We figured Lea had already been exposed, so the whole quarantine thing seemed like it would have been too little, too late.

For whatever reason, Lea didn’t come down with COVID. Not so much as a sniffle.

* * * *

On Day 5 I woke up with a headache that wouldn’t go away, and I had absolutely no energy when I woke up in the morning. That was when I realized I had contracted the Coronavirus. I more or less stumbled from our bedroom to the living room, laid down on the couch, and slept almost all day. And that was more or less what I did every day until the end of July.

I didn’t lose my sense of taste or smell, but I did lose anything even remotely resembling an appetite. I lost about 8-10 lbs. in a week. I’ve put it all back on, so I won’t have to replace my wardrobe…

The other symptom I may or may not remember with any clarity is the state of delirium I fell into. And I stayed there for a week or more.

* * * *

Delirium is a serious disturbance in mental abilities that results in confused thinking and reduced awareness of the environment. The start of delirium is usually rapid — within hours or a few days. Delirium can often be traced to one or more contributing factors, such as a severe acute or chronic illness, changes in metabolic balance (such as low sodium), medication, infection, surgery, or alcohol or drug intoxication or withdrawal.

* * * *

To say I was in a mental fog doesn’t seem to be an adequate description to me, unless it was one of those super thick, London/pea soup fogs that swallows everything in a dense mist. That is a much more apt description. In layman’s terms, I was fuckin’ out there, man.

In my befogged mind, I wandered through my altered awareness, searching for the divinity inherent in all of us. I descended into the darkest depths of my being — searching out places that I normally wouldn’t choose to revisit. I found my demons and freed them from where I had imprisoned them.

Okay, I’m not sure this actually happened. I was delirious. But it sounds cool.

Well, there is this one more thing: there’s a part of me that sometimes feels like a kid again post-COVID. Yeah, it is kind of cool! So there’s a part of me that thinks I may have actually freed some demons. It’s hard to tell with this kind of thing. You’re good one day…

And I dreamed of kit-tens. And yard renovation.

I’m not sure why those two topics popped into my head. I couldn’t intentionally focus on anything, except feeling like hell. Other than kidney stones, I can’t think of another illness that made me feel as miserable as COVID did.

Perhaps God, the Universe, and Everything sent me visions of comfort to ease my misery. Is there anything cuter than a kit-ten? Besides more kit-tens??

But yard renovation? We’ve already done all of the outdoor renovations we are going to do here at our rented resort. There are only so many improvements we’re willing to invest in and take on for a place we don’t own, and don’t ever plan on owning.

The backyard fence is one of those ugly-ass chain link things with three strands of barbed wire running across the top. Anything, including no fence, would look better than our fence. It’s the kind of fence you’d expect to see at a prison for reprobate kindergarteners.

* * * *

I’m not sure when I stopped feeling like I was going to die to death, but I’ve been feeling more or less back to normal — whatever that is — for a couple of weeks now. I have resumed my usual duties as Steward of the Realm at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa. I’ve also resumed playing golf, whenever the weather permits. It’s been raining like a bastard down here, and my golf course has a tendency to turn into a river whenever the skies open up…

A couple of weeks ago, I started hearing kit-tens meowing in the gardens of our front yard. That’s not unusual here. Our neighbor has a goddamn herd of cats that hang out in our gardens and crap profusely in our yard. I figured the kit-tens I was hearing were her kit-tens.

On August 2nd, the kit-tens I didn’t want to find decided to find me, and climbed to the windowsill of one of the windows in our dining room. The window they picked is right above the food bowls for Mika and Mollie.

There were two kit-tens. A light tan Siamese mix kit-ten, and a dark gray mottled kit-ten. They had to be littermates because they were clearly bonded to each other. The tan kit-ten mewed pitifully and constantly. The darker kit-ten, the smaller of the two, opened her mouth widely to meow, but not a sound came out of her mouth.

It was the loudest cry for help I have ever heard.

The kit-tens were beyond malnourished; they were starving. If they hadn’t found us on that particular Tuesday morning, I don’t think they would have been alive on Wednesday. When Lea joined me with a packet of soft cat food, we had never seen anything so small eat with so much ferocity.

I didn’t think my heart was capable of being broken anymore.

I was wrong.

* * * *

I’m not completely sure I actually wanted more kit-tens. We tried that once. It didn’t turn out well. Actually, it was a total clusterfuck of a disaster. But God, the Universe, and Everything literally dropped two little orphans on our doorstep, and I am not going to oppose the Will of God if I can avoid it. So we adopted the orphans — Gremlin and Pixie — and now we have four kit-tens again.

Because we already have two indoor cats, our veterinarian told us we couldn’t immediately introduce our new kit-tens to our old kit-tens. Fleas, worms, feline leukemia — I’m sure there were other considerations. And we learned one of the kit-tens, Gremlin, is a boy. Pixie, the littlest kit-ten, is a girl.

We went shopping and bought a color coordinated carrier and litter box, and I set up a kit-ten care center on the carport. I told Gremlin and Pixie to stay there until we figured out what we going to do with them. And they did! For a week!!

It’s probably the only time in history that someone said, “Stay.” to a cat, and the cat obeyed.

That’s probably the most compelling reason for me wanting to keep them. They didn’t want to leave us. We moved our little orphans into our guest room a couple of days ago, and they are more than content. The fleas and worms have been eradicated. Both of the kit-tens have fat little bellies and have filled out so much that we can’t count their ribs anymore. They eat and play and sleep and poop. And poop. And, poop some more — they’re acting like kit-tens again.

I check in on them frequently and watch them at play. And my soul purrs with contentment.

Mika and Mollie have been immensely curious about our new kit-tens, but not exactly receptive to them. Any problems we’re going to have with the transition from two to four indoor kit-tens are going to be created by them. Gremlin and Pixie are the most chillinest kit-tens I’ve ever seen. We’re going to take this transition as slowly as we need to. Or, I should say, as slowly as our older kit-tens need.

* * * *

I would be content to stop here. I survived COVID. Gremlin and Pixie survived starvation. But there’s one more thing: the ugly-ass fence in the backyard. Two-thirds of the chain link fence still survives, but the other one-third was ripped all to hell and back when the retaining wall separating our yard from the golf course below our yard collapsed in the last major thunderstorm that unloaded on the Lakeside Area exactly one week ago tonight.

Collapsed is the wrong word. Exploded is probably closer to the truth. Our backyard is probably forty feet away from the first fairway. When the wall fell, rocks rolled halfway into the middle of the fairway. There were a few unexpected hazards on the first hole last weekend…

We’ve had a crew of three or four guys reconstructing the retaining wall this week. They spent three days clearing all the debris and vines and shrubs away from the remaining fence. A new foundation for the part of the wall that needs to be rebuilt was set yesterday. All they need to do is pile another seventy-five thousand rocks together, hold them in place with concrete, and they might be done by the end of next week.

