While Santa was nestled snug in his bed, with visions of sugarplums and various other acid flashbacks dancing through his head, Ms. Claus was up and taking care of bidness as per usual.
Herself the Elder enjoys an early holiday chat with Ms. Claus through her bedroom window.
In point of fact, she was out in the frosty air, delivering a big box of Dunkin deliciosity to the residents and staff at Herself the Elder’s assisted-living house.
The coffee was made in the kitchen with care, for she knew that eventually, against all odds, that grumpy old elf St. Grinch would haul his fleabitten carcass out of the sack and stumble blindly around the joint screeching for stimulants to jump-start the undersized and frequently offline Freon pump in his rib cage that he claims is a heart.
Now she’s home and banging around in the kitchen making pancakes and eggs over easy, with more coffee, still more! Molasses cookies are likewise on the program. Your basic Joyeux Noël, n’est-ce pas? Feliz Navidad? Nollaig shona dhuit?
Whatever you call it, have some on us. Her. Whatevs. I’ll have more coffee, please.
The temptation is to load it down, saddle up, and sail away. But to where?
Lacking a passport, I’m restricted to the lower 48 states, Alaska and Hawaii being something of a long bunny-hop by bike. I don’t think Hans Rey could make either in one go, even if he started with a bean feast, a lit fart, and a tailwind.
Unfortunately, several of my preferred bolt holes are either hot as blazes or actually on fire. And if I leave New Mexico, I face a 14-day quarantine when I return.
Plus, Herself would have to rassle up her own grub in my absence, in addition to working for our living, catering to Miss Mia Sopaipilla, and assisting the assisted-living place with Herself the Elder, who recently took another digger, this time breaking her right wrist.
HtE is issued a fresh 14-day quarantine every time she leaves assisted living to see a sawbones, which is not nearly as much fun as seeing the road unfold before you from the saddle of a brand-new bicycle.
This is a review bike, of course. Merry Sales provided frame, fork, and a big box of bits, but the Great Parts Shortage of 2020 being more or less ongoing, I had to contribute a few items from my personal collection, among them a wheelset, inner tubes, saddle, and brakes.
Between us it made for a pretty tasty build, and I can’t say much more than that until the paying customers get theirs. In the meantime, I’m getting mine.
Still sticking pretty close to home, though. I’m not getting too far away from the mailbox until our ballots show up. That’s a review I can’t wait to write.
That may be Cthulhu’s eye up there in the clouds. Or it could be the moon.
This is what the eastern sky looked like around 7:30 last night.
“No more monsoons! The end is nigh! Prepare ye for mostly sunny and warmish!”
Which it was. Eighties as I pedaled off nine-ish this morning, and it only got hotter.
Later in the afternoon Herself popped round to the Dark Tower for a window chat with her mom, but couldn’t stick it out more than a few minutes.
Don’t expect her to have a window chat of any duration with Louie Gohmert, though. Not even if the dumb sonofabitch wears a diving helmet and a diaper over his Bug-hole.
“If you want anything done in this yard you’ve got to meow until you’re blue in the mouth,” says Miss Mia Sopaipilla.
We’ve been cocooning a bit, I suppose.
It’s not easy to watch America doggedly screwing its head even further up its own arse, especially while striving to make some novel observation about the practice. The bon mot proves elusive. So we’ve turned our gaze elsewhere.
The back yard has needed work for a while now, and it’s been getting some. Weeds pulled, vines excised, lilacs pruned, pond rock and red mulch laid down, balky gate repaired, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.
In the process we discovered a few new aches and pains along with an old faucet and four sprinkler-system heads we didn’t know we had. They could be part of some prehistoric irrigation network; for sure there are a couple real anachronisms on the other side of the yard, metal jobbers buried in the pine duff like the plungers on land mines.
We’re not great with roses, but occasionally we get lucky.
The apple tree by the kitchen window has had the schnitz. All the neighbors say it’s never been worth a damn, and we’re starting to agree, though Spike the Terrorist Deer, that notorious outside agitator, seems fond of its bitter, undersized fruit.
So that will probably come down directly, along with a Siberian elm that is more than a match for my skills with a shovel and bad language. Probably have to take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
The neighbors with the little girls have partnered with another couple up the street to form a collective of sorts. Between them they have five munchkins to educate and entertain, and they share other interests as well, so it seems a great leap forward.
The gang performs a daily bicycle/scooter rodeo that relies heavily upon our steep driveway for a launching ramp, so we’re making our own small contribution. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Elsewhere in the cul-de-sac, a four-legged neighbor went west. Daisy was a sweet old Lab who, with her cousin Gunner, served our little community as a combination of early warning system and welcome wagon.
Gunner is deaf, and a bit shy, but Daisy had been known to stride into homes like a Monty Python bobby, as if to enquire, “Wot’s all this then?” Their human has already arranged a new companion for Gunner, a black Lab pup tentatively named Henry.
Beyond our immediate ’hood, Herself the Elder’s assisted-living home has undergone a round of Bug® testing, and the all-clear has been sounded, though the lockdown remains in force.
Last Friday we delivered a load of Asian food for the joint. Pre-Bug®, Herself had been taking her mom out on Fridays for a bit of shrimp fried rice, and we decided to revive the practice as a take-out deal after Daisy and Gunnar’s person said he’d been doing something similar for his mom.
Then we thought, “Why not spread the wealth a bit?” From each according to his ability, etc. So everybody got some, including us, because I am a sucker for a six-pack of gyoza and pretty much anything else I don’t have to cook.
Speaking of wealth, when the light is right we can enjoy what the previous owner of El Rancho Pendejo called “the golden hour.” Once the day’s chores are finished we park ourselves on the back patio with frosty beverages in hand, admire our handiwork (such as it is), and hope to pan a little color from the dung as it all runs downhill.
The golden hour. “Well done, Yahweh,” as Doc Sarvis once said.
Herself chats with her mom jailhouse style, on the phone, through a pane of glass.
We swung by the Dark Tower yesterday, bearing gifts.
Herself the Elder had requested huevos rancheros for Mothers Day. So we ordered up the takeout from Weck’s and ran it on by.
“You’re spoiled!” exclaimed a staffer. Dern tootin’. As spoiled as one can be in an assisted-living facility under lockdown in plague time, anyway.
Ain’t nothin’ a couple sacks of mulch and a cat statue can’t fix.
Afterward we continued a ongoing backyard-cleanup project. I’m a lifelong asthmatic with a personal, portable plague of allergies, the most severe of which is to yardwork.
But the space was starting to look like a tumbledown Tinkertoy tower of rusty playground equipment, a bullet-riddled ’63 Rambler American on blocks, and a three-legged pit bull with bowel issues would actually constitute improvements.
So, yeah. Yardwork.
Up north, where the yards are 35 acres, my man Hal forwards a Colorado Public Broadcasting piece about how gig workers there — including him — are getting the runaround from the plague-jiggered unemployment system, such as it is.
“This is exactly what happened to me when I applied,” he said. “I apparently need to call there. But of course cannot get through.”
Well, you can always get through here, bub. What’s going on out there in Greater Dogpatch? Are you digging holes and filling them in again? Redistributing wealth? Fetching takeout to shut-ins? As the Year of the Plague drags on toward Memorial Day, we want to hear how our readers are getting by. Wag your tales in comments.
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