Here at the Covid, Covid Cabana

The toughest part is going to be the social isolation. I love people. We love being with people. We love eating out and going to get coffee and being with our family and friends. _______Do you know what is really a trip about this? Young people. Not kids so much but many kids younger and younger are already prepared for this. So many young people already stay indoors all day playing fortnite, snapchat, mindless videogames, tik tok and other social media. They already communicate this way. They are already socially distant from each other. They already don't go to concerts or gatherings anymore and are increasingly uninterested in nature or being outside. Many of them communicate only online well and the person to person interactions each day are the strained and akward ones. Could I lay in bed on my phone for days on end? No. That would make me crazy. Could I live off of hot cheetohs and Redbull and flip my sleep schedule so that I could get into the hottest late night videogame battles or endlessly surf youtube till I fall asleep at 4 am. No. But I know about a thousand young people who not only can but do that regularly already. They already don't even really date. They instead get together, get jealous and break up over simply liking the wrong person's post on Instagram. The entire relationship existing over the internet. They already are dancing and sword fighting their way through virtual worlds in the dark alone but connected. Is it a way of life I can do or want for Biggie? No. It is just crazy that young people are largely un impacted and they already know how to socially isolate. You can't make this stuff up. Meanwhile people are complaining online that they can't get their Boomer parents to stop going out in public or going on cruises. Before the internet human to human contact was essential as air. ______It makes me think of the trips my grandfather would take me on in Omak called "going to town." We'd go to all the places in town for really no utilitarian reason. It was exhaustively and wonderfully long and we would go under the guise of "needing" something in town. But we didn't. We needed to go to the Pub to have "coffee" with the fellas. We needed to go to the bank to check our safety deposit box (nothing changed). We needed to go to the hardware store to get a nut and a washer but really we just wanted to stand an bullshit with the Ace Hardware guys. We needed to go to the post office to send something off to someone for some reason that probably wasn't essential to survival. We needed to go to the grocery store for Winston's, Carlo Rossi and scratch tickets. We didn't need any of those things at all to survive but we did it every day. Those are the things I'm missing the most and its only day 3! Biggie is still a little two young to truly understand what I understood being toted around by my grampa but not too young by much. In the summer I take him everywhere and do my best impression of my grampa everywhere I go. I want Biggie to learn how to speak old people. I want Biggie to know that his dad has a friend or a buddy or a homie in every store he goes and that people are nice and small talk is worth it. This stupid virus is going to ruin that for a while. ______How do we replace that from a distance. How do we replace a handshake, a hug, and a chuckle. I delivered some vegetables from the farm today to a friend and had to talk from 15 feet away. It was good to see him but it is also tragic. The only conversation for the next half a year will be Carona this, Covid that, can you believe it this, did ya hear that? _____ And all these people out and about town. This is how they make money. This is how we get paid. If this goes on long enough and gets weird enough and we somehow stop getting paid to be teachers am I ready to make a living some other way? I am ready to barter. What can I make, grow, amass and trade? What do I actually need? ______Also. Who is going to enforce all the missed payments? There aren't any dudes in a Wellsfargo stagecoach with a guy riding shotgun protecting the loot inside who are going to come get you in this scenario if you don't pay your credit cards or mortgage. Chase isn't going to come take your car away. Just cough on them. Your landlord can't evict everybody. They can't take everybody's stuff back. If they do they'll get sick too. Money is so weird to me right now. They can shut your gas and power off though so keep paying that one. I'm being dramatic but these are the thoughts on only day three. _____I was looking forward to taking a break from my job (as I do in summer) but now I'm feeling very responsible for the greenhouse and all the food, plants, and potential inside. I'm worried it will get broken into making it compromised to go in. Hell the maintenance dudes were in there working on the heater today and I didn't even want to be in the same space as them and now I feel like I need to sterilize everything so I can get my bliss back. This is ridiculous. Once a day I feel like I just throw my hands up and say I can't believe this. But then each day about a hundred times I actually can and do believe this because it makes so much sense. _____So I'm home. Ready for the afternoon sun to warm up the yard so we can work on our next project trying to keep occupied. We'll turn up the Grateful Dead once more and turn our faces to the setting sun and hope we make it to what we're calling "OK Day." It is 14 days from our last potentially compromising community contact. That day happens to be our wedding anniversary on the 29th. Touche Life here at the Covid, Covid Cabana...