The Blog I'm Not Writing

* Taking my car through the car wash;
*posting links to the Divinyl’s “I Touch Myself” and Joan Jett’s “Do You Wanna Touch Me,”
on Facebook, and thinking of Way. Too. Many. other songs for the COVID-19 situation;
* hanging a bag of nut milk   [1]   to drain over the kitchen sink….

Someone has too much play time on her hands.  Girls and Boys, are you, too, practicing safe sex Social Isolation ® ?

 

 

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Department Of I Was Not Prepared For This

Dateline: Monday, March 16. Email from my yoga class studio (my emphases):

…effective immediately, we will be limiting class sizes to 9 students. With this class size, the “social distancing”
between students in our classroom can be up to 40% higher than the CDC recommended distance of 6 feet.
Our Older Student Population
Because you are in a higher risk group, we are recommending our students
who are 60 years and older to please stay home until conditions improve.

Moiself  immediately began thinking most unyoga-like thoughts:  Ahem, and WTF?  When did I get into a “higher risk group” when I can keep up with the Millennials in class and seriously kick some yoga ass  [2]  in pigeon pose….

Fine. I’ll be a Good Citizen. ®  It’s funny to me, how much that frosted moiself’s butt, to realize that I’d been placed in a Category.  The next day I was still a bit steamy.  [3]  Perhaps I’m overreacting…

 

 

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Department of The Corona Virus Playlist
British Invasion Edition

For those too young to wipe your own behinds remember, the British Invasion refers to

“… a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s, when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of British culture
became popular in the United States…. groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks…and the Animals
were at the forefront of the “invasion.”  [4]

Moiself  has listed some of those groups’ song titles which are, IMHO, are applicable to our self-isolating, transmission–paranoid, COVID-19 times. At first I thought to list them alphabetically, but had more fun arranging them in groupings:

* A Hard Day’s Night
* Don’t Bother Me
* Get Back
* Get Off of My Cloud
* Inside Looking Out
* Long Distance
* Run For Your Life
* You Better Move On
* You Won’t See Me
* You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away

* Getting Better
* We Gotta Out Of This Place
* Help!
* Doctor Robert

* From Me to You
* Gimme Shelter
* Hello Goodbye
* Helter Skelter
* Here, There, And Everywhere

* I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party
* I Feel Fine
* How Do I Get Close
* Worried About You
* I Want to Hold Your Hand
* You Can’t Always Get What You Want
* You Can’t Do That
* You Really Got A Hold On Me

* I Should Have Known Better
* I’ve Got a Feeling
* Misery
* I’m So Tired
* Ventilator Blues
* Wish I’d Never Met You
* Where Have All the Good Times Gone
* Who’ll Be the Next in Line
* It’s All Over Now
* The End

 

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Department Of Another Way To Get A Good Laugh In Stressful Times…

…is to do something really stupid – something that makes you face palm yourself (which is one reason why moiself  is a Frequent Flyer when it comes to giggle mileage).

 

 

Dateline: earlier this week, after an at-home (of course) workout and before venturing to the grocery store. I change from my exercise t-shirt to a non- less-smelly t-shirt and glance in the mirror.  I reach for my toothbrush to use as an eyebrow brush: when I pull a snug shirt over my head, my eyebrows get a little unruly.

 

 

A second too late, as I have placed brush to brow, I realize that moiself had applied a small dab of toothpaste to the toothbrush a couple of hours earlier, got distracted, and set the toothbrush down on the sink edge without brushing my teeth. Thus, I now have very straight eyebrows with a dab of minty white toothpaste in them, giving me that certain je ne sais quoi (as well as a minty/fluoride scent wafting from my forehead).

The thing is, I did both brows before I realized what I was doing.  The second thing is, this is not the first time I’ve done this.  I’d say my average is once every two years.  Upside: my eyebrows have never had a cavity! So, yeah, I’m not absent-minded, I’m participating in an important research program involving the collection of dental hygiene data.

 

 

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Department Of Rescheduling Fun

There were to be ten of us around my dining room table on Tuesday, March 17.  Even before our state’s governor (in line with CDC and other health organization guidelines) called for voluntary social distancing, my guests began to cancel.

Not to worry, moiself assured my would-be guests via email, we will not scratch our celebration. We’ll just postpone it until…until we know more about what’s going on.  Also, I’m assuming my guests cancelled due to their concern for public health safety, and not as a commentary on my planned dining table centerpiece:

 

 

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Department Of Silver Linings

If something is good coming out of this pandemic it might be the concept of social distancing, which may come in handy after Whatever Is Going To Happen ® has died down.  Playing it correctly and not overusing it, you could artfully excuse yourself from certain tedious personal and professional obligations.  Y’all know what I’m talking about: that feeling of, “I’d rather stick a Tabasco-coated tuning fork in my eyeball than attend…

* another of my nephew’s ukulele recitals;

* our Homeowner’s Association meeting on proper dog-walking and waste disposal protocol;

*my boss’s latest attempt to mitigate his blatant racism, sexism
and homophobia by holding a pronoun sensitivity training session;

* my neighbor’s latest pyramid scheme lure   Amway/Herbalife/Mary Kay bait setting-disguised-as-a-ladies’-cocktail-party….”

