covid diary: day 34

And so begins another week.

We spent the weekend, like every weekend now, trying to stay away from the news and just be for a while. I had to work both days on my providential side project, for which I was simultaneously thankful and resentful. Saturday afternoon, though, I got outside for a while and pressure washed the patio and all the patio furniture. It looks really good now! And while I was doing that, Mike was busy on a project of his own: He cut trails through the pasture so we can use it as a nature preserve!

Listen, I know what a privilege this is. We've lived here for almost two years now, though, and it's not like we're planning to get horses or cows or even alpacas anytime soon, so we might as well use that land for something that interests us. The birds, especially the red-winged blackbirds, love the pasture, and they weren't crazy about Mike being out in their space (one of them even dive-bombed him), but eventually, they'll get used to us.

He finished the trails just before the sun went down, so I had time for a short tour on Saturday, but on Sunday Mike and I went out for a longer walk. We found some wildflowers blooming by the back gate, and we encountered some curious bovine neighbors.

This morning it was raining, and more neighbors came to visit. I saw them out my office window heading toward the other neighbor's house, but then they turned around and came right up to our front door, how do you do. The dogs were not pleased, but it made me laugh.

In the news: lots of reports that the president and the administration knew about the dangers of the pandemic and had plenty of time to plan, but the president ignored his advisors and instead decided to downplay the whole thing and do nothing to make the country safer. This shocks exactly no one. What *is* shocking is how much power this cruel narcissist has and that Republicans continue to support him.

A couple of updates. First, remember last week when I was all "hey let's watch what Gavin Newsom is doing in California"? Welp. Turns out that now he's banded together with Gov. Inslee of Washington and Gov. Brown of Oregon to form a West Coast pact. These governors are planning to work together to figure out when and how it's safe to reopen the region. Likewise, the East Coast has its own pact now too, with the governors of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts working together to get through this pandemic and safely and gradually reopen their states. Listen, we've been saying around our house for a few weeks that Gavin Newsom is president of West America, and Andrew Cuomo is president of East America (the rest of the regions having thus far not produced a standout leader) ... and it turns out we're not wrong. These states know the president isn't going to help them, so they've decided to be smart and get through this by helping each other. And you'll never guess who is so deeply unhappy about this development that he went on a tirade in his press briefing and declared that he, not the governors, has "total" authority over decisions on when/how to reopen. Go on, guess. Bonus points if you guess that when a woman reporter told him he was wrong per the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, he attacked the reporter instead of defending his position on any legitimate grounds.

Second, remember that election the Republicans insisted on having in Wisconsin last week despite the dangers it posed to all Wisconsin voters? Remember how the Republicans thought that the lower turnout would ensure that their preferred candidate for the state supreme court would be easily elected? Welp. The brave people of Wisconsin had a little something to say about that. Results came in last night, and the Democratic candidate for the state supreme court, Jill Karofsky, beat that Republican. And not by a small margin, either. The last results I saw had her up 55-44.

And finally, an update on the banana/toilet paper story from last week. It turns out that those aren't the only two products with entirely separate business and personal manufacturing streams. Lots of food producers have those separate streams too, and no easy way to transition from one to the other. As a result, while lines for food banks are shockingly long, farmers who grow vegetables for the restaurant industry are literally plowing their crops back into the ground instead of picking them (because the restaurants are closed), and dairy farmers are pouring out vast quantities of milk instead of processing it (because the pizza places and other restaurants who buy the bulk cheese made from the milk have severely lowered demand). Now, I'm no nationally acclaimed economist/political leader/supply chain expert, but it seems to me that if we had a centralized national response, there could be ... I don't know ... some kind of stimulus mechanism to pay the farmers to supply their products to people in need. Then again, I guess you would have to care about actual Americans more than ratings or personal grievances for that to happen.

Nationwide cases: 588,435. Deaths: 23,708. (Note: That's 5,000 people who have died since my last update on Friday. My heart goes out to each of their family members and all of their loved ones.)