It all kind of hit me last night. We ordered carryout from a restaurant – Lauryn got a salad while I ordered a burger with onion rings. Put the order in, went up to get it, came back, opened it up and……no onion rings with my sandwich. And yeah that’s a super small thing, but it set me down a path last night.
I’m tired of all of this. I’ve been working from home for almost right at 2 solid months from the COVID-19 pandemic. Since mid-March, I’ve left the house maybe 1-2 times a week, and usually only on weekends to pick up groceries curbside or get takeout. I’ve not been inside another building in that timeframe, which itself seems like a strange thing to think about. I haven’t seen friends at all, save for video calls or various drive-by parades to celebrate with friends. And as with most of my posts, my writing here is layered with 100 layers of privilege. Lauryn and I have both been able to hold our jobs much in the same way we did before this happened. We live somewhere big enough that we can have carryout options for groceries and restaurants. We have relatively minimal expenses and are able to have some savings built up, so we may even be OK for a bit if one of us were to lose our jobs or have hours cut substantially from this. But even still, I’m tired.
- I’m tired of not being able to go in to a restaurant to eat – where we don’t have to call in, pick it up, and then come back hoping it’s all good. I’d love to just go in to a place, sit down, order, look around at the people, and then enjoy our food. If something’s wrong, you’re right there and can correct it.
- I’m tired of not going to the grocery store. I’ve always loved grocery shopping, likely because I would go to Aldi and Kroger with mom on Sunday afternoons while Dad watched the NASCAR race – is was a little getaway we would do (that sometimes involved Sonic).
- I’m tired of not being able to see friends. I miss hanging out and talking with people in person. I miss having board game days with 10-15 people all in one house, 2-3 tables of games going, and a kitchen full of food set out for people to enjoy. It’s no secret that I like board games, but really it’s having all of my friends together in one place enjoying each other’s company that I love most. I hate that we’ve bought this house and haven’t really had anyone over to see it / enjoy it with us.
- I’m tired of not being able to just spontaneously go “hey, lets run out to Albuquerque/Amarillo/Palo Duro this weekend for no real reason”.
- I’m tired of doing the exact same thing every day – with no real other options. I wake up, I work (weekdays), I make dinner, we watch TV, I play some video games, I go to bed. Sure, we switch it up where sometimes we go get groceries or play board games online with friends, but it’s still the same stuff week in and week out.
- I’m tired of people not taking this seriously. We’re in a global pandemic. Lubbock has 600+ cases, 190 of which are active, and an 8% fatality rate (greater than almost every metropolitan area in Texas except Midland/Odessa). As much as I’m tired of doing all of this, there’s no way I’m going to go anywhere in public until active cases in Lubbock drops to 0. I can’t see how our policies to reopen this nation are premature
- I’m tired of people saying we need to “stop living in fear” or that “the government is trying control people’s lives” or that “we must sacrifice our well-being to save the economy”. All of that is BS. The data on this has proven that it is more contagious and deadlier than the seasonal flu, and unlike the flu we don’t already have vaccines or other treatments for it. That’s one hell of a thing to be cautious of. Is the government controlling you, I suppose so. But only because, left to their own devices, companies and people would still be going out, socializing, and getting way to damn close to each other. That would only spread this thing quicker, which would then overrun our healthcare system, and then we’re looking at way worse numbers on this than we are now. And when that all happens, I bet the economy will be in a much bigger world of hurt than it is right now. It’s not all about you – we need to make sacrifices as a country in the short-term such that we can be more prosperous in the long-term.
- I’m tired of a President and administration that doesn’t take this seriously, considers all negative news related to this to be a personal attack on the administration, has constantly denied the recommendations of health professionals in the dealings of this, and has been more concerned with his own personal image than with the public health crisis this represents. From the start, Trump was out there saying this wasn’t a big deal and that we had it under control. He has constantly rallied against the need for testing and data collection, calling at one point for those stranded on a cruise ship to be kept their so that their numbers wouldn’t be added to ours and later saying more testing means we’ll have more cases which would make us look bad. He has been caught on tape proposing some REALLY bad solutions to this, including but not limited to: 1) using the normal flu vaccine, 2) ingesting bleach / inserting UV lights into the body, 3) promoting chloroquine before it had been sufficiently tested – causing drug shortages for those that actually need it only for it to be found as an ineffective treatment. Most recently, he basically said “nah, fuck that” to Dr. Fauci’s assertion that schools should not open up in the Fall as we likely would not have a vaccine by then. (Dr. Fauci is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has been the voice of reason through all of this.) Trump has promised that companies are working on solutions to assist in this when either 1) that work hadn’t started yet (Ford making ventilators) or 2) it was nowhere near to the scale he described (Google offering testing services). Both Trump and Pence have failed to wear masks in their visits to corporations and government organizations that are providing assistance in this pandemic, which at minimum sends a message to people that such devices are not needed and thus would make this spread quicker. I didn’t provide any sources here, but I can 100% provide links to everything mentioned here, often times in video clips of Trump saying/doing the thing I claimed above. Even through all of this childish shenanigans there are still people that see him as such a “wonderful leader / best president since Lincoln”. With Biden proving to be a dirtbag (duh? what was wrong with Warren?), we’ll probably be dealing with Trump for another 4.
So yeah, I want my onion rings. But really, I want things to go back to normal – and that includes us to not have a baby in the White House.
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