It’s been quite a couple years, hasn’t it?

I think we have all had the frustrations and disappointments that were rampant with this pandemic. I’ve been reflecting the last few days, on the heels of the high school reunion cancelation that I was supposed to attend tonight.

What the pandemic has brought me:

The loss of a pet – deeply beloved for 15 years. I could have done online support groups (and did), but it is not the same. This was Ruby, my first dog. She taught me more humility than I ever learned elsewhere in my life and gave me more love than I ever imagined possible.

The acquisition of a pet – a cat. Again, another lesson in humility.

Developing an appreciation for my job. Not just being valued for skills, but for the love of doG, a reason to be out of the house 3 to 4 days a week though the deepest depths of quarantine. At times, it is literally a reason to remain alive.

The disappointment of failed expectations. In 2019, I began working with my college’s 40th reunion committee. It was one of the most lovely and rewarding experiences of my life, and the disappointment of the reunions cancellation went very deep. I participated in and enjoyed the Zoom meetings, but it wasn’t the same. The carrot of aa replacement reunion added to the 2021 reunion was dangled, but that again fell through.

2021has brought another disappointment – cancellation of my 45th high school reunion party. Through a communication glitch, I didn’t find out it was cancelled until yesterday, the day originally planned for the event. I could have been more upset and disappointed, but it has fit with the last two years.

I have been blessed with the reconnection with friends from high school and college.

I’ve been blessed with a delightful (sometimes) kitty who gets along (when she’s not traumatizing) with my dog.

I was so proud of myself for getting the car covered well in advance of the snowfall.

I had visions of myself going out and fluffing the car cover and knocking all the snow off easily and then deftly rolling the cover up to be ready to store for the summer.

In reality, even though I covered the car on Saturday, well before any precipitation, it must have had melted snow inside.  It was firmly welded to the Subaru.  After much fuss and effort, I was completely covered with snow before I was able to peel enough of the cover away from the driver’s door just enough to reach in and start her, and run the defrost and defoggers.

Then, this was not the lovely, powdered sugar picturesque snow of earlier in the winter. No, this snow weighed 900 effing pounds, and I couldn’t find my Snow Joe (the 6′ snow pusher, designed expressly for pushing snow off your car). So I had my little scraper/brush, and it was just a struggle.

Finally, I got it off, stuffed with snow, had to put in the garage so it all could melt in there. I’m hoping for the 70 degree weather this weekend, so I can put it out to dry off before I store it.

At least the world is still clean and white. I got to work just about on time in spite of the morning’s sturm und drang. (Try typing that without autocorrect going berserk).

I redid the SBA disaster loan for the shop on the updated site (there was no $10k box to check last week), and did the stock order and then looked around for paint that I could watch drying.

It’s nice to make money, but I hate to waste my Owner Guy’s, I want the shop to survive this mess. It takes three hours to make the trip worth my while, 4 hours would be preferable, but when all I can do is watch TV and read on line recipes…….

Oh, well.

So we were forecast for 0 – 7″ snow today. I did my store and pharmacy run, got everything and came home last night, and buttoned up with the car cover last night.

Why a car cover? Why not park in the garage? Well, a house built in ’49 – ’50 had different tolerances. I am simply not comfortable dealing with slightly less than 1 1/2″ tolerances on either side of my mirrors.  Hence, I got the “Make Do” garage.

It’s just a car cover, but having got it on last night when everything was dry means, I won’t have to sit and wait for the blowers to melt the over 32/under 32 ice melt that would otherwise glued it to the windshield.

Of course, when I started making breakfast and realized I had no pre-made hash browns, I was in a quandary.  Should I head out and get some?

No, the brave part of my self said, You have potatoes. You have made biscuits to avoid going out, let’s make hash browns.

So I peeled a potato.  Grated it onto a towel. Put it in a clean white dish towel and wrung it out.

Made the best hash browns ever.

I am out of Mission Tortilla Strips. How could I have forgotten, when I remembered to get a small container of 8 Layer Dip.  I have some chips, hidden somewhere, if Mom hasn’t got to them first.

