Covid is beginning to spike in the US. There are things I would like to say about how it is managed here in the US, and that if we had elected Bernie in 2016, and put in place an national healthcare scheme, and nationalized records, and nationalized the effort to fight something like this… And I would especially like to say things about the current leadership, or lack of it. But I think that IF Bernie had been elected, and we did actually coordinate a national shut down, the kickback by the Covid Freedom Fighters would have been immense. Better this to have happened under a “Republican” President. Let them fight him instead.
Anyway.
So Covid is spiking nationally right in summer. It seems like the efforts to fight it have peatered out. People are wearing masks, even around here, where Liberty Trumps sanity.
My poor wife and kids have hardly left the property in a couple of months now. I have been getting out, but to run the errands and get the things. Putting myself in harm’s way, hopefully making the right decisions, and keeping clear of the virus, because the moment I pick it up, they are all in harm’s way.
I see so many people when I am out who areragging their kids through the stores, the whole family unmasked. There is a word for people tho make such very poor decisions. It’s stupid for me to say it, though.
So, we have mostly been at home since at least March. This has given us some time to work out some of the things that need doing around the house, and keep changing and improving it.
This past week we took the false ceiling out of the craft room. That raised us back up in there to the original ceiling, 18 inches higher than that old false one. That makes nine and a half feet. That also involved taking out where the tops of the built in cabinets were boxed in, and I will soon be finishing that as a display shelf for her who claims that room. The bathroom is repainted, and a new sink is nearly ready to install. I have covered the top 18 inches of the walls of the craft room with beadboard, to hide a few sins there. I’ll be boxing in where the chimney angles from the living room through the top of the south wall of the craft room. The whole beadboarded area will be painted yellow to offset the very dark blue of the room, and the ceiling white. I think it is going to look great!
All of the work we have done in there has kept me too busy to get into the garden and get at the weeds. Missus is back to work, and my mornings are free now since she is in the craft room, but the weather is highly uncoopaerative and it is soaking wet out there, and cold. That’s how we roll in July here in Idaho.
The boys were by on Saturday. Jordan helped me go to the Logan City Dump and pick up a full trailer of firewood. I have never carried that much in it. It was great! A couple of more trips like that, and with the wood promised me by a farmer friend here in the neighborhood, we are going to be set for this year. I may have to finally start building my stores for excess that can be kept for coming years to improve the season on the wood. Now there’s what I would really like to do! Get ahead!
Dylan bug bombed his house and got to our place after Jordan and I had left. But he and his family were still here when we got back, and we had time for a nice visit. They also brought Dylan’s friend Ed. So if we are all found dead of Coronivirus, there is most of our contact tracing in the past few weeks. You gotta follow them from here.
So these are cynical times, even with the good of getting firewood and getting done with more work on the house.
So much has changed since I wrote my first journal entries in this journal all those months and years ago, in England. So much! People we have loved are gone, and new folks have shown up. We have moved from city living to country living, and in the process moved from one nation to another. The boys have had the chance to grow and have a life that is more than getting drunk, hanging out with friends, and trying to avoid getting in trouble because of a lack of other choices. One is a mechanic, and the other is putting his wife through college. We have added another daughter to the family since leaving England, too.
Whatever happens, happens. And When it does, I just happen along with it. Sounds like a lack of ambition, doesn’t it? Yet, here we are. We are working up an early 20th century house, and burning firewood to keep warm through the coldest of winters, raising loads of animals, kids, and building a little mini-farm one could raise a family on with little outside input.
It has not come free, despite sort of inheriting the farm itself. I say sort of because that is how it might look from the outside, but it cost me plenty, more than I will ever discuss because of the anger that comes with that topic. It is enough for me to say I busted my ass for it, looking after the grandparents in their lowest times, and losing one of the most valuable relationships I have had in my life, which is now irretrievable as she is dead. On top of all of it, there has been working the place by hand with no money to put into it for years, and no tools to help. There has been fighting the opinions of a certain grandparent, and he entitlement to feel like she could offer those opinions. We are in a heavily religious area, and since we don’t participate in their faith, we have very little interaction with anyone here, with only a single notable exception among them. There is one guy who really does look beyond all that and is a friend. On top of it all, as part of the arrangement to come here we were supposed to have irrigation on the field, but grandma up and sold that just to spite me. That has not been recovered, so we have dry farmed and been short every year because of it.
So, no, it has not been free. Far from! We have a lot to do in order ove forward from where we are now, and we are not the type not to move forward. Moving forward is still trying to catch up to what we had been promised in exchange for coming here in the first place. But we are also ahead of where we would have been had we stayed in England. It’s a double edged papercut.
Mom’s birthday will be rolling around in a few days. I wish she were still here to celebrate that with us. I never expected her to go as young as she did, and the way she did. She was the last good part of the life I was born into. More good has come, but there is nobody good between me and the grave now. I am left here to forge on, and to try to show the new ones how it is done. Luckily, I have had a great show from grandma how it’s not done. She aged disgracefully. I have got to age better. That is my determination in life, now.
So, it looks like the last ten yers have made me a philosopher. That’s fine. We battled 50 mile an hour wind two days ago. That was much easier than battling people. Ironically, we battled both in much the same way. Hunker down in the house and avoid the flying debris.
Speaking of 50. I am seeing that come around real soon. Probably time to write that book I have kept promising myself I would do.