Tag Archives: general crankiness

Scheduling Rejection

books, etc., writing, , , , , ,

I’m a writer and right now I have a book manuscript floating around the Internet, looking for an agent. Which means, of course, that I’m collecting a lot of rejection slips (emails, really).

A lot of books and articles and blog posts purport to teach you how to deal with rejection, usually by telling you about famous authors whose novels were rejected any number of times before they were accepted. This doesn’t cheer me up or comfort me any, as all I can say is, “Well, I have way more rejections than J.D. Salinger ever did.” It’s a competition I don’t care to win.

Instead, I have decided to schedule my rejections, so that they come in a little more slowly and I can handle them, psychologically. To me, at least, getting a few rejections at a time is better than getting hundreds all at once. That would truly drive me into depression and immobility.

Actually, no one gets hundreds of rejections. Most agents have a policy of “no response means no.” This means that many of my query letters, writing samples, and submissions are lost in limbo – not a yes, not a no, just nothing. (Yes, I know the Catholic Church has given up on Limbo as a Thing. That doesn’t make my metaphor any less appropriate. But I digress.)

So, here’s my schedule: Every day I send out queries – but only three. That’s just the basics, though. Every time a get a rejection email, I cross that agency off my master list of queries sent, and I send an extra query that day. And add it to the master list, of course. The master list also contains the date the query was sent and the name of the specific agent it was addressed to, as well as the agency.

When I say “cross that agency off,” I mean it literally – I don’t delete it from the list. (Strikethrough is a function I use often in Word.) The info remains encoded in ones and in zeros. It’s just that I can’t remember the names of all the places I’ve queried. So whenever I find another potential agent, I use “Find” to see if I have sent to them, been rejected by them, or whatever. (I know there are apps like Query Tracker and just any old database that would do this for me, but I stubbornly stick to my low-tech version.)

I also use the list to keep track of any additional notes: “Closed to queries until March 1st.  Try again then.” Or “Re-query in eight weeks.” (That one’s a rarity.)

I must admit that I am running low on agents to query. I don’t think I’ve contacted every available agent in the US, but I’m having a hard time finding lists of agents who are willing to consider mysteries or lists that contain a number of agents to whom I haven’t already submitted.

I have received one semi-positive response – one agent wanted to see a copy of the whole manuscript. And another rejection email – one that I considered a good one – said that I could try them again when I had another project. Although if they didn’t want the first one, I don’t know why they’d want the sequel, which is what I’m now writing.

Maybe I should take on a different project altogether. I don’t really love the genres, but maybe a cozy mystery (if only I could think up a suitable career for the “detective” to have and a, well, cozy setting). Or a romance, though I wouldn’t be able to use my own experience to base it on. I haven’t had a “meet cute” since I met my husband, mumblemumble years ago, introduced by mutual friends at a folk festival.

Actually, what I’m working on is a sequel to the mystery novel I’ve been sending around. My theory is that publishing companies like series more than they like stand-alone novels. Or maybe I should resurrect my early attempt at a mystery novel in which I killed off my rotten-ex-boyfriend-who-almost-ruined-my-life. If that doesn’t make me feel better, I’ll kill him off again in the sequel.

 

 

There’s a Redbud in My Shower!

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I love plants and flowers. I really do. As long as they stay outdoors, where they belong, as nature intended. Or sit politely on windowsills, if indoors.

What I object to are plants and flowers that refuse to know their place.

I really shouldn’t blame the botanical specimens for this. What I object to is my husband putting them where they don’t belong. My husband brings home rescue plants.

(Both of us believe in adopting rescue animals. Adopt, don’t shop is our motto. We have adopted dogs and cats (mostly cats), all the way from Dumpster divers to pets that adopted us. But I digress.)

Dan gets these wayward plant specimens from work. No, he doesn’t work at a nursery, but a big box store. They do have a gardening section, though, and in it they have plants. And when the plants look the least bit discouraged or haven’t bloomed in a while, that’s when my husband swoops in and carries them off. Occasionally they make him pay a buck or two, but usually they were destined for the Dumpster (making Dan a Dumpster diver, too, I guess).

Sometimes the plants he brings home have little ceramic pots – often chipped or cracked. Other times, he brings home plants with tiny bare roots or ones with potting soil clinging to them. Fortunately, Dan has a robust collection of dark green plastic containers that he uses for the pot-less orphans.