Mom doesn’t understand why I won’t sit and just watch Hallmark TV with her. I go to my room and read.  I have offered to play DVD’s, Iron Will, Road to Avonlea and numerous other and she really can’t see why I’d want to watch those. I wasn’t trying to make her watch my “The Prisoner” collection. I mean, who could not like Iron Will?  Mackensie Astin, David Ogden Stiers, Kevin Spacey? Who could not like?

So I tell her I can’t be comfortable in the living room, which is true. My pain issues have not gone away because of the virus. Sure, I can take a butt-load of ibuprofen, but Tylenol is a placebo,  and to my great horror, just after she told me where I could come to her for treatment now, my acupuncturist got furloughed. SO my back pain and foot neuropathy will allow me to suffer along those people who are indeed victims of this horrible curse that has come upon us.

And we are are still suffering from Ruby’s death in February. Pippi, maybe the most, but maybe Mom, who comes looking for Ruby late at night, every couple days, and I have to tell her that we have lost her.

And I miss my dog. I am sure I’m bottling it up. Ruby was there for me. For the last 15 years. No matter what happened that little red double masked face, was right up there for me.

Near the end, She’d just come and sit on my foot while I worked the computer. She was never a cuddler like Pippi, never wanted to sleep on a human bed, but she was the most incredibly loyal being that has existed on this planet in my NSHO.

I could really use the love she projected at me every day, right now.

But I am an employee in an essential business, where we struggle, and I fear every person who walks through the door. Only had one jerk so far, that barged up and told me the social distancing was bullshit.

He’s a post office employee. Next time he comes in I will tell him not to come in (he’s only there to socialize) and if he persists I will take his picture and send to the Post Office with a complaint about disrespect. He is not our carrier, only comes in to fill his truck with gas, and wants to come in and breathe on me to prove the social distancing is bullshit.

Fuck him and the truck he drove in on.

I’m cooking more, I’m reading more. I will tell you, look to your local library, they have books on the cloud, and recorded book for audio. That is what will sustain me through life. Not beau of COVID, but just because I love books and still have access. And, Adoration for Ramsey County Library. go on line, order a book and they will bring out as “takeout.”

Support your local library if they do that.

So, anyhow,

Folks, be well and be safe. If you aren’t in a safe space and need help, message me with something stupid or incongruous. I will do my best to alert authorities or help you find safety. I love you, my friends.

Eileen

I knew on January 2 that 2020 would suck.  Every step was a stumble or a struggle, either physically or emotionally. But we must bite our lip and soldier on.

I was actually marshaling the resources to come fully out of the winter’s wasteland, I’d paid off bills, and saved enough for a year long health club membership where I could wear out my annoyances on the treadmill, and in a perfect world, have a hot tub to soak away the psychic debris I was determine to unload.

Well, Novel Coronavirus dashed those hopes. I bought new trainers anyway, in hope we will be free sooner or later.

We certainly picked the right time to cut the cord from satellite TV. We up graded the internet, renewed Amazon Prime and Netflix, joined Philo and jumped into trials with CBS All Access and Acorn TV.

I watch TV like a fiend for a couple of weeks and have lost a lot of interest.

The new Star Treks, Discovery and Picard were good.  Wasted some brain cells on binge-ing some other series.

I managed to get caught up with Bosch and am delighting the fact his character has adopted Coltrane, a Blue Cattle Dog.

But now, it’s time for a break and leave the TV watching to Mom. She’s 95 and this virus scares me to death for her.  At work I only have regular contact with my brother and my boss. Most of our customers have been cool about observing our social distancing policies. Only one was a dweeb about it, so I started spraying my disinfectant and cleaning right next to his hands. He said I should’t be doing that to him, I said, our posted polices say you should be hanging out there.  Karma will be busy, I think, when this fiasco is over.

But I am tired. Bone tired. I can smell, and I have been sneezing which does not seem to be a death knell in the litany of symptoms listed for the dreaded CV-19. If only we could come up with a colorful name for this curse.

But to attach any name that isn’t clinical and minimal would tarnish the namesake, and although Pangolin Plague has a certain ring to it, I would not want to harm in anyway, the images or lives of this beautiful and otherworldly creature that brings beauty into a world so sorely lacking it.