Lea and I visit with our construction team several times a day. We fill a cooler with ice and water and Coca-Cola to keep our crew hydrated. And Lea buys them doughnuts every morning. Those guys are all in love with my wife. And they are building a great wall for us.

* * * *

In retrospect, if I had known my delirious dreams were going to suddenly come true I would have been a lots more specific with my thoughts. I didn’t want the fence removed. I wanted the vines and bougainvillea bushes growing in the fence removed. Well, they’re gone now. Along with almost everything growing in that part of the garden, too.

* * * *

I’m not sure what God, the Universe, and Everything is trying to tell me. Be careful what you wish for comes to mind. The most exciting part about this for me and from my perspective is an open line of communication to the Great Beyond appears to have been opened from within. I’m excited by the future and the things to come — just as long as there are no more kit-tens involved.

Future Shock

Hey there little buckaroos. How’s everything going out there? I am admittedly out of touch with most of the things going on in the world right now. My life has become a fairly insulated cocoon of intentional oblivion. I’m not terribly interested in much of anything that happens beyond our gate anymore. Perhaps you can relate to this. I don’t think I’m the only person that feels this way.

No news is good news. Ignorance is bliss.

There might a lots of truth in those statements. There might not be any. They aren’t mottos or credos that I try to uphold in my life. The only reason I mentioned them is they’re the kinds of things I’ve heard other people say when they’re not terribly interested in what’s going on around them either. And it’s not as if I’ve gone completely off the grid of current events. I don’t watch the news very often anymore, but I receive daily updates on what’s going in the world via social media and the Interweb every time I log onto one of my mobile devices.

* * * *

According one recent report I read, the Minnesota Vikings are suddenly considered to be serious Super Bowl contenders by at least one sportswriter. That made me laugh, so that guy might not be a sportswriter anymore. Football season hasn’t even started yet! That’s probably why the Vikings are contenders to be world champions at this precise moment in time.

Every team has the same chances of winning the Super Bowl right now because they’re all undefeated, and no one knows how good or bad they are. There haven’t been devastating injuries to key players, and there’s almost one or two of those that happen to just about every team as the season progresses. Unless the Vikings field a vastly different team than they did last year, that prognostication won’t stand up very long. They did spend a whole lots money this year upgrading their defense, and everyone who follows American football knows that defense wins championships. Right?

That’s a hope I’m trying to keep alive, though it has dropped precipitously on my priority list over the last few years.

Speaking purely for myself, I’ve been disappointed by the Vikings so many times in my life that I don’t care if they ever make it back to the Super Bowl again. If they do, my doctor is going to have to put me on a whole lots of Valium for the two weeks between the NFC Championship game and the Super Bowl. He’ll probably have to admit me into the hospital and have me sedated during the game because I won’t be able to watch it without having a heart attack or a stroke. And if they lose for a fifth time, he might just as well put me down. I’m not sure I could live through one more post-season heartbreak from them.

Maybe that’s a hope I shouldn’t try to keep alive anymore…

* * * *

A couple of weeks ago I read an article that former president Donald Trump shut down his radically new and revolutionary social media platform (From the Desk of Donald J. Trump), after just 29 days. It turns out that his SMP wasn’t much of a platform. Not even for him. It was, wait for it — a blog. That made me laugh, too. I LOLed. And LMFAOed. And I ROTFLed. Then I re-LOLed some more.

There’s a reason for my reactions. Mr. Trump originally said he was going to create a new social media platform that would redefine the genre and make Facebook and Twitter about as meaningful as Myspace. Both of those sites suspended his accounts indefinitely after he incited a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people.

Given the fact that The Donald is a failed influencer that needs to be in the spotlight, he had no choice but to create his own social media platform, just so he could put himself back into the spotlight, especially after those fascist assholes at Facebook and Twitter wouldn’t even let him appear on their stages anymore.

* * * *

I will never stop hoping that Trump will someday be indicted for a lengthy list of crimes, and imprisoned for a very lengthy period of time — and five counts of murder/manslaughter/homicide need to be on that list. I know this will never happen, but that doesn’t mean I can’t continue to hope that it will. And it doesn’t begin to describe how disappointed I am in the American justice system for letting him get away with… everything… so far.

There. Are. No. Words.

* * * *

You’d think that this self-proclaimed genius would’ve known better, wouldn’t you? A blog? I mean, OMG! WTF?!? That’s a terrible medium for The Donald — for a multitude of reasons. He was at his best — if you can call it that — when he buffooned and clowned his way around the stage for his Trump-pets, speaking off the cuff in front of a microphone with a whole lots of cameras rolling.

It would appear that Donald Trump put as much effort into revamping social media as he did in creating a healthcare system that would improve upon on the Affordable Care Act. Or preventing the pandemic. Or fixing the American budget deficit. Or making America more better greater again… I can do this all day, people. I have a really long list of President Trump’s failures.

A blog, for the most part, is a written venue of communication. There isn’t any means for immediate interaction between the writer and the audience, and there is no opportunity to ad lib anything. Additionally, The Donald cannot spel. Nor can he write a complete, comprehensive sentence. And most of his supporters can’t reed rede read.

_{The Sharpie is mightier than the Quid Pro Quo}

According to the article, that was the reason an infuriated Donald Trump shut down his cutting-edge social media platform. I mean, his blog. No one was reading it. I might have actually had more people reading my mostly meaningless blog than Trump had reading his totally pointless blog. That makes me smile a smile of vast contentment. Unfortunately, The Donald wasn’t infuriated enough to have a heart attack or a stroke.

Oh well, maybe next time… Like, when he finally figures out the election he lost will never, ever, be overturned.

* * * *

I have a lots of hypothetical situations that run through my head, so I’m going to throw this one out there as an example: I doubt that any of the thirteen people who regularly read my blog are Trump supporters, but on the off-hand chance that you are, and you’re female, and you’ve been wondering if you could be in a relationship with me because I seem like an urbane, erudite, cool guy — um, no. We couldn’t.

For one thing, I’m already in a relationship. I’m very happily married to my lovely supermodel wife. But even if that wasn’t the case, no, we still couldn’t be in a relationship. To sort of paraphrase Meatloaf, I can overlook a lots of things. But I can’t/won’t do that.

* * * *

Maybe it’s because I’m no longer as young as I used to be, but keeping up with the pace of life has become exhausting. I didn’t have insomnia prior to the first Coronavirus lockdown. Oddly, I do now. I’ve had it for about the last year. And I consider my life to be more free from stress than it has ever been.

At some point in time in this post I plan on exploring that issue. We’ll see how long it takes me to get there.

The fact that I often have trouble sleeping now — like tonight — doesn’t bother me as much as it bothers my doctor. He seems to view my insomnia as a personal affront to him. I’ve been taking Melatonin regularly at night for the last couple of weeks to make him happy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

I’m retired. If I don’t sleep, it’s not like it’s going effect my performance at work the next day. And if I decide to take a nap in the afternoon it’s not going to get me fired. I don’t see this as a big problem.