It’s not the actual plants I object to. Dan has brought home some truly gorgeous ones – orchids and African violets and night-blooming jasmine and leafy green things that threaten to take over wherever they’re planted.

And unfortunately, where they’re planted is often the bathroom. When we had a regular tub, Dan used it as a potting table (or trough, really). He thereby acquired the chore of scrubbing out the tub.

Now, however, we have walk-in showers with lots of little ledges designed to hold soaps and shampoos and exfoliants and loofahs and such. They are instead filled – you guessed it – with plants, from the flourishing to the bedraggled to the defunct. (He claims he was experimenting to see whether plants would grow under the bathroom’s LED lighting. They won’t.) He waters them by the simple expedient of showering with them. (We have two walk-in showers, and so far the greenery hasn’t invaded the second one.)

They also show up in other places – in the sink or hanging from the towel bar, for instance. I swear I once almost wiped my ass with a philodendron leaf from a plant that was completely obscuring the toilet paper roll.

Nor has Dan stopped with taking over the shower and the windowsills. (I grudgingly allowed him to place one small, easily-cared-for plant on the windowsill in my study.) A number of his botanical friends seem to have taken root on the coffee table. Well, not taken root, actually, but you get the idea. This is his temporary repotting station. He claims he’s going to set up a real one in the basement. (I’ll believe it when I see it and I haven’t seen it yet.)

I shouldn’t complain too much about the rescue plants, I suppose. The seed catalogs have started to arrive and Dan will most assuredly negotiate his orders with me.

Can I spend $200?

Can you keep it down to $75?

$150?

$75 now and $25 more when we get paid again?

At least those will mostly be planted outside, unless he has to store them in the refrigerator till the ground unfreezes. Or unless they need potting in the aforementioned shower, sink, or living room. Then it’s time to offer up fervent prayers for no more freezes.

Freeze is also an issue in the fall, when Dan needs to bring in the potted plants that adorn the front stoop. I gather daily weather reports and hold the door open for him as he brings in banana trees and other large specimens, being vigilant about our rescue cat door-darter. (At least the foliage doesn’t have that bad habit.)

I must admit that the plants and flowers add a certain ambience to the house. Just not to the bathroom.

 

Getting Into the Movies

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While I admit it would be terrific if my mystery novel finds an agent, and then a publisher, and then becomes a wildly popular best-seller, and then gets made into a big Hollywood movie, that’s not what I’m here to write about today.

In one of the Facebook groups I belong to, someone posed the question, what thing in a movie is a deal-breaker for you? There were all kinds of answers. One of the most interesting was someone who said the “10% of your brainpower” film, in which one person suddenly gains the use of all 100% and acquires superpowers. (That whole thing about using only 10% of your brainpower is a crock anyway. Have you ever heard anyone say, “He was shot in the head, but fortunately the bullet only hit the 90% he wasn’t using”? But I digress.)

I had two and a half dealbreakers. The first one was any movie with Sylvester Stallone. At least Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to have a sense of humor about himself. 

Another thing that keeps me from being able to enter into a movie is when the POV (point of view) character is a pre-teen or teenage boy. This puts “A Christmas Story” out of the running, as well as “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off.” I understand that both of those movies are wildly popular, but I just can’t get into them the way I can “All That Jazz,” “Contact,” or anything with Kris Kristofferson in it.

The half a deal-breaker was superhero movies or anything based on a comic book. It’s only half a deal-breaker because I have to admit that I like the Deadpool movies. But they’re sort of outside the typical superhero movie. Breaking the fourth wall much?

The other thing that keeps me “outside” a movie, I hate to admit, is my husband. He has a habit of leaning over to me and whispering softly in my ear, “I think I know how those space ships work,” or “Do you know a guy named Elliot?” or “I think I have a pimple on my back. Can you look?” There’s no coming back from a mood-killer like one of those.

I’ve been working on him, though, and I’ve almost convinced him that when I’m staring in rapture at the screen, eyes glazed over, barely breathing, is not the right time to tell or ask me anything other than “The theater (or livingroom) is on fire,” and then only if it really is.

Then he slips. I’m watching an engrossing DVD that I haven’t seen in years, and he sits down beside me and asks, “Did you hear what Trump just did?” And then looks offended when I shush him.

