That's My Bix!

Last night, another successful night with Ole sleeping off the bed and honestly, I got a great night’s sleep for once, so I’m thrilled too. Avi chose to sleep on the couch instead of coming to bed, which meant there wasn’t even a single 25 pound dog blocking various legs or trapping you under the blankets, much less two of them.

Today is officially Hot with a capital H and we have, as predicted, needed to turn on the AC. I still taught class outside again today — it’s a pretty sweet set up, honestly. I sit under the patio overhang and I have a rolling laptop cart that I can adjust to perfect camera height (aka not looking up my nostrils and also forcing a double chin situation) and there’s an outlet there so that I can plug in and not worry about the stream killing my ancient laptop battery. I usually take my breakfast/lunch out there and eat it while waiting for my students to arrive (for some reason I have to admit students to the Zoom — I haven’t figured out how to turn that off).

Today, one frantic student was already waiting when I got there ten minutes early and when I allowed her in, she was freaked and worried that she had missed class. “Doesn’t it start at 11 am?” she said. Nope, 11:30 am, always has, we’re now in week 12 and also, the campus literally doesn’t have any classes starting at 11 am to my knowledge — it’s almost like a high school with set classroom timeslots.

So we chatted while I ate my brunch glop — which is a mixture of protein yogurt, protein granola, fresh fruit (in this case blueberries) and usually a handful of dried fruit (in this case, craisins) for a little sweetness. Then more students arrived and we had a robust discussion about what makes something scifi, fantasy or horror, and what the tropes are that you can use to drive plot or break entirely in your stories.

After that, I watched the beginning of Deadwater Fell, which apparently is yet another proof that David Tennant is incapable of doing anything cheerful unless it’s fantasy or scifi (topical, since much of my class was spent deciding if Doctor Who counted a little bit toward fantasy too since it’s less interested in the technical stuff).

For lunch, I whipped up some leftovers from Esteban’s sous vide chuck roast experiment. He’s figured out a way to take bog standard chuckroast, tie it into a bundle, sous vide it with spices and garlic for more than a day and out pops the perfectly tender, amazingly rare cut of meat imaginable. Think prime rib, except it’s cheapass chuck roast. I sliced some ultra thin, toasted a hoagie bun, spread it with Trader Joe’s garlic spread, layered on some provolone and topped the mess with a flash sautee of the sliced beef. Unfortunately, thanks to my late brunch and later still meal of amazing beef sandwich, I may not be eating dinner tonight, or at very worst, eating it at 10 o’clock tonight.

After eating lunch, I read more fiction submissions for my job, trying to finish off the fall issue picks before I skeedaddle and graduate. Then it was time to go pick up our grocery order. This time, in efforts to find tater tots, Esteban tried ordering at a different grocery store — unfortunately, I had procured tots when I went to the grocery store/post office earlier this week, but this other order had already been submitted at that point. This new place was out of most stuff and didn’t have a mechanism for suggesting replacements for things, so we’re unlikely to go back if only for that reason but the process itself was painless enough. Alas, two more bags of tots, so we’re officially Tot Hoarders, but it means that there’s a Tater Tot Casserole in our future. But it also resulted in three giant bags of frozen bing cherries for my smoothie adventures. Also, thanks for the tip in the comments — I also scored some chopped frozen spinach which I will try and report back.

It was disconcerting to see even fewer people wearing masks in the parking lot at this place. Now, maybe they put them on when they walked into the store and took them off when they were leaving, but it looked like the fear of COVID-19 is either waning or just not existing. And ultimately this feels a lot like the frantic lather of an unseen force the way it did in the months leading up to the 2016 election — we know for sure that the Chinese were behind the texting escapade earlier this month, and we also know that just one guy registered all of those Liberate Whatever websites.

You have to wonder — if much of foreign espionage is focused on disruption and chaos, wouldn’t a really efficient way be to use a relatively slow-moving natural disaster to continue to sow those seeds of disruption and chaos? If you hated a population and wanted as much trauma and death as possible, what if you could convince people that there wasn’t actually any danger?

What if you could convince your enemy to walk directly into the forest fire or hurricane?

What did we all learn from the death of thousands of Americans in 2001? That we galvanize and come together quickly and forget our differences. Remember the day after 9/11 when traffic was so courteous and gracious? There were no honks, no middle fingers. People saw each other as people. And here, amidst all of this tragedy, another opportunity to see each other as the fragile beating hearts that we all carry inside our vulnerable mortal shells, another opportunity to think for the whole instead of for the inconvenience.

If I were thinking in militaristic ways of attack, I’d be incredibly threatened by that strength and unity. I’d try to figure out any way I could to prevent it from happening.

I got myself caught up in it the other day, when I engaged in someone’s debate about whether or not it was time to “reopen the country”. First, it’s the epitome of privilege that we consider this “shut down.” This is not closed. This is limited, certainly but it is not “closed” or “shut down”. I can get liquor delivered to my house in 2 hours. While the supply chain for certain things is impacted (geez, you stress bakers, it’s not like they can just flip the switch and make more yeast instantly), there are still plentiful options for nutrition out there. Sure, you might not find the brand you want, you might not get your tater tots, but you’re still well fed.

But the argument I got caught up into was countered with the question that boiled down to thinking about people who are a paycheck away from financial uncertainty. This person, whom I very much respect, made the argument that sounded a lot like they were saying it was fine for more people to die if it meant someone wouldn’t “lose their house.”

Okay, let’s dissect that for a minute, and assume that you’ve lost your job and unemployment isn’t enough to cover it and the months and months of foreclosure proceedings have transpired — not owning a house does not indicate that you will be homeless. First, a foreclosure on someone’s 4-bed 3-bath ranch because they are out of work does not mean they step directly into a refrigerator box under the overpass. There are programs in place for this very reason (which, if I recall, the Republicans are still trying to dismantle) to prevent people from living on the streets and going hungry because that’s what a First World Nation does for their people. Second, renting an apartment or a house is often cheaper than owning a house in many markets — sometimes it makes more financial sense to do this, particularly if you might need to move in the near future (case in point: We chose not to buy a house in Las Vegas and have been renting this entire time, primarily because we didn’t trust the Vegas real estate market at all). Thirdly, maybe the actual problem is a system that pays people so little that they can’t plan for ever being out of work (again, the dismantle thing comes up here too).

Fourth, can we go back to the part where you literally just said that you valued property over a person’s life? What the what?

I was upset about the rationale for probably longer than I should have been. I mean, hey, when someone is making the argument that it’s more important to own a house than save any number of lives, I guess I’m not going to change your mind. Instead, I’m going to worry about your morals and if you were the good person I thought you were.

And also, I get it. Everyone is het up because things are scary right now and everyone is feeling lots of feelings. I mean, I am too. I’m about to have no income whatsoever in three weeks, and let’s face it, the job prospects aren’t looking great for me either. But also, what if this is all just to keep us shouting at each other instead of bonding together as one? What if we are being played?

What if we just remembered that in the end, kindness is never wasted? That no matter what you do during this time, if you acted in kindness, you made the right call.

Be kind, my friends.

I’m glad you’re here. Thank you for being here. We’re going to be okay.

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