There’s at least one more thing I should take into consideration about my current level of physical/emotional enervation and semi-frequent episodes of insomnia: As my wife has pointed out to me several times, I’m not 64 anymore. It’s pretty much all downhill for me from here on out…

To quote my brother-in-law, N. William Pfaff, “They can only kill you once. Everything else is just foreplay.”

Like unto many things in my life, I’m going to stand pat with the Wait and See approach; continue to monitor and assess myself from a distance because I don’t want me to know that I’m under surveillance.

* * * *

Don’t you worry. When things get back to normal again, your life will get back to normal again, too.

Perhaps. But there’s this: The world has changed, and whatever it returns to will not be the same world that existed prior to COVID-19. And there’s also this: No one I know has ever used the word normal to describe me. You probably don’t want to be the first person to go there.

* * * *

¡Feliz Día del Padre! And it’s the first day of summer too. The sun is shining. The US Open Golf Championship is playing on the TV. I usually golf on Sunday, but I took today off for a few reasons:

I haven’t been playing much golf since Todd decided he needed a vacation from us and drove up to Minnesota in early April to see his son, his daughter, and his grandson. We’re assuming that he’ll return in about a month or so. But there was never a strict timeline on his plans, so everything is subject to change. It’s one of the perks of being retired. You get to play a whole lots of things by ear.

I was under the illusion that I’ve been in a bit of slump for the last year or so. I wasn’t pleased with my scores because they, you know, sucked. But the word slump implies that at one time I wasn’t playing poorly, and I’m not sure I can state that with a clear conscience anymore — if I ever could.

I seem to remember that just before the first quarantine I was consistently scoring in the low 80’s, and I was convinced that I was going break 80 in the very near future. But I’m also the guy that forgets why he went into the kitchen in 20 steps or less, so I’m not sure my memory of being an almost not-so-terrible golfer is accurate.

Theoretically, a slump should be time-limited. Shouldn’t it?? After a year of slumping through the fairways, the roughs and the trees, the sand traps, and the greens — I’m starting to think this isn’t so much of a slump as it is a strong indicator that I’m simply not all that good at golf.

* * * *

While we’re on the subject of golf theories, I’m going to present Naisby’s Postulate of Bad Shots. And Stuff. Dave Naisby is one of the members of my country club, and he explained his theory to me the last time we played together. He’s Scottish, so you have read the next sentence with that wicked cool Scottish accent.

“Bad shots are neither created nor destroyed. They merely rotate in a random manner from one hole to the next.”

It’s the most succinct explanation of the vicissitudes of golf that I have ever heard in my life. Based on the way I’ve been playing, I’m pretty sure I’ve proven Dave’s theory multiple times, and it can now be classified as a Law.

* * * *

Another reason for decreasing my time spent on the golf course is pure psychology. I have previously described golf as a fickle mistress. One day she’s all happy to see you and treats you really nice. The next time she doesn’t have time for you and slams the door in your face. I figure if I start treating Miss Golf like I’m not interested in her anymore, she might start being nicer to me when we get together.

That ought to to do the trick, eh.

* * * *

The final reason I didn’t golf today was the weather. I know I said it was a beautiful day here, but yesterday Tropical Storm Dolores hit the western coast of Mexico, and we’ve gotten about four inches of rain in the last twenty-four hours. It was extremely soggy here this morning, and I thought it would get even soggier. But the prevailing winds must have blown the remnants of Dolores off to the north of the Lakeside Area, and it turned out to be a really gorgeous day.

The Chinese Mountains to the west of the resort will green up and look like heads of broccoli in a few days. The temperatures will moderate and cool off a bit. The dust and pollen have been erased from the sky and you can actually see the other side of Lake Chapala clearly for the first time in months.

_{See? I told you it was beautiful here}

I love the beginning of the Rainy Season. Everything feels fresh and clean. It’s like unto a second Spring. And I won’t have to spend several hours a day watering the dozen or so gardens we’ve resurrected after subduing the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow from Hell. With all of my free time I’ll be able to keep the lawn mowed and trimmed, and make sure that the current hedgerow remembers the limitations its boundaries.

And I might feel like writing more often. We’ll have to see how that goes, too.

The only negative thing about the beginning of the Rainy Season is the bugs. June bugs. Flying Buffalo Ants. The Other Flying Ants. Mosquitoes. Giant motheses. They all appear at this time of year. In hordes. Lea absolutely hates the bug invasion. I have to admit it is kind of creepy.

The only good thing about it is it’s brief. And it does provide a veritable smorgasbord for all of the birds that live around here.

* * * *

It’s been awhile since I wrote anything in my blog about my mostly boring life. I’ve actually been too busy to write. And I’m not making that up. We had a few visitors here at the resort in May. Lea’s sister, Leslie, and her husband, Bill, flew down from southern Minnesota, and spent a week with us taking in the sights and the some of the food here in the scenic Lakeside Area.

I was mildly surprised that Les and Bill made the trek down here. Neither of them is in great health, and they both have varying degrees of mobility issues. I hope they come back soon, and often. They said they would. They’re both sweet people and you’ve already had a sample of Bill’s sense of humor. He makes me laugh.

* * * *

Here’s another hypothetical situation for your consideration: Leslie is eight years older than Lea, and Bill is two years older than Leslie. That part isn’t hypothetical. That’s actually true. Bill leaves Philadelphia in a train traveling west at 65 miles an hour. Leslie leaves Chicago in her smart car traveling east at 45 miles an hour. How many tropical fruits can a Bananasarus Rex eat before Leslie will have to stop to the use the restroom for the first time?

* * * *

Lea and I both took short trips back up to the States in May. Lea said she needed to do some shopping, so she flew to Austin, TX and spent a week with her daughter, Gwen. I suggested that she get the J&J COVID vaccine while she was there because I didn’t have any faith in the Chinese vaccine we had received here. No one — not even the Mexican government — knew when the second injection would be available. And neither of us wanted to spend another ten and a half hours waiting to get it.

* * * *

I thought that little piece of paper stating you had been vaccinated would end up being far more important than it has turned out to be, didn’t you? I’m disappointed that no one has asked to see it. If I wanted to return to the States, that piece of paper is worthless. I’d have to go get another swab shoved up my sinuses to get another piece of paper that says I tested negative for COVID.

That doesn’t make any sense to me.

* * * *

When Lea returned to Mexico, I flew up to Austin to get vaccinated. And that’s the only thing I did while I was there. I flew up on a Sunday. Got the J&J vaccine on Monday. And flew back to Mexico on Tuesday. When I returned, Gwen flew down with me. She spent a couple of weeks hanging out at the resort, and we played several rounds of golf before she flew home.

Gwen is not a good golfer either, but she has demonstrated moments of being just about the luckiest golfer I’ve ever played with. Sooner or later the golf gods are going to notice that. They always do.