One time when he did get the hint was when we were watching the third “Lord of the Rings” movie in the theater, and when the ending came, I was curled up a ball in my seat, with tears cascading my face. Even if he did have a comment to make about what kinds of swords everyone had used or how much he liked the actress who played Galadriel (who, since he can’t remember the character’s name, he always refers to as “the elf witch,” which is not even close, but by now I know who he means), he restrained himself. 

And he does know not to talk to me when I’m watching a film I sing along with, like “The Mikado” or “Pirates of Penzance” or “The Wizard of Oz” or “Cabaret.”

So what are films I enter into? In addition to the aforementioned, “An American in Paris,” “The Three (and Four) Musketeers,” “The Goodbye Girl,” “The Big Chill,” and “The Commitments,” among others.

I’m sometimes tempted to wait until he’s watching  “My Favorite Year” or “It’s a Wonderful Life” and ask him “Who’s that guy playing Potter? What else have I seen him in?” But I don’t. Because I’m a good wife.

 

Happy Pandemic Birthday to Me

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Today is my birthday, and we are in the middle of a pandemic. How does this affect my celebration? Hardly at all. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with birthdays and am perfectly happy celebrating them with as little fuss as possible. In fact, my idea of a really good present is for my husband to tell the waitstaff not to sing when they bring my birthday cupcake or sundae. I rather imagine that they enjoy the singing as little as I do.

This year, it’s even more minimalist than that. Since we no longer go out to eat, I am expecting to get a surprise bag of Taco Bell takeout, with maybe a candle in the quesadilla, or, if I’m really lucky, Long John Silver’s chicken planks with a candle in the cole slaw.

Of course, my husband still gets me presents. He buys them in July or so and hides them till December, then gives them to me – if he can remember where he hid them. For this Pandemic Birthday, he hasn’t had the advantage of following me around stores to see what I like, then sneaking back later to buy it. He does work in a department store, so I’m pretty sure he’s gotten me something and hidden it in the back of his car.

Since the store he works at also has a day-old baked goods table, I can reliably expect some form of leftover cake or pie, sometimes with whipped cream, but hardly ever with a candle. And when there is a candle, just one is fine, thank you very much. I may also, of course, receive the proverbial bowling ball named Homer.

In my teens, I tried to disown my birthday altogether. In my dysfunctional way, I told people that it was on March 1, rather than in December. This was a stupid coping mechanism, not unlike the time prescription Ibuprofen caused me stomach trouble in college and I sat by the door in my classes, hoping that the burping would be less noticeable there. Don’t ask me why. My birthday didn’t go away (the burping didn’t either), my family still baked me cakes, and I still got presents or cards.

Eventually, I reclaimed my actual birthday. As the years went by, I barely celebrated at all. Then Facebook came along and now I have the opportunity to count the number of people who wish me happy birthday. As excitement goes, it’s not much.

There’s likely to be even less excitement this year. A surprise party would be out of the question, even if I liked them, which I don’t. First of all, I almost never leave the house, so it would be difficult to sneak people in without my noticing. Also, having masked people jump out from behind furniture and yell at me would resemble a home invasion more than a party. Besides, a good many of my friends live out of state and even the ones here in town are social distancing, which is part of why they’re my friends.

I’m content these days just to let my birthday slide by with an emotion that ranges from meh to Bah, Humbug, depending on the year. I have a feeling this is going to be a meh year.

 

 

We All Know What Labor Day’s About. Or Do We?

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Labor Day is the day when we don’t have to work. Instead, we have picnics and barbecues and sit on our lawn chairs drinking beer. There might be a parade with classic cars for the grown-ups and clowns for the kids. Some businesses close their doors for the holiday. Others run special Labor Day sales and back-to-school specials, and deck their stores and commercials with red, white, and blue. It’s a national holiday, so someone must have once thought it was a good idea to give everyone a day off to mark the end of summer. In fact, it was such a great idea that someone made a whole weekend of it.

All of that may be true now, but it wasn’t how Labor Day started. It began as a holiday to celebrate the labor movement, trade unions, and the ways workers have contributed to building the United States. Take a closer look at that. It means the little guys – workers – who dared to pit themselves against Big Business – the bosses – and march, protest, and yes, sometimes riot in pursuit of ideals such as a living wage, weekends off, the eight-hour day, pensions, the ability to strike, and other changes.

(May 1st was also a candidate for “International Workers’ Day,” but conservative president Grover Cleveland felt that May 1st would celebrate a bloody confrontation in Chicago called the Haymarket Affair; socialism; and anarchy. In the fashion industry, Labor Day is considered the date past which one should not wear white or seersucker. But I digress.)

