2020 has a nasty ring to it.

It's been 5 years since my last post. I was totally won over by my iphone and Facebook but now am drifting back to my blog. You wouldn't think a lot could happen in 5 years but what we are looking at now is a series of misadventures that might more accurately be termed plagues of biblical proportion.

Young readers, when last I wrote in 2015, I was "retired" - laid off really- and getting ready to sell my house. Five years later I'm in the same position. Between 2015 and 2020 I have had many upgrades done to the house, nursed my mother until her passing in March 2015, and got a new job in April 2015 from which I am retiring in August. And I will begin anew the process of getting the house ready for sale. The main difference is now I will be moving alone, having lost my other half of 49 years suddenly Jan 11, 2019.  In October I will be 75. Time marches swiftly on.

But let me go back a few years.

First mistake leading up to our current disaster was in 2016 when the Electoral College gave a charlatan, a bogey man, a liar, cheat and swindler the presidency even though a margin of more than 3 million votes chose otherwise. Now in his 3rd year of office this evil presence has upended all the hard won victories in civil rights, health care and civil law of the past 60 years.

Two significant pieces of legislation - The Dream Act and The Affordable Care Act - were accomplished under President Obama before the Idiot was elected. The Idiot and his Republican Senate have spend 3 years trying to undo that legislation, so far unsuccessfully.  Even during the Obama presidency, a Republican dominated Congress spent 90% of its time obstructing anything proposed by Obama. They couldn't get over an African American elected as president, any more than they would abide a woman president. Hence, the Hillary Clinton v Donald Drumpf contest of 2016 resulted in ignorant old white folks and greedy white folks chose a candidate totally unfit for any office anywhere anytime over a woman, a successful lawyer, senator, and former first lady.

So someone on high - way up in the heavens - decided he/she's had enough. If these people were too stupid to stop the evil forces he would bring on the plagues. First devastating wildfires, then floods, heat, drought, melting polar caps and finally -- since nobody was connecting the dots -- the virus. As of this writing, 123,000 Americans have died, millions around the world.

Stores have been closed, schools closed, work from home, millions unemployed, hospitals overwhelmed, shortages of protective gear for emergency workers.  The place has a look not unlike those Armageddon-themed movies.

In late January of this year (2020) something called the coronavirus hit the world, first in China, then Europe and now the US.  We have been shut down and shut in for over 90 days, working from home where possible while the Idiot keeps denying the pandemic, and spending all his time campaigning to be re-elected. God Forbid.

The self-distancing, self-quarantining cast an eerie pall at first. In fact, self-distancing, a word I don't think I'd ever heard before,  could probably be declared the "in" word for 2020.  No cars on the street, grocery stores ran out of toilet paper, disinfectants, clorox, people were racing to find or make face masks.  People adjusted. Gradually TP was once again available but much more expensive. Go figure. People stopped hoarding and started returning to the grocery stores, especially because - like the  7 stages of grief - the pandemic had stages, and one of the first was obsessive baking. People who rarely cooked anything were now in a cooking frenzy (myself included). Making sourdough bread because the stores were empty of yeast. The result was the second section to be totally empty in the store was the flour section. The pasta section was third. Apparently pasta and canned sauce is the go-to meal for people locked in their houses with their kids 7 days a week 24 hrs a day.

Then the second stage came, with joggers running about and neighbors one never saw before were walking in family groups. Parents were in charge of making sure their kids were keeping up with online lessons. But parent who had housekeepers and IMPORTANT jobs that kept them away from home for 10-12 hours a day suddenly were home all the time. Early anxiety about this seems to have worn off and now, as we enter Phase 3 of the re-opening of restaurant and stores, these parents are not that thrilled about the idea of returning to work. It's been like a mass yoga exercise in learning to breathe and people are feeling balance coming back into their lives. Things that were important once are not so much now. I once feared retirement. I don't now.

And yet it has been hard for some - maybe most- people to focus, to accomplish what they thought they would do during the shutdown. Learn a language, write that book, exercise more, drink less (opposite happened - every wine shop immediately announced home deliveries). Amazon has done a booming business. At first saying it would only be delivering essentials, then with all stores closed, people started ordering online with the same frenzied pace as they cleared out the grocery shelves.
It's like summer vacation as a kid - that reading list doesn't get done till a week before school opens. But at least you knew school was opening. We don't know that today.

People are used to working on various deadlines. There are no deadlines now. My youngest's wedding was supposed to be in May, a week after law school graduation. Graduation was held virtually. The wedding moved to early fall. The house was supposed to be on the market in April. Now moved to the fall. Retirement was supposed to be June. Now moved to August.

But there is no guarantee things will open up in the fall. Since recent openings there's been a spike in cases, proving that this virus is still here. A CDC researcher said it's like a wildfire: it will keep burning until all the dry wood is gone. We're the dry wood (old, chronically ill, and even foolhardy party and beach goers who ignored warnings to self-distance.)

So it's hard to plan. When will I see my kids again? My grandkids? You have to shake yourself by the shoulders and say "get over it - step up - move on."  So I've just discovered online courses for free and started one yesterday. I'm going to the beach in August with some of my babies.  We will social distance. But we will social distance together.

And I set the date of retirement in concrete: August 28th. I will move on - not sure where - but the house will be on the market in Sept-Oct.

So that's the story of the first half of 2020. The running joke is no one has to add this year to their age. My feeling is the last 3 years sucked with the onslaught of plagues beginning with the election of a truly unstable person.

2020: Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like the play?