* * * *

Future Shock is a book by the American author, Alvin Toffler. It was published in 1970, and I remember reading it in high school. I can’t remember if it was a reading assignment for one of my classes, or if I read it because I liked to read back then. One thing I do remember is it was one of least enjoyable books I ever read. It didn’t have a happy ending.

In the dictionary, shock is defined as a sudden upsetting or surprising event or experience.

In the medical field, shock is an acute medical condition associated with a fall in blood pressure caused by blood loss, severe burns, bacterial infection, allergic reaction, or sudden emotional stress marked by cold, pallid skin, irregular breathing, rapid pulse, and dilated pupils.

In the book, future shock is a psychological state created by “…too much change in too short a period of time”.

In that regard, all of the events of the last year have unquestionably met that criterion. This profound physiological state — that’s how I’m going to describe this flashflood of multiple noxious stressors — can be experienced by individuals, a group of individuals, and even entire societies.

* * * *

In the dictionary, stress is defined as a feeling of emotional or physical tension. It can be caused by almost anything, depending on the person and their perceptions. Something that one person experiences without stress can produce a goddamn pants-wetting panic attack in someone else.

A Perhaps Little Known Fact About Stress: Stress is not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, stress can help you face difficult challenges and achieve your goals. The right amount of stress can help you accomplish daily tasks more efficiently. That’s right. Stress can actually make you elevate your game.

Stress can also serve as a sort of early warning system, producing the fight-or-flight response. When the brain perceives a possible crisis situation, it starts flooding the body with epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol. These hormones focus your senses, enabling you to quickly react and avoid potentially dangerous situations. Stress can actually save your life.

It’s only when you’re overwhelmed with stress that it becomes detrimental.

* * * *

The term future shock seems to be incongruous to me. It’s not the future that shocks us. It’s the present set of particularly nasty circumstances that make us wonder whether or not we will even have a future. And that’s where the shocking part comes into play as far as I’m concerned.

According to Toffler, all of this shock and awe about the present/future has been caused by industrialization. Just in cases you were wondering, the first Industrial Revolution started roughly in the mid-1700’s. All we have done since then is streamline the process to the point that it now has a super-charged Hemi engine complete with a couple of twin turbos.

In Toffler’s opinion, we created a monster that has become an out-of-control juggernaut. The genie has been let out of the bottle and there’s no way to get it back in there again. All we can do now is hope we can keep pace with it or we will surely be crushed to death if we don’t.

When I look at the situation in this way, the pandemic appears to be more of a blessing than a curse. It forced us to slow the fuck down, son. It gave us the opportunity to catch our collective breath and reassess almost everything we had been doing.

We have been an industrialized society for almost three hundred years. There’s no way we are going undo that process. Even if we all wanted to do that, I’m not sure it would be the smartest thing we could do. I absolutely love the fact that I have access to an ocean of information at my fingertips, even if I’m not interested in 97% of it.

It took a little over two hundred years before Toffler came up with a name for the menace we had created, even if it’s a stupid name. And we’ve spent some of the last one hundred years trying to figure what we could do about it.

In recent years, a paradigm shift has occurred. The dark future that Toffler was convinced would occur is by no means etched in stone. He may not have been able to see a path that would change his outcome, but that doesn’t mean other people couldn’t. Individuals, groups of individuals, entire societies, and most importantly, corporations have started making a conscious effort to to raise the bar of ethical standards in everything from agriculture to zoology. And that includes pretty much everything in-between.

These are very good things. These are the things that enable me to keep hoping for a better tomorrow. And if enough of us can keep this up, we might not end up destroying ourselves in the process of improving our lives.

To be sure, we still have a lots of work to do. And we have long way to go before we sit back and try to believe that we’ve done enough to correct the error of our ways. But we are doing something. And that’s the most important thing.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Almost fifty years ago, I started writing my first novel. I was living in an apartment in Little Falls, MN at the time. I don’t think it had a title. I had no idea what I wanted to write about. I didn’t even own a typewriter. My novel consisted of a bunch of notes I had scribbled down on a yellow legal pad. Probably when I was drunk.

I don’t think any of the notes I had scribbled down actually looked like a novel. It was mostly ideas I was contemplating trying to turn into a novel. I had a few of the chapter titles written down in my notes. You know, like, I had an outline or something. The only thing I’m sure of is the title of this post was the title of one of the chapters of one of the books I never wrote.

* * * *

In one of my previous posts I mentioned that I suffer from Involuntary Musical Imagery, otherwise known as an earworm. Usually, it’s just annoying. But for the last month or so it has been almost intolerable because the song that was stuck in my head was Coward of the County by Kenny Rogers.

I know, right!

The song was bad enough when it was released in 1979, having to hear it 20 times a day or more on the radio. There are no words for the torture that it was having to hear it for all of your waking hours for 30 days in a row. or more. I’m just relieved that it somehow got kicked out of my mental playlist. Finally.

* * * *

Hey. How’s it going? I hope you’re all surviving the seemingly never-ending saga of the Coronavirus pandemic. I don’t think it’s even been one whole year since this thing started. And yet, it somehow feels like it’s been going on for most of my life. And I am old.

I don’t think I know anyone that has died to death from COVID-19. Several of my friends have had it, and they have all survived. However, several of my friends have lost friends or family members to the Coronavirus. I’ve been extremely fortunate so far. I hope my luck holds out for a very long time to come.

Up in the States, most of my friends have received one of several types of vaccines that are now available. Most of them have posted pictures on social media with their official documentation, which is something we’re all going to need in the future if we ever want to travel to another country, or possibly, even leave the house.

I don’t think any of the vaccines are available here in the Lakeside Area. My doctor thinks they might arrive here by June or July. Or maybe next year. This is Mexico. Time is very relative here. And there’s this: Many of the people that live here are gringos from different countries. Canadia. The US. England. New Zealand. South Dakota…

I’m not sure we’re a huge priority to the Mexican Government.

Up until he contracted COVID-19, the Mexican President didn’t believe the pandemic was real. I’m not sure how much his experience has changed him. Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been a bit a of an enigma while he’s been in office. He’s turned out to be a disappointment to almost everyone that voted for him.

Much like unto the former President of the United States, AMLO didn’t do much of anything to stop the spread of the Coronavirus in Mexico. He left that up to the governors of the 31 states. The governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro Ramírez, has been very proactive in trying to keep the people he represents safe and healthy. and alive. And that hasn’t been an easy accomplishment.

Not because the people of Mexico haven’t complied with most of the preventative measures that we’ve all experienced. No one down here has protested about alleged infringements on their rights or freedoms. It’s the whole family thing.

Family ties are huge down here. Ask any Hispanic person you happen to see and they will tell you that family means everything to them. Families here get together as often as they can to celebrate anything and everything. Or nothing.

Hey, man. The ‘Rona might kill me, but if I don’t go to my abuela’s birthday party– She’s gonna be 95 this weekend! — I’m a fuckin’ dead man for sure! At the very least she’ll slap me silly with her chanclas.