The labor movement and trade unions have fallen on hard times, what with politicians trying to gut their effectiveness, minimal concessions from bosses regarding rights, and the prevailing sentiment that “unions were useful once, but now have gone too far or been taken over by the mob.”

One of the heroes of the labor movement in the 1960s and 70s was César Chavez, a leader of the United Farm Workers’ trade union, which used nonviolent tactics such as strikes, pickets, and boycotts to advocate for better conditions for agricultural workers. He was posthumously given the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Other people have been associated with the labor movement and conditions of workers, nearly all of them leftists in their politics. In 1974, U.S. author “Studs” Terkel wrote Working, subtitled People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. And Barbara Ehrenreich’s gritty 2001 book Nickeled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America chronicled her three-month journalistic experiment of working at minimum-wage jobs like waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Walmart clerk.

This year’s COVID crisis has caused us to focus on who really are the essential workers in our society. To many people’s surprise, it turned out to be manufacturing workers, truck drivers, shelf stockers, and nursing home workers. Whole industries suffered from the lack of waitstaff, bartenders, cleaners, and cooks. Mom-and-pop shops took a bad hit. And of course, police, doctors, nurses, EMTs, and other hospital workers were deemed the most essential of all. Some workers were offered “hazard pay” if they continued to stay at their posts during the first months of the pandemic. Many, if not most, workers, unless they were working from home, wore masks and were abused by those who did not. Masks and other personal protective equipment were in short supply in many hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes.

This year’s Labor Day celebrations should be a celebration of these essential workers, not just an end-of-summer opportunity for beer, parades, and speeches about how workers are the backbone of the country and, oh, yeah, what a great country it is, with the stock market (i.e., the bosses) doing so well.

At the very least, we should thank the people who keep society rolling in good times and bad, who manufacture and provide us with the necessities of daily living, and who remain largely unsung until a crisis forces us to pay attention to them – the workers. The laborers for whom this holiday is named.

 

Gravity Is Not My Friend

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Unfortunately, as the saying goes, “Gravity is not just a good idea; it’s the law.” That may be true, but I am seriously considering a career as a lawbreaker, an avocation as a scofflaw. I might even argue the point as a lawyer.

Gravity, while one of the most powerful forces in the universe, is not nice to those of us living on Earth. Oh, I know that gravity keeps the moon in place and creates tides and other really neat things. But for the creatures living here, it has its disadvantages. And by creatures, I mean people. You and me. Particularly me.

First, let’s take weight. It’s that darn gravity that causes us to weigh what we do. The moon’s gravity is only 1/6 of Earth’s. Therefore, on the moon, we would weigh 1/6 of what we do now. That’s why astronauts get to jump and bounce on the moon and give the illusion of floating. The moon still has gravity, but it’s not nearly as annoying.

It is possible to achieve zero gravity on Earth, but you have to ride the “Vomit Comet” to do it, which I, for one, am not willing to do, even if they would let me. (It’s an airplane that makes steep inclines and steep drops that leave the humans inside suspended in midair for a few moments, just long enough to see their breakfast also suspended in midair.)

(Incidentally, there’s been a lot of speculation about what zero-g sex would be like. From my extensive research in science fiction novels, I gather it would be awkward, difficult, and counterintuitive. If I ever have the chance to find out for certain, I’ll be sure to let you know right away. It’ll be the first thing I do, after.  But I digress.)

No, the problems with gravity are for we, the Earth-bound. Aside from the weight issue, there are the aging issues. Gravity pulls on our no-longer-so-firm tissues and causes them to elongate. This is noticeable in the skin (particularly on the upper arms and neck) and, need I say, in the boobs. You wonder why your chest is starting to migrate to near your belly-button when you take off your bra? It’s gravity’s fault you’re not perky anymore.

In my case, it’s also gravity’s fault that I’m as beat up as I am. My childhood nickname was “SuperKlutz” (this was in the days before self-esteem had been invented) because of my ability to accomplish such feats as falling out of the car with both feet still in the car. I also managed to fall off the monkey bars, landing on my head on what was then considered to be reasonable playground surfacing, i.e., asphalt. Some people say this explains lots, but never mind that now.