Repeat after moiself:

“Oh, gee, I’d love to, but for the sake of community health,
and as per the advice of my ____
(doctor/psychiatrist/pedicurist/Mar-a-Lago online Medical School and Virtual Putting Green website),
I’m practicing social distancing.

 

 

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Department Of Problem Solved

“…1,135 people have needed intensive care in Lombardy, but the region has only 800 intensive care beds….
As the COVID-19 epidemic expands and the disease progresses, (ICU beds) are in increasing demand, especially because of the breathing problems the illness can bring. Every time a bed comes free, two anesthesiologists consult with a specialist in resuscitation and an internal medicine physician to decide who will occupy it.
“In Italy, Triage and Lies for Virus Patients,”
NY Times, 3-16-20 )

 

“Sometimes extraordinary problems require a supernatural response.  Fearless prayers is what is needed in this moment.
Let’s all pray for a swift end to the coronavirus.”
( Tweet by Jentezen Franklin, evangelical pastor, whose online service #45 claimed to have had joined for the National Day of Prayer to counter the coronavirus.)

 

 “…(Evangelist) Cindy Jacobs…said God told her to create a global day of prayer to stop the virus from spreading.
(  Mother Jones online )

 

 

When there is a shortage of vital medical equipment, Those In Charge Of Such Things ® face agonizing choices (and remember, every day in this country, people are placed on respirators due non-coronavirus related accidents/illnesses).  Should these triage situations arise in the United States, I’ve got a solution to easing the shortage.  Yes, I hereby volunteer to be Triage Czar.

 

 

Here’s how I’ll do it. Short of being able to talk to all ICU admit-tees and/or respirator candidates in person, I’ll design a simple questionnaire to be filled out by the patient or their designated medical representative, to determine the patient’s category.

Category 1:
Conservative Christians (and even the moderates and some liberals) and followers of any other religions (and the NRBS – “Not Religious But Spiritual” folks),
particularly those who claim to “believe” in the power and efficacy of prayer (or crystal energy patterns, homeopathy, reiki, etc.),
particularly those who pray for cures  (for any and all conditions, from cancer to “gay-ness”) for themselves or friends and family, and those who credit
supernatural intervention when they recover from illness.

Category 2:
Freethinkers, Brights, Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists: religion-free folk
who hold a naturalistic world view and follow the guidelines of medical science.

How does this work, you ask?

Category 1: Y’all who put your faith in the supernatural, when you are admitted to the hospital you will be assigned a bed in the chaplaincy ward,
where you and the chaplains/religious /spiritual counselors/fellow believers of your choice
can pray pray pray pray pray.

Category 2: Y’all get the doctors, the medicines, the ICU beds, and the respirators.

You’re welcome.

Should be a most revealing data gathering experiment, if my advice would be followed and someone kept statistics.   [5]

 

 

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Department of Epicurean Excursion   [6]

Featuring this week’s cookbook, author and recipe:
Wildwood: Cooking From the Source in the Pacific Northwest, by Cory Schreiber

Recipe: Apple-Cider Raisin Bread

My rating:

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Recipe Rating Refresher  [7]

*   *   *

May you “put your money where your mouth is” when it comes to medical care;
May you always remember what is on your toothbrush;
May you have an epic playlist when you are in social isolation;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

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[1] Don’t have a cow, dairy industry – I realize that almonds do not lactate.

[2] Actually, kicking some yoga ass is not a thing.

[3] The day after that, all classes were cancelled.

[4] Wikipedia; British Invasion.

[5] Of course, many people of all worldviews, including the supernatural, will have an immune system up to the task and recover on their own.

[6] A recurring feature of this blog, since week 2 of April 2019, wherein moiself decided that moiself would go through my cookbooks alphabetically and, one day a week, cook (at least) once recipe from one book.

[7]

* Two Thumbs up:  Liked it
* Two Hamster Thumbs Up :  Loved it
* Thumbs Down – Not even Kevin, a character from The Office who’d eat anything, would like this.
* Twiddling Thumbs: I was, in due course, bored by this recipe.
* Thumbscrew: It was torture to make this recipe.
* All Thumbs: Good recipe, but I somehow mucked it up.
* Thumby McThumb Face: This recipe was fun to make.
* Thumbing my nose: Yeah, I made this recipe, but I did not respect it.