And that’s not an exaggeration. Not going to a family gathering can have serious repercussions. So now you have a better idea of the situation down here.

Governor Alfaro has ordered at least three major lockdowns in the last year, and I don’t know how many minor shutdowns. His latest directive will remain in effect until December 15th — pretty much the rest of the year. I think he just got tired of having to re-issue statements every other week.

* * * *

Despite the fact that there isn’t much to do here because there just aren’t many things to do not only here, but pretty much everywhere right now — we’ve been keeping busy here at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa. Retirement has turned out to be a helluvalot more work than I ever imagined. That probably wouldn’t be true if we weren’t the Stewards of the Realm at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa.

We’ve spent a lots of time and money improving a place that doesn’t belong to us, and more than likely, never will. Those things weren’t part of our rental agreement — we aren’t obligated to do any of them. I’ve written about all of them in previous posts, so I don’t think I’m going to list them all again. But the longest and most expensive endeavor we’ve taken on has been renovating the yard and all of the gardens.

* * * *

Every living thing goes through various stages of development in its lifetime. According to a guy named Erik Erikson, humans have eight distinct stages. I know I had to memorize them when I was in nursing school. And then I forgot almost everything about them because once you get out of nursing school, no one is ever going to ask you about them again.

The one thing I do remember about them is they all had kooky-sounding names — like, your biggest challenge in each stage was not to kill yourself, or everyone else you meet. Trust vs. Mistrust. Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt. Initiative vs. Guilt.

See? I told you.

According to Mr. Erikson, the stage of development I’m currently in is Integrity vs. Despair. Whatever. I see it more as a setting in of the Three G’s. In alphabetical order: Gardening, Getting Older, and Golf.

* * * *

Lea and I both prefer things to look neat and orderly. And so does Todd for that matter. Todd is our roommate. He moved here from Idaho about a year and a half ago, and took up residence in one of our guest rooms. He’s Lea’s oldest friend, and he’s become my closest male friend and golf partner.

That whole neat and orderly thing: that was probably the greatest impetus in our decision to improve the appearance of pretty much everything in the yards. That’s why we decided to have the pool repainted. And to annihilate the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow, and all of the other vines and vegetation that hadn’t been trimmed or manicured in the last forty years. All of those things started way back in the middle of last October.

I’m sure the lockdowns and shutdowns and restrictions from the Coronavirus had something to do with our decision There wasn’t much of anything else to do, and we had been here long enough that looking at the overgrown hedges and shit really started bothering us.

Lea and I have improved every house that we’ve lived in for an extended period of time, whether we owned them or not. It’s become kind of a habit for us.

* * * *

The pool had been bothering us for awhile. It wasn’t on good shape when we moved in. Additional time, and continued use, didn’t do anything to improve its appearance. So we made a deal with Lord Mark, our landlord. He would pay for the prep work, paint, and any miscellaneous supplies. And we would hire a painter to paint the pool.

We drained the pool and let it dry out for three months. In January we had all of the pool surfaces prepped by Tacho, and Lea and I pressured washed every inch to get it ready for paint. Francisco Flores Bernini, my friend, caddy, and the guy who has painted almost the entire inside of our house, painted the pool a deep, dark blue. Jaime Mendoza, our property manager, had 40,000 gallons of water delivered in two huge trucks.

I have to say it turned out better than I thought it would. If we ever have any visitors here, I think they’ll love it, too. It’s the jewel in the crown of the resort once more. Or it will be once we get the solar heating system working again.

The solar heater is on the roof of the master bedroom, and it is a Mexican technological wonder. It’s so complicated even other Mexicans haven’t been able to understand it. We’ve had a few guys come over to look at it to repair it, and they all say it just needs to be replaced.

We’re going to start that process this week, according to Jaime. We’ll see how that goes. There’s more than one person involved in finding a solution to this problem. It might take awhile to get them all together over here. Personally, I think we’ll end up with a new heating system eventually, simply because that’s what everyone has been saying we’re going to need. But this is Mexico. When it comes to stuff like unto this, nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems.

* * * *

When I was a kid, I spent almost every summer working in the fields on my grandparent’s farm by day, and was preyed upon by my pedophile uncle by night. As a result, I had no interest in becoming a farmer when I grew up. And yet, as an adult, I have done far more gardening than I ever thought I would. And that is all because of my lovely supermodel wife.

Lea loves gardens, but she doesn’t want to do any gardening. That’s where I come in. And the Five Languages of Love. I’m a guy. So you can believe me when I say I had no idea there were any love languages.

* * * *

This couple gets married. On their honeymoon night the guy looks at his beautiful bride and says, “Hey Mrs. Stevenson, you wanna retire into the bedroom and let me fuck your brains out?”

“That is just so rude!” his wife snaps. “I knew I wasn’t marrying a Casanova or anything, but couldn’t you at least try to be polite about it?” The guy thinks about for a minute, runs his hand through his hair and decides to try again.

“You’re right, honey. I apologize, and I’m really sorry I said that. Now, could you please pass the pussy?”

* * * *

Lea’s favorite love language is Acts of Service. In my case, that ended up translating into Build me a garden. Or in Lea’s case, a lots of gardens. I constructed at least three gardens for her in Minnesota. In Arizona I transformed our backyard into a desert oasis. Okay, I didn’t do anything except sign the check in that instance. But the results were worth it.

Here at the resort, the gardens had been completely swallowed by the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow and all of the untrimmed vines that covered the fence in the backyard. All Todd and I had to do was find them again. And I should add that Lea played her part in hedgerow annihilation, too.

Lea doesn’t like digging in the dirt because it ruins her manicures. If I spent any money on taking care of my fingernails, I probably wouldn’t want to do anything to fuck them up either. Oddly enough, Lea actually enjoys trimming shrubs and vines. It’s that whole neat and orderly thing again.

* * * *

All of the things I’ve already mentioned are true, but there’s one more reason why I decided to tackle the daunting project of hedge demolition and yard improvement. I really suck at sitting on my ass all day listening to the TV. Yeah, it kind of surprised me to discover this, too.

Lea says she’s not surprised. She apparently understands me better than I do. We have been married to each other for over three decades, so her comprehension of me isn’t all that surprising. I’m pretty sure I understand her better than she understands herself, too.

Speaking of TV, I’ve been able to get our streaming devices to actually work on a consistently reliable basis. So we’ve actually been watching a couple of series: The Crown, and The Mandalorian.

I’ve found that I actually like the young Queen Elizabeth II. And I detest pretty much everyone else in her family, the fucking royal sissifated sniffle-snaffles that they are.

The Mandalorian guy reminds me of The Rifleman. It was a TV western way back when I was kid. They were big back then, and there were a lots of them to choose from. I really liked The Rifleman when I was a kid. I watched a rerun of it a few years ago on a quiet Saturday morning, and I changed the channel after five minutes. I thought The Rifleman was just about the stupidest fuckin’ show I had ever seen.