At my age, gravity takes my least little misstep and turns it into a trauma. Just the other week, I wiped out on a short flight of concrete steps, despite using a cane at the time, and bruised my leg, skinned my scalp (which bled like an SOB), and produced a massive goose egg on my forearm. The goose egg has ebbed some, but it left a hideous bruise that has still not resolved to a proper skin tone. I glance down and think, “Wait! I don’t have a huge birthmark there!” And even if I did, it likely would not be turning entertaining but appalling shades of dried ketchup, soot, teen hair-color, and pea soup as I wait for it to dissipate. It resembles either a tornado sky or a very overripe, much-abused eggplant.

To add to the indignity, when I do fall, that mean ol’ gravity keeps me stuck there on the ground. I need to strengthen my leg muscles, I guess, so I can regain a standing position if my husband isn’t there to swoop in and hoist me back to vertical. (Actually, sometimes I can do it and sometimes I can’t, and I’ve never been able to figure out what makes the difference.)

A cane I have gotten used to. Riding scooters in large home improvement stores with concrete floors is also acceptable. But, so far, I’m resisting using a walker, though I suspect it will eventually come to that, sometime in the distant future when I’m truly old.

Unless some clever scientist figures out how to dial back gravity just a wee bit or my next house is on the moon, of course.

Acting My Age

etc., fashion, funny things, humor, , , , ,

I read all those posts about what women over a certain age shouldn’t do – wear message t-shirts or leopard prints, for example – and promptly ignore them. I have a great collection of t-shirts (including a Deadpool one) and leopard-print flats and a leopard-print bathing suit. If I stay away from a style of clothing, it’s because I don’t like it (the “cold shoulder” look comes to mind).

What I’m trying to say here is that I’m really bad at acting my age. My main problem is that I don’t know what age I am.  I mean, I can remember what year I was born and do the math. But fortunately, everyone else seems confused about my age too.

For a long time, I was often mistaken for younger than I am, which is a good problem to have. The first time someone called me “ma’am,” I had to look around and see who was standing behind me. It turns out the greeter was just a southerner who had been brought up to use “ma’am” as a polite form of address for any woman with any kind of authority. I was a cashier, so I had the power of exact change to wield. 

I’ve also been disconcerted when trying to buy a drink. Once I was in a bar and asked for a beer. The server asked for my ID, but the goggle-eyed look I gave her earned me a hasty, “Never mind.” I did have my hair in braids that day, but I was well into my 20s at the time.

And I know that cashiers in supermarkets are required to ask for ID even if the beer-buyer looks to be 90. But I still find it puzzling. “I have underwear that’s old enough to drink,” I tell them, mentally adding, “and if you don’t believe me, I’ll show it to you.”

Now, however, that doesn’t happen. To the younger generation, I am evidently a crone. Once I was in a tiny accident – it barely knocked the “I” off my Saturn Ion. But the other motorist seemed in quite a tizzy that I didn’t want to go to the hospital. I assured the young man again and again that I was fine. I may have seemed a bit disoriented because I couldn’t find a pen and paper to take down his insurance info. But he kept insisting that I go to the emergency room to be checked out because, as he put it, “you’re elderly.”

At the time, I was 52.

I admit that I have not aged well. My apparent age is not helped by the fact that, after two back operations, I now sometimes walk with a cane. And I haven’t bothered to get my hair “done” since long before the pandemic. 

But in my head, I am 35, tops. I’ve been told that everyone’s mind stops picturing them getting older at some point and forever after thinks they’ll look that way. I expect to see myself in the mirror looking 35, and am always disappointed when I don’t.

This is different from having an inner child, which for a long time I didn’t believe I had. Turns out that was because my inner child is an inner teen. She’s an outlet for all the things I never did as a repressed adolescent – painting my nails, flirting, spending money on ridiculous trinkets. Sometimes I let her out to have her fun for a while, but then I have to put her in a mental box and sit on the lid.

One needs only so many Deadpool t-shirts, after all.

Living Like a College Student

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A few weeks ago I wrote about how we were moving, and in finding a new place to live, I thought we might have to live with college students (“Stuck in Our 60s” https://wp.me/p4e9wS-13M). Now we have moved, and I find that instead, we are living like college students.

Back when I first went to college and moved into a dorm, there were certain things that were de rigueur. Cramming a life’s worth of belongings into half a room, whether dorm or apartment. Using stacked milk crates as either a bedside table or a dresser. Building a bookcase out of bricks and boards. Trying to share one small closet with another person’s entire wardrobe. Record albums stashed in the ubiquitous milk crates or banker’s boxes.

