Going Rogue

I was as giddy as a virgin at the Hunk-O-Mania Strip Club when I woke up this morning, knowing I was going to be a premeditated lawbreaker for the first time in my life. Yup, I was going to take my pandemic protective gear on the road. I had my story rehearsed in case I got stopped, “Officer, I’m going to Walgreens to get some allergy medication. That’s allowed. Right?” Or maybe I’d haul the grocery list out of my purse left over from the last time I went and use it as proof that I was going to one of the two approved locations old people without essential jobs are supposed to point their cars towards. It was raining out so I breathed easy, figuring I’d have to be doing something grossly wrong on the road for a cop to pull me over and even then, they’re not giving tickets out for a first offense. They're not even making random stops to check on pandemic run-aways. A lawn care service owner, though, tested that second offense rule. He’d been reported for leaving fliers in mailboxes and was given a warning. But he didn’t stop. The second time he was caught he was given a $500 fine and his name was plastered all over the media. Honestly, who reports a guy for doing something as petty as leaving a piece of paper in mailboxes? Maybe I’m just being a softie after my own “crime spree?”

It all started earlier in the week when I got a call from Levi’s groomer about his upcoming appointment. Other places where I’d had appointments---at the hair salon, the dentist, the doctor and for a couple of senior hall lectures---were all canceled via a personal phone call so I was pretty sure that’s what the groomer was going to say. Imagine my surprise when the shop owner told me they are still keeping all their standing appointments for terrier class dogs, which covers Levi my Might Schnauzer. They normally have six groomers working six days a week but the shop owner himself cuts the terriers breeds so, he figured he could be safe with only him and his wife in the place. They had just ended a two week quarantine, he said, after returning from vacation and the shop had been closed for a total of four weeks. Levi would be the second dog to cross the threshold. 

I can be as selfish as the next guy so I turned a blind-eye to the groomer breaking the law by conducting non-essential business. I wasn't looking forward to cutting Levi's hair at home, knowing it would be like putting a single pair of handcuffs on an octopus and thinking that would keep the cephalopod from using its other tentacles to suck your eye balls out or create a wind tunnel between your ears. Been there, done that with wiggle wormy Levi. For some reason he trusts Glen to cut his hair and do his manscaping while the guy baby-talks Levi through the whole process. Levi wants me no where near him with a pair of scissors in my hand. Ya, I know, all law breakers can justify their actions. I should have said "no thank you" then planned on shipping Levi out to Montana during sheep sheering season when the pandemic is over.

While Levi was being an unwitting victim of a criminal act, I went across the street to the grocery store hoping to score some toilet paper. No such luck. They said when they get a shipment in, even with limits of one package per shopper, it’s gone in an hour. If you follow a community message board in your town you’d understand how that happens. People are posting time-dated photos of when they see toilet paper on the shelves and people in need are dropping everything they’re doing, jumping in their cars to score a package and the person who gets the last package posts a picture of it. This same message chains happens every day, several times a day. I’m not desperate enough to hang around the message board from daylight to dust to see the first posts live, but that day will come if people don’t start going back to work and doing their business in public bathroom stalls.

I might have gone into that grocery store with a two item list but I bought $70 worth of stuff, mostly meats for the coming apocalypse in our food chain caused by the recent closing of huge meat processing plants in states that didn’t have social distancing in place. Their employees processing beef, pork and poultry were dropping like flies from the Covid-19 virus. “Rates of infection around these plants are higher than those of 75% of other U.S. counties,” one analysis said. I only eat meat a couple of times a week. A little chicken here, a little beef there with some bacon occasionally thrown in between. Since the pandemic started I’ve stockpiled enough beef cuts to reconstruct my own cow. If I liked head cheese, I’d almost be there and I can safely say that day will never come. But I can see a day when I'll be bartering roast beef for toilet paper.