That’s pretty much what I think of The Mandalorian too. It’s very predictable. The dialog is mostly boring and repetitive — except Baby Yoda is so damn cute I put up with all the stupididity just for him. I’ve watched five or six episodes. I’m still waiting for the Baby Yoda kid to say something. I don’t know if he ever speaks, but I’m hoping like hell that he does. And soon.

* * * *

Earlier in this post I said that restoring the gardens was expensive, and you night think that I spent a bunch of money buying plants to put in the gardens. That would be incorrect. I’ve probably spent less than two hundred bucks on new plants.

The expense was hiring someone to haul off all the shit we chopped down.

A guy named Guillermo was driving by the resort in his beat-up pickup when he saw Todd dragging a bunch of branches out to the curb to be picked up by the local garbagemen. He asked if we would be willing to pay him to do it.

Our garbage guys can haul off only a very limited amount of branches and stuff at one time, and everyone in our development always has a bunch of yard debris that they need to get rid of. If we had waited for them to perform this task for us, we would still have a mountain of debris to get rid of, and we started almost five months ago. For the very reasonable fee of $25 bucks a truckload, Guillermo hauled away about 20 truckloads of branches and vines and shit whenever we needed him.

It ended up being a good deal for all of us. Guillermo couldn’t find any work because of COVID-19, so we were an absolute godsend to him when he was desperately looking for a way to make some money. And we were able to demolish stuff at a much faster rate because we weren’t limited by the local garbage collection limitations.

* * * *

With the debris removed, we could focus on making the yard and gardens all pretty and cutey once more. We took the hedgerow out in sections, therefore, we also reconstructed the gardens in sections. With that in mind, we now have gardens that are very well established on one hand, to gardens that are just beginning to sprout flowers. If that pattern continues to repeat itself, there will always be one part of the gardens in bloom, no matter what time of the year it is. There isn’t really a winter season here. It’s more like unto varying degrees of summer all the time.

Now you understand why I think this place is a paradise.

We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the flowers that started growing once they could see the light of day once more, and that was what convinced us that our resort used to have gardens at one time, long ago in the past.

Morning glories, brown-eyed susans, amaryllis, dahlias, and lantana have sprung to life, adding pops of color along the south side of the house. Lilies and geraniums started growing around the bougainvillea and the monster poinsettia tree. At least seven varieties of vines are climbing the stone walls and fences that enclose our grounds. And we uncovered a mango tree, a papaya tree, and an avocado tree.

Unfortunately, flowers aren’t the only things that have sprouted up in the once-forsaken gardens. We also have a very impressive crop of weeds growing, too. This is where the helluvalot of work started coming into play for me. And Todd. And it involves the two W’s of the first G of my version of this stage of my development in life.

Watering and Weeding.

* * * *

To the best of my knowledge, there’s no such thing as a garden that doesn’t require any maintenance. If there is, I sure as hell didn’t plant it here. We used to have a gardener — well, he was more of a yard maintenance guy than he was a gardener — and that was our main reason for letting him go. He was one big reason the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow had grown to such outrageous proportions.

Miguel is no longer our gardener, but we did hire him to maintain the pool. He’s probably the only person on the planet that knows how the enigmatic plumbing for the pool works. Just in cases you were wondering, he likes what we’ve done with the gardens.

According to a reliable source that I can no longer remember, the one thing that all plants need to live is water. That makes sense to me, so I’m not going to research it any further. It’s the Dry Season down here right now. It won’t rain in any appreciable amounts until the middle of June. The gardens we decided to uncover need to be watered on pretty much a daily basis. At the very least, every two days.

Yep, I’m going to be busy for awhile.

Todd tends to set up sprinklers to water any part of the yard or gardens that he takes care of. I’m a bit more hands-on. I bought a shitload of hoses and wands and nozzles with a variety of settings and strengths, and I more or less water everything by hand. It takes me a few hours every day to make the rounds to all of the gardens. It’s one of the reasons why it’s taken me so long to write this post. I think I’ve been working on it for at least a month. Maybe two… I honestly can’t remember.

I like to see how my plants are doing. Are they looking okay? Do they need more water? Less water? More sunlight? What’s that fucking thing? Is that a new weed I’ve never seen before? Is it a flower? Maybe I’ll leave it there for awhile and see what it grows into… That’s kind of how I roll when I’m watering the gardens.

* * * *

Gardening is a fairly mindless enterprise for most people. There is nothing mindless for me. My mind is always running, and it hasn’t been my buddy for quite some time. I have to seriously counter the natural tendency of my mind to make me feel as bad about myself as it possibly can. It’s become more or less a full-time job lately.

Age has given me some perspective on my life. This is the second G of my version of this stage of my development in life. Being sober has given me an extended period of time of reasonably sane behavior. But the more I seem willing to embrace myself, warts and all, the more my mind seems to think it needs to step in and do something about that.

It’s probably still mad at me for quitting drinking…

We’ll work this out sooner or later. I’m smarter than my brain thinks I am, and I am way more patient than it is. One of these days it will realize that and leave me alone.

* * * *

A weed, by definition, is any plant that you don’t want growing in your yard or garden. And they are pretty much the bane of my existence right now. Mostly because weeds don’t come to you. You have to get down to their level to get rid of them. My back is no longer built for that kind of movement. And I’m sure this is true for more people than just me, but for every weed I remove, ten weeds seem appear out of the ground to take its place.

And I don’t know what is in the soil here, but it took a toll on my hands. After one week of weeding, the skin on my hands took on the texture of 90 grit sandpaper. Then my skin started to crack around the beds my fingernails. It surprises me how something so tiny and seemingly insignificant can hurt so goddamn much. I couldn’t have typed anything even if I had wanted to. I could barely hold a golf club without breaking into tears.

I’ve started wearing work gloves out of sheer self-preservation. And I’m applying lotion on a daily basis now. I think my hands will recover and return to their previous state of feeling like I’ve never done an honest days’ work with them.

* * * *

Most of the garden restoration was accomplished simply by relocating the plants we already had to different locations, which was another back-breaking exercise for me, and seeds. I love seeds because they’re inexpensive and I don’t have to bend over to get them onto the ground. I more or less throw them in the general direction of where I want them to grow, and add water.

I’ve kind of become the Marky Flower Seed of Mexico.

My helter-skelter approach to gardening drives Todd crazy. He’s much more scientific and methodical in his approach to. He tests the soil and makes his own compost. He grows a lots of plants in small pots, then replants them exactly where he wants them to be, in more or less specific numbers.

Last year I sowed a few hundred seeds and almost nothing grew. This year I sowed a few hundred thousand seeds, and almost all of them germinated. Yeah, I don’t get it either. It’s one of the mysteries of Life in Mexico. I may not understand why it happened, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. And I really don’t care what Todd thinks when it comes to my gardening techniques. I have created the gardens of ten thousand dreams here, and I am well pleased.

