The winter that wasn't.

The last three months were the winter that wasn't, in a year that won't be except for long interludes stress, strain, isolation, loneliness, and misery for very many.  It only snowed a traceable amount once all winter, and my furnace only came on maybe thee dozen times (I keep the thermostat 49, the lowest it will go).  I attended a fancy (black tie preferred) wedding in a hotel on the new Washington Waterfront on the Anacostia in January, I had my fifth eye procedure in February and came down with a dreadful two-week crud with copious up-all-night coughing fits on Valentines Day.  I think that's about sums up the winter.

Now I'm sheltering in place at home under the governor's orders in Virginia.  I didn't step foot off my property yesterday but I have adequate tp on hand (about 30 rolls--not cases), a sufficient amount of bourbon and flavored seltzer water in the cabinet and lots of dented cans picked up from the clearance shelf in the supermarket on the back porch, not all of it expired, only most of it, and none by more than two of three years.  I guess I'll be okay.  Being a former cop I still have my service weapon and I laid in fresh .357 bullets, that weren't 30 years old, the last time I was in West Virginia (just try buying ammunition in the DMV) so I'm doubly alright.

So I think that's about it for the entire year while we hunker down to ride out this virus, because it caught us completely unprepared thanks to the reckless voting choices many hinterland voters made in 2016, wishing upon pixie dust.  Gone are my intentions to attend my high school class's 50th year reunion in New Jersey, my law school class's 30th year reunion here in Virginia and the wedding of a nephew out west.  It looks like that 6 hours of extravaganza on the waterfront on a bitterly cold January evening is about all the socializing there'll be for this entire year.  I haven't even been in physical proximity with my girlfriend for the last three weeks because she has a brother in the risk group and an octogenarian relative.  I walk two miles three times a week down the roadways (the neighborhood streets are not busy) because my lungs feel too tender to start running again after my February sickness.  Was it the virus?  I'll never know because there are no adequate tests anywhere, still, in America.  I have a relative who is terribly sick currently who lives in a red state so she got a test, that took NINE DAYS to come back, negative.  Now we all wonder if it was a false negative because in MAGA America, everyone is paranoid and no one trusts anything.  Anyway, there'll be no secondary test 14 days later because still, there isn't adequate testing for the coronavirus test in America while thousands die from it.

But the phlox is in bloom, flowing over retaining walls.  Life springs eternal.  The cherry blossoms in DC waxed then waned, though the DC mayor shut down the Tidal Basin, appropriately, because thousands of idiots the weekend before last were perambulating the basin, cheek to jowl, viewing them.  America will get through this with less casualties with proper regard, or with mass casualties with reckless disregard.  Be safe, everyone.