So, Covid-19 it will remain.

My wish for everyone is to survive these trials and come out a stronger, more loving people. I hope that is possible.

I so hope it is.

At least the Doritos truck is still constant.

Ruby has come home. It will be over 60 degrees tomorrow and it’s the kind of weather where it would take a big truck with a winch, or an act of God to get her to come inside, from her post at the gate, surveying her world on the inside and out.

She didn’t need much. She wasn’t a cuddle. She didn’t need to be on you every minute. But some part of her would always touch your foot, or something. She always let you know she was there.

In the kitchen, she had the talent of laying right where you needed to move. The better to drop the food you were preparing. Because, after all, didn’t you REALLY mean it for her?

She was my pride and joy and now she is gone.

I get up and put on clothes and go to work. I make sure Mom has decent meals (she’d live on peanut butter sandwiches, American cheese sandwiches or fried egg sandwiches if she had her way).

It still hurts.

Not much to say. The legend has left my life.

14 years ago, we’d moved to Arizona, got a house with a yard. We could get a dog.  A DOG!!

We’d gutted the house because of the meth and were living in the motorhome in the yard. Didn’t have the washer and dryer hooked up because we had an electrical connection, a garden hose and it was winter in Arizona.

So, I’d truck the dirty laundry up the 20 miles or so from Superior to Globe to the laundromat, and one day I found a page torn from a spiral notebook on the bulletin board that said, “free dog.”

I called and went up to meet this young, teenage kid who wanted to give away a dog.

She was a kinda cute, red speckled thing. I asked the kid (his name was Wade,) what kind of dog and he said, “Queensland Heeler,” which meant nothing to me.

Then he sobbed and said his dad was going to shoot her if he didn’t “get rid of her,” himself.

I asked her name. “Escape.”  Why? “That’s what she does.”

Is she housebroken? “Don’t know, she ain’t ever been in no house.”

“You want her?”

I took her.

They had driven up in a Dodge Caravan driven by a man in a dusty tan cotton duster, with a tiny blonde haired, blue eyed girl in flannel pants and a pink t-shirt. They gave me the dog, with the leash as a kind of noose around her neck, no collar, and got into the van and as they shut the doors to drive away, I heard the little girl scream.  “Where’s my puppy???? Where’s my puppy???”

I had to finish laundry and Dog was terrified of crossing the threshold into the laundromat.  I hurried, we stopped at Walmart on the way home and got bowls, a collar, food and a tie-out and whatever.

And went home.

We had a Ben Franklin stove we used for cooking and outside heat. We sat and talked to the dog and renamed her, Ruby. And talked to her and talked to her. Put on the collar, secured the tie-up, and went to bed.

WE woke up in the morning, to find the tie-up rope chewed through in three places, and the pup sitting proudly in a yard chair holding a big piece of it in her mouth, wagging her tail at us. She chose us.

Took a week before she was sleeping in the RV with us and has been the pulse of the family since.

14 skunks in the first couple months. Ask me, I know what works and what doesn’t. Best thing is just breathe it in and get used to it. After about #6, we’d just bring her in and cuddle up with her, skunk or no.

One night with the garden hose in her mouth after taking a Colorado River Toad away from her. That prompted our relationship with Snakesafe.com where we first got her toad trained, and then Diamondback trained. She wouldn’t go into a certain corner of the yard in the wet season when the toads were coming out, and she’d either rip your arm off if she was leashed, or herd you away from any rattler scent if you hiked with her.

The downside of hiking with her, is your group could have no stragglers. Not allowed. Heels would be nipped until all the cattle complied.

Love was in abundance. Right up until the end. Monday, her eyes said, “You’re not going to do anything rash, are you? Just sit here and pat me.”

But Tuesday she said, “Please set me free.”

She beat us by a little bit.

She was the best girl, right up until the end.

Having a senior dog can be a challenge. A year ago we were struggling with Ruby’s inability to poop, so even if it was in the middle of the living room, each pop was a cause for joy and celebration.

The day after Valentine’s Day last year, Ruby left us a gift.

I am sorry if this is not your cup of tea, but we love Ruby and everything she gives us.