Marigolds, zinnias, sweet alyssum, and cosmos. Lavender, lupines, bachelor’s buttons, and daisies. Calendaria, dianthus, and carnations. Salvia, asters, delphiniums, and mums. Sunflowers, snapdragons. scarlet pimpernel, and foxglove. Ageratum, hollyhocks, nasturtiums, and sweet william.

We have a lots of garden space, therefore, we have ended up with a boatload of flowers to try to fill them all. Most of these I’ve grown from seeds or cuttings from monster-sized plants. And almost all of these plants produce more seeds. I may never have to buy another packet seeds for as long as I live, even if I live for another two decades. There’s no such thing as too many flowers. Or too many types of flowers.

The end result of our labors has been so dramatic that it’s hard to adequately describe. It’s like unto a caveman/hippie/beatnik guy that decided to cut his hair and join the human race. It opened up the outdoors and let the sun shine in. Now all we have to do is keep it trimmed and manicured until we die, and then it will become someone else’s problem.

For now, there are three of us on the job so it hasn’t become a major ordeal for anyone. But we all can see that it’s something we’re going to have to be very proactive about or we’ll end up another Hedgerow from Hell in no time flat.

* * * *

And that brings me to the third and final G of my version of this stage of my development in life. Golf. Prior to the onset of all the COVID-19 lockdowns and precautions and stuff, I was consistently scoring in the mid-80’s. I fixin’ to get ready to start to begin to break 80, and go onto the Professional Senior’s Tour.

And then one day, for no particular reason, pretty much almost everything about my golf game just fell apart, and it stayed there. I was scoring in the mid-90’s and golf became a whole lots less fun than it had ever been.

I’ve tried to remain philosophical and positive about sucking at golf once more. Everyone goes through a slump. You’ve just got to play through it until it gets bored and goes away to ruin someone else’s game. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.

That’s how dieting works. For example, if you lose several pounds, they float around through the atmosphere until they run into someone else, and that person suddenly gains several pounds. I’ve lost 15 pounds since I retired. And I’d bet at least one person reading this has gained 15 pounds in the last four and half years.

I rest my case.

* * * *

And that’s about it from the Chula Vista Resort and Spa for now. We’re still accepting reservations, and we now offer special Friends and Family Rates that will be available for a limited time — like unto those TV ads for Dr. Ho’s Circulation Promoter and Pain Relief System.

Y’all take care of yourselves and stay safe out there. I’ve come to the conclusion that gardening is an apt metaphor for life. Plant a lots of seeds. Keep the weeds away. And water as needed.

When you look at that way, life isn’t away where near as complicated.

Waiting for Guffman

If you follow me on Facebook, you won’t be hearing from me for awhile. I’m in Facebook jail, again, for thirty days for posting this incredibly insensitive and controversial statement. Back in May.

_{I know right! What the hell?!?}

Yep, it was so outrageous that it took Facebook five months to realize they should have been outraged almost half a year ago. What sort of twisted human sifts through five fucking months of Facebook posts? Not even super-creepy stalkers do that kind of shit!!

There are no appeals in the kangaroo court of Facebook. I should know. I’ve been in Facebook jail so many times I’m like unto Norm on Cheers. Everybody there knows my name.

* * * *

If you’re not familiar with the film Waiting for Guffman you should check it out. It’s fucking hilarious, and you could probably use a laugh right about now. You’ll definitely need one when the second quarantine starts after Trump loses the election.

I’m kind of hoping that once Trump is gone, someone in America — maybe even the next President — will remember that Science used to be a respectable profession before this putz of a president came along and told his mindless followers that Science was stupid and couldn’t be trusted.

We don’t have to wait for the election for that to happen here. Starting Friday evening, we’re turning the clocks back to March or April and initiating another lockdown. Lea has been reading the restrictions to me as I write this. It’s not going to be a complete shutdown, but it sounds like there are going to be a significant amount of restrictions, especially at night and on the weekends.

And if you have to be out and about, you had better be wearing a facemask, amigo.

Enrique Alfaro Ramírez, the governor of Jalisco, has been threatening to reimpose a lockdown for the last couple of months because he’s dismayed by the number of COVID-19 cases in his country. And he apparently thinks he can do something to change that.

* * * *

According to the latest statistics available, there have been 901,268 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Mexico, resulting in 89,814 deaths. And Mexico has done an horrendous job of compiling accurate data. In the state of Jalisco, there have been 33,339 confirmed cases with 3,967 deaths.

* * * *

Despite those appalling numbers, an increasing number of people down here have ceased using any and all personal protective measures.

I call it Pandemic Precaution Fatigue. And the thought process goes something like unto this: I am over this. I’m going to come down with this crap and live, or I’m going to come down with this crap and die. Either way, I don’t care what happens anymore. I just want my fucking life back.

In an previous post, I wrote about something I called Spousal Fatigue. It’s a term I coined to describe what happens to some retired people when they find themselves trapped with the person they married without a break, day after day after day…

This year, you didn’t necessarily have to be retired to find yourself in that situation.

Okay. I remember the richer or poorer part. Sickness and health. Yep, for better or worse… But I don’t remember anything about twenty-four hours a day, every goddamn day!

Perhaps that’s one reason why some people are willing to take their chances with contracting the Coronavirus. Oh yeah, and a vaccine is going to be available any day now, right? Didn’t President Trump say that, what, about…eight… months ago?

Whether they become infected with COVID-19 or not, there’s a fair chance that the life they want back won’t exist once this pandemic is finally over. I don’t know if this good or bad, all I know for sure right now is there doesn’t appear to be a whole lots of people that seem to understand this fact.

And there’s this: there’s no such thing as a flu vaccine that is 100% effective. Most of them fall well below, and I mean way below that mark. The COVID-19 vaccine, whenever it’s finally unveiled, isn’t going to be the panacea that some people believe. And given the stance of the anti-vaxxers, there will likely be as many people, or more, who will choose not to be vaccinated, so there’s that to take into consideration.

* * * *

I’m kind of going through my own sense of fatigue right now. I spent a fair amount of time over the last couple of years trying to convince several people that Donald Trump is a pig of a human being, a criminal, and a traitor to his country. And not one of the people I preached to has had a change of heart, not even with the preponderance of evidence that I feel proved my argument beyond a shadow of a doubt.

We are all of us, most likely, tired of something right now. Even my Muses have been strangely quiescent of late. I’m not sure what to make of that. Maybe they’re under quarantine, too. Or maybe they’ve been replaced by the infrequent tactile hallucination I’ve been experiencing for the last couple of months.

* * * *

Tactile hallucinations aren’t the most common form of false sensory perceptions that people can experience, but they’re not rare by any means either. I’d elaborate on this more, but my wife has practically begged me not to say anything about it. To anyone. After I told her.