During my day of shameful civil disobedience I also went to the pet store where they had erected a huge acrylic wall at the cash register. A lot of time and effort that went into making that and I couldn’t help wondering if the factories churning them out are working around the clock. I've only been to four places since the lock down started and three had installed these ‘sneeze guards’ around their employees. The dog groomer’s check-in desk being the exception. That one is so tall I can barely see over it. I’m happy to report I wore my face mask everywhere I went, and grocery store even provided plastic gloves for my foray inside. I suppose I should have stood on a soap box and belittled the groomer for enticing me out of the house, but I didn't and I maintained my giddy-to-be-free mood the entire day…until I saw the look in Levi’s eyes when I picked him up and he first noticed my mask and smelled my hand sanitizer. Whatever he was thinking it wasn’t good.  ©

Buddha Offerings and Circus Tricks

Dog grooming day was Monday. Drop off time was scheduled for noon with a pick up estimated at 4:00 and in between I ran errands and had lunch at a curious little hole-in-wall Chinese restaurant that had a countertop filled with coins crowded around a tall, jade Buddha. The pile was at least five inches deep and four feet long and I’m guessing it was offerings to the Triple Gem: The Buddha, Dharma and Sangha although there was no neatly printed place card denoting the meaning of all that money sitting there waiting for a snatch-and-run robbery, assuming the would-be criminal came in with a large bucket. If I’d been in a Buddhist monastery with steel bowls lined up for visitors to drop coins in I’d know they were for the monks and maintenance on the building but coins on a countertop in a restaurant? When it came time to pay my for my lunch special of $6.62 I handed the cashier the exact amount and to my surprise, the coins went on the Buddha’s pile and the bills in her cash drawer. I wondered briefly if customers are promised good fortune if we add our extra change to the pile. The cynical side of me thought it could be a clever way to make more money---like coins tossed in a tourist trap wishing well---but the idealistic side of me thought something inspirational was going on that I didn’t understand. I may have to go back again and ask some questions.

The dog grooming salon is close enough that I could go home to wait for Levi but I don’t like being home without him. It’s too quiet and I can’t hear the doorbell anymore without the dog jumping up to see who is standing on the other side of the glass, an action that lets me know how much I depend on him to be my ears when my hearing aids are sitting in their box. I should do something about that---wear those Resounds full time or buy a louder, old person’s doorbell---but I can’t bring myself to do either one. When my husband lived alone he was a heavy sleeper and he wired up a factory break bell to a timer that he used for an alarm clock, mounted it on the wall above his bed. He could sleep through it but the neighbors from across the street couldn’t and after listening to it for 10 or 15 minutes they’d come across the street and bang on his bedroom window while having their daughter dial his phone. The combination of the alarm, the phone and the banging would finally wake him up. Except for the time when it didn’t and they called me, knowing I had a key. After a half hour of bells and banging he still hadn’t woke up and they were afraid he was dead. Fast forward many years later when Don went in for a sleep study and he came out with a biPAP machine and that ended the era of nagging him awake with bells, whistles, water and letting the dog get involved in the action. Just the idea of getting a louder doorbell gives me flashbacks. Do I really want my neighbors to know every time someone comes to my front door?

I ate too much on grooming day. A protein shake for breakfast, Mongolian beef for lunch and a hot dog bun filled with chicken and cheese for dinner plus two---count them---one, two bowls of ice cream with peanuts and chocolate sauce. Why do I do that to myself? When I cut my personal trainer loose at the YMCA I cut myself loose, too. The half-gallon of ice cream in the freezer is the first I’ve brought home in months and I can’t leave it alone. I have no self-control when it’s around. I’m cheating myself in other ways, too, like recently I figured out if I go to the gym on Sundays, I can count that as both the third workout in the previous week and the first workout of the coming week. I do like summer Sundays at the gym, though. It’s relatively quiet except for this past Sunday when a weird woman dragged a cycling bike out of the cycling studio and into the hallway where everyone passes by and she was singing every third or fourth sentence coming through her ear bugs. “Get it on!” “Yeah, one more time!” "I like it like that." I would have told her to get a room but she had one and gave it up in favor of being an exhibitionist. 