Well, we found our new temporary place to live, and it’s quite a bit like that. We moved from a three-bedroom house to a one-bedroom apartment. That’s a lot of stuff to move, much less fit into one-third the space.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) the only pieces of furniture that came with us were the bed and a TV set. The living room is too small for a sofa anyway, so we bought two collapsible camping/stadium chairs and a wooden stool to use at the breakfast bar. It’s hard to snuggle up on stadium chairs, but at least the bed is queen-sized.

Most of our belongings made the journey (about two miles down the road) in totes, those wonderful plastic containers, about the size of two milk crates. They make up most of the rest of our furniture – TV stand, bedside tables, coffee table. Even my desk is a riff on brick-and-board, consisting as it does of two stacks of two totes each, with three sturdy boards across as a desktop. We did manage to bring along a desk chair, which, surprisingly is at just about the right height. My “study,” however, is located in the utility room, where a washer and dryer ought to go, but don’t. I share it with the water heater and the cat box. My husband’s “study” is half the breakfast bar.

The rest of our belongings, including all our furniture and nine-tenths of our possessions, currently reside in a crammed-full storage unit. In two and a half to three months, they will be released from their confinement (and so will we). It is devoutly to be hoped that a proper moving truck and some husky young workers will accomplish the transfer of all that accumulated stuff to our rebuilt, three-bedroom house. This recent mini-move was a do-it-yourself affair, involving the rental of two U-Haul trucks and the capacity of our Ford Escape. And many, many trips.

Our new apartment complex is quiet, not packed with college students, very near the entrance to the highway (so Dan can get to work quickly), and has a laundry facility that will make up for the lack of one in my study. I work in my jammies, anyway, so I don’t have to be washing and drying work outfits or much else besides t-shirts (my other fashion choice). As a matter of fact, all the clothes I expect to need for the next three months were packed in one suitcase. And Dan wears a uniform to work, so he doesn’t need much in the way of clothing either. And while he may not have his own study, he does have a small patio, where he can commune with his assorted plants and bird feeder.

As for the books and record albums, electronics have become our friends. My computer has iTunes, we both have iPods, and there are any number of devices around that act as e-readers, from my cellphone to a tablet to an actual e-reader. This obviates the need for thousands of linear feet and who-knows-how-many pounds of reading and audio material. Our collection of DVDs is much reduced as well, easily able to fit inside one of the many totes.

Do we love our new apartment? No. Does it meet our needs? Not really. Can we tolerate it for three months? We can tolerate nearly anything for three months if, waiting at the end of it, there is a newly rebuilt, two-story, three-bedroom (well, one bedroom and two studies) home with all new furnishings.

I won’t say it’s going to be easy, but if there’s one thing my husband and I have learned to do during our life together, it’s to drop back five and punt. We’ve been punting a lot over the last year, but this time the goalpost is at least in sight.

 

Sick of the Virus

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I am sick of all the coronavirus blog posts and memes. But there are a few that I’m particularly sick of, especially the defiant ones and the conspiracy theories. Here’s what I think, for what it’s worth.

No, COVID-19 was not engineered by the Chinese or anyone else. There are plenty of viruses running around out in the wild and jumping species without anyone having to create them in a lab. Just because this one might affect you doesn’t mean it’s special.

No, wearing a mask does not violate your civil liberties. Miners and construction workers have to wear hardhats. Painters have to wear masks or respirators. Surgeons have to wear gowns, gloves, and masks. There are laws about these things designed to protect the people involved. If they can suck it up and wear protective equipment without protesting, so can you.

No, your need for a haircut does not trump my need for staying off a respirator.

Yes, social distancing is inconvenient, but it still beats having your lungs filled with fluid.

Yes, the employees in businesses that are still open probably hate wearing masks too and sanitizing their hands multiple times a day. But they don’t want to take your viruses back home to the people they care about.

No, it’s not necessary to carry guns to rallies protesting COVID-19 restrictions. Shooting legislators and health authorities will not make a bit of difference to the virus. Show some dignity, people. 

Yes, states have the right to respond to the virus in any way they choose, but they ought to consider that the virus does not care about state lines or crossing them. An informed national policy would make the crisis less of a crisis, though.