I’m guessing she also meant I shouldn’t write about it…

My lovely supermodel wife has always said she considers me to be quirky and unique. I don’t think she’s ever seriously considered me to be, you know, crazy. Until now. I’m sure she’ll let me know how she feels after she reads this.

Sorry honey, I have to say something about this.

This phenomenon happened maybe a dozen times in a row, in two different rooms of our house. I felt someone, or something, very solidly hitting/tapping my right hand twice, when I was performing a very specific…task.

Yes, it was kind of freaky. No, I’m not going to elaborate on this any further. Trust me, you really don’t want to know.

I simply changed the manner in which I perform this…task, and I may have outsmarted my hallucination because it hasn’t happened since. I seemingly have to work around some of the things that happen inside of my head far more often than I’d like to admit.

* * * *

Fortunately for me, I don’t have to physically interact with any of the people I’m disappointed in right now because none of them live in the Lakeside Area. Those wouldn’t be pleasant conversations for anyone.

Equally unfortunately, I doubt the governor’s actions are going to accomplish much of anything to change the attitudes of the people he’s trying to save. It’s been my experience as a psych nurse that when people stop caring about whether they live or die, there’s nothing you can do to help them until they decide they want to live again.

Nor do I think that his actions are going to appreciably alter or slow the progression of COVID-19 here in the Lakeside Area at this point in the game. It doesn’t make much sense to fix the fence after all the livestock have escaped, but at least he’ll be able to say he tried to do something.

Buena suerte, Governor Alfaro. You’re going to need all the luck you can find for this plan to work.

* * * *

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first global pandemic I’ve faced in my life. Some of my Trump-supporting friends have cited other flu-like outbreaks from previous years, and the fact that more people died from that year’s combination of letters and numbers disease than this year’s letters and numbers disease.

Cold and flu season strikes every year. Does that mean we’ve been visited by a pandemic every year, and, what, we were just too busy to notice? I don’t recall any extraordinary global measures being instituted to try to save lives and prevent the spread of those past disease events. Do you?

Consider this: There’s a football season every year, too. Does that make every football game played the Super Bowl?

I’m pretty sure that even Donald Trump and all of his supporters understand that there’s only one Super Bowl. And it will remain that way until the Donald tells his fanatics there’s actually more than one Super Bowl, and then they’ll believe that shit, too.

Interestingly, Trump’s supporters all claim that they don’t blindly believe everything he says, until you question them about the basis of their political views. And you will discover that, yeah, they really do blindly believe everything The Donald says — no matter how ludicrous it is. I also find it very strange that they don’t seem to realize that they do this, even after you point it out to them.

Don’t believe me? Trump says the only way he can lose this election is because of voter fraud. And, yes, his supporters believe that, too. As for the rest of us, we all know what a non-issue this has been in American politics over the last two centuries.

Just sit back and watch what his supporters do and say when he loses. Personally, I can’t wait. I might even drink a glass of champagne…

That said, I am also filled with dread and apprehension regarding this election. There’s one thing that Donald Trump’s supporters don’t realize —

My mistake. You’re right. There are many things…

This is the thing I had in mind: Every principle and ideal that the United States of America was founded on is on trial in this election. Trump’s supporters see him as the last defender of freedom in America. They cannot see that he has been systematically dismantling the last shreds of democracy that remained while he’s been in office.

Trump’s supporters think they possess some arcane knowledge about this president that no one else has. They are absolutely committed to him, they will do anything he suggests to them, and they have guns. A lots and lots and lots of them.

They’ve been preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse for decades, somehow missing the fact that they’ve become zombies themselves.

_{Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools… Romans 1:22}

* * * *

This could become very ugly, very fast. The curtain has been pulled back, and what it has revealed about America under the Trump administration, for the most part, hasn’t been pretty. Long after Mr. Trump no longer sits in the Oval Office, his supporters are still going to be out there. If that thought doesn’t daunt you, it should.

They are the reason I believe that America isn’t in danger of losing the qualities that made it the most celebrated country on the planet.

It already has.

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When the last quarantine went into effect, Todd and I decided to become gardeners. Guess what we’re going to do during this lockdown!

A couple of weeks ago, Todd and I started attacking the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow on the south side of the Chula Vista Resort and Spa. I’m going to guess that it was planted about the same time that our gringo mansion was built, way back in the 1950’s or 60’s.

That, more than likely, was also the last time it was manicured. The Royal and Ancient Hedgerow stands roughly twenty feet high, and is probably eight to ten feet thick. In layman’s terms, it’s a jungle out there.

_{You never know what will pop up on a Google image search…}

The primary shrub in our overgrown hedgerow is bougainvillea. It’s a hardy plant that’s virtually impossible to kill. And it has thorns. Some of the thorns in the branches in our hedgerow are over an inch long. And they are incredibly sharp.

When we attacked the hedgerow, it attacked back. Todd and I both look like we’ve been wrestling jaguars. And it doesn’t look like we’ve been winning.

But we are.

We have taken some significant hunks out of the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow. You can actually see Lake Chapala from a few spots in our yard now, and sunlight filters into the bedrooms on the South Wing for the first time in decades.

That said, we still have a long way to go to tame the beast. It will easily take us another month to complete subdue it, and that’s probably about how long the second quarantine/lockdown is likely to last.

Todd and I have been discussing adding some flowering vines into the areas that have been opened up again. The flowers will add some color, and vines don’t generally have thorns. That’s a big plus. After that, it will just be a matter of keeping the hedgerow regularly trimmed. It should look better than it ever has by the time we’re done.

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Waiting for Guffman is a 1996 American film loosely based on Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot. The movie mockingly documents a community theater musical that tells the history of a sleepy little Missouri town called Blaine. The director is an eccentric outsider, who claims he knows an important Broadway producer in New York City named Mort Guffman, whom he has invited to come to see the show. 

The director tells his cast if Mr. Guffman writes a favorable review of the play, they could all end up in a Big Broadway Show. They’ll all be able to get the hell out of Blaine, and they’ll probably all become world famous or something like unto that.

The play is beyond awful. I’ve gone to a few of these small town productions in my lifetime. The only word I can think of to describe these shows is painful. Guffman never shows up, a rave review is never written, and everyone involved with the show more or less goes back to their mundane lives once the show is over.

It might not sound like much, but I think it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. Oddly enough, one could make the argument that the movie could be interpreted as an apt metaphor of current day America. Well, the voices inside my head seem to think so…

Okay. I see where you’re going with this. The eccentric director is Donald Trump, right? The awful play is the Trump administration’s response to the Coronavirus, correct? Or, it could be everything the Trump administration has done because you don’t really like this guy much. The cast would then have to be Trump’s supporters.

How am I doing so far? I guess there’s only one thing I don’t get. Who, or what, is Guffman? Wait a minute! I’ve got it! Guffman — is the vaccine!

Damn! There’s nothing funny about that ending. This fucking sucks, dude.

Yes. Maybe now you understand.