Most people don’t talk or use cell phones at the gym. Most people respect each other’s concentration on their workout programs. I broke that rule this week with Circus Guy. I call him that for two reasons: 1) He has red and green tattoos covering every inch of skin what shows except his face and, 2) he does this thing where he stands one-footed on a soccer ball while holding a twenty pound weight plate in each hand. And he does this for several minutes on each leg, then he repeats that set two more times! When I walked past him on Sunday, I pointed to the ball he was balancing on and I said, “Now, that’s impressive!” He laughed and replied, “Comes from spending my childhood on hockey skates.” That was the longest conversation I’d had in days. Woo is me.  ©

The Devil Made me do it and Other Stuff

Monday was a Red Letter day for Levi. He got a long overdue walk followed by an afternoon at the doggie foo-foo beautify parlor where he was greeted by a giant-but-gentle pit bull. She belongs to the owner of the shop so she’s always there to offer a butt sniff to the clients---human and canine alike. It’s a busy shop with five groomers, a shampoo person and someone manning check ins and outs. Levi’s groomer is a guy in his mid-forties, he’s the Schnauzer specialist and owner of the shop. Levi loves him and that feeling is mutual but from my point of view, a forty-eight dollar haircut and a bath ought to come with a heavy dose of love. There are cheaper places around but I’d rather save money somewhere else like skipping professional pedicures. I don’t have the patience, lately, to have someone play with my toes or to listen to a random woman in the next chair spend ten minutes deciding on the color polish she wants. Just pick one, already! Of course, no one had better say the same to me about taking forever to find the exact shade of gray I want in an oriental rug for my bathroom. That’s different, says the widow who has suspended doing “girlie-girl” stuff until further notice.

I don’t mean to imply that my widowhood has anything to do with my lack of enthusiasm for girlie-girl prep-time. It doesn’t. My newest theory (read that as newest excuse) is there should be only one primped-and-pampered person per household and Levi gets that title here on Widowhood Street and judging by Levi’s excitement greeting the groomer it’s clear he thinks his beauty routine is worth every penny. Now, if pedicures came with a heavy dose of sweet-talk, kisses and petting from a hunky guy I’d probably break the one-per-household rule and hop right into a pedicure tub with the same enthusiasm that Levi shows when we pull up in front of the foo-foo beauty parlor. Did I mention the groomer calls me ‘Honey’? I don’t know why. It doesn’t sound patronizing coming from his lips. It’s not because he doesn’t remember my name; he also calls me ‘Jeanie’ which I find endearing because so many people called me that when I was growing up.

On Groundhog’s Day I attended a Mexican Fiesta/luncheon at the senior hall. It was different than our normal luncheons. This one was sponsored and planned by a local senior living facility and they spared no expense. They brought in truly great food and virgin margaritas and for entertainment they hired a three piece band from the local Council for Cultural Exchange. They played calypso/ Caribbean Music---but not modern versions. It was the historical beats and rhythms the African slaves brought with them to the Caribbean that got mixed with the instruments used by the indigenous people. It was a repetitive and “happy” beat meant to keep the slaves working at a good pace. The trio made up a “song” on the fly from three words said by an audience member to demonstrate how it was done on the sugar cane plantations. The songs of that era had just a few words repeated over and over again so that they required no thinking and evoked no longings. There was a dance demonstration of how the slaves were allowed to celebrate at the end of the work day. I’ve seen that dance somewhere before and it does look like a celebration but I never would have guessed its origins. 

I was in a mischievous mood at the luncheon so I mentioned that I stayed up late the night before to watch the Iowa Caucus coverage. That’s all it took for several of the ladies at the table to spit nails and venom at Hillary. And that's all it took for someone else to declare Ted Cruz will be the next president and for several others to argue that Bernie is too old to hold the office. It amused the heck out of me that at a table full of old people Bernie, at 74, was deemed too old. “Why would anyone want to vote for an old man like that?” someone asked. ” I wanted to answer, “Ask someone under thirty. That’s his demographic” but I behaved myself and sat there with my sociologist’s hat firmly in place, not saying a single word after confessing to why I was sleep deprived. Observe and record but don’t become part of the study. Ah, I’m good at doing that. It was fascinating that one of the nicest ladies I know from the senior hall and one of the nastiest ladies were both animated in their hatred of Hillary, trying to out do each other with their tales of Hillary’s wows and Bill’s hoes. I knew before I brought up the topic of politics that a discussion could turn out like it did. I live in a tomato red state in a crimson red county but, like I said, I was in a “mood” to be a lightning rod, hoping to get the sparks I got. It was my way of celebrating the way the 2016 Iowa Caucus turned out. ©