No, people in the 70s did not like gas rationing, any more than people during World War II liked rationing of gas, sugar, flour, shoes, and many other commodities. But they put up with it for the sake of a greater goal. In this case, the greater goal that restrictions are required for is preserving the lives of innocent people.

No, you don’t need that much toilet paper. The virus attacks the respiratory system, not the GI tract. Leave some for others, for goodness sake. Let’s not be ridiculous here.

No, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros had nothing to do with the origin or spread of the virus and are not using it as an excuse to microchip everyone. (Microchipping your pets is still a good idea.)

Yes, staying at home and sheltering in place can be boring. And trying to work from home or home-schooling your kids can be frustrating. But there are people who do these things by choice, every day of the year, and if they can put up with it, so can you. Boredom and inconvenience are not sufficient reasons to risk death for yourself or others.

No, politics has no effect on the virus. It hits red states and blue states equally, all things being equal. Some states are just more on the ball than others when it comes to limiting the spread of the virus. Look at Ohio – a red state with a governor who listens to a doctor and takes her advice about proper precautions. The virus wasn’t “timed” to interfere with elections either. There’s no way you can make a virus do that.

Yes, you are acting like an idiot if you harass (or shoot) employees who insist you wear a mask. They are carrying out their employers’ instructions or the health regulations of their state, county, city, or other authority. They’re not to blame for it.

No, no one is whipping up fear for fear’s sake. COVID-19 is already fearsome enough without it. This is not a plot to use fear to control us all. 

Yes, I have an axe to grind, “skin in the game,” as it were. I am a senior with an immune condition and an immunosuppressant medication. My husband has diabetes and a job in the high-risk environment of a grocery store. If either one of us gets the virus, we’re likely both toast.

There. I hope I’ve made it clear. These “news” stories, rumors, memes, and speculation have to stop. There are people’s lives at stake here, folks.

Stuck in Our 60s

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“Keep it down, Gramps! Some of us are trying to study! What is it with the Grateful Dead anyway?

That’s how I imagine our interactions with the new neighbors would begin. My husband and I are looking for a short-term rental over the summer and thought it would be easy to find something while students were away. We thought that, for three months, we could put up with any kind of neighbors.

The better question might be, could student neighbors put up with us?

In these days of ubiquitous headphones and earbuds, I doubt that the neighbors’ music would bother us all that much. But occasionally, my husband likes to let his freak flag fly and blast his favorite 60s tunes. And his hearing isn’t what it used to be, so I do mean blast. It’s hard for me to remember that the 60s were 50 years ago. It would be like us listening to someone blasting tunes from the 1920s, an unnerving thought. The 30s, maybe, but not the 20s! I don’t care how they roared.

Of course, the noise issue cuts both ways. Needless to say, it’s been a while since either one of us was in college, but I do seem to remember the dorms ringing with loud parties, loud emotional breakdowns, loud sex, and loud everything else that could be measured in decibels. True, Dan works at night, when most of the loudness might occur. But we could easily make complaints about the noise the new “Keep off my lawn!”

Tie-dye has made a comeback, so we might not look too out of place with our t-shirts and jeans (still our standard uniform). And my habit of working at home in my pajamas might be seen as “cool” (whatever the new equivalent of that is). But everything else about us would evoke grandparents, from our gray hair to my cane. We look our age and make few attempts to hide it.

Worse still, the students might see us not as useless fuddie-duddies or hopeless old relics, but as wise ancients. I remember the traumas that my college roommates and I went through as we experienced love, heartbreak, despair, confusion, ennui, and test anxiety. And there was many a time when we, shall I say, effervesced to excess. All we’d need would be some young persons showing up on our doorstep, seeking advice, a couch to sleep on, a car to borrow, or a hangover cure.

Nor would we be much help in the academic area, should they turn to us for tutoring. I know that in the field of English (my major), the pendulum has swung back and forth between examining only the text itself, examining the author’s life, and examining the reader’s reaction. I can’t even guess where the pendulum is now, but it almost certainly hasn’t remained stationary. Dan’s degree in counseling might be more up-to-date and relevant, but I don’t think a side gig as an unpaid, unlicensed therapist is what he had in mind for retirement.

And let’s consider the thinness of the walls in student apartments. Our cats are very quiet and Dan and I don’t have loud arguments. But youngsters might get squicked out at the sound – or even the thought – of two seniors having sex.

Come to think of it, a good way to keep them away from our door would be to hang a tie on it. If Dan owned a tie, that is.