WINTER OF DISCONTENT

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (01-07-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     It's only the end of December and we've already had two powerful storms. A couple weeks ago we had a blizzard that dropped about a foot of snow. Don't worry about us, we were well prepared. We stocked up on the necessary items, knowing that it could be at least an entire day before help could arrive. We bought an extra dozen eggs, in case we were snowed in for two days and had an 8-egg omelet on the first day. And we bought extra milk in case I suddenly become lactose tolerant, and we bought extra salt like they told us on the news, for the omelets I guess. What if we're stuck in the house for three days? Can you imagine? What would we DO? I don't want to have to resort to doing whatever it is we've been doing for the last 9 months. What if the internet goes down, and I have an important project due at work? How can I explain to my boss that because of the blizzard I won't be able to stay home from work today, I'll have to come in. Do we need any more proof that we're in a weird place? The biggest waste of time and resources right now is plowing the roads. If you plan on leaving the house in the next three months, email the DPW and tell them where you're headed, and lets save some money by only plowing those roads.

     Then we had a wind storm that blew 70-mile an hour winds around Westchester. If I tried that in my car I'd get pulled over by the cops before I even left my house. There were trees down everywhere. The irony is that all across America we cut down a zillion trees for Christmas, and if we had just waited a little longer most of them might have blown down anyway, a good portion of them all over my lawn. We have a tree that hangs over the front of our property with such flimsily attached limbs that every time someone whistles "YMCA" or says a word with the letter "H" near it, 9 or 10 branches fall onto my lawn. This wouldn't bother me, because the lawn looks better with branches covering it, but they get caught in the lawnmower and even though I can bend over to pick them up 10 times I can only straighten up 5.

     The law of averages says it's going to happen again, we're going to get at least three 100-year storms in the next two months. I'll be at home just like you, figuring out where to put all the stuff we got under the tree this year. Where are you going to put that chia Trump that Mitch Mcconnell sent you? You need two light sources for it, one overhead to make the seeds come up, and one over on the side to make them bend horizontally for the comb-over. Where are you going to put that Peloton you got as an expensively unflattering gift? I know I'm going to regret having that Peloton in the house, criticizing me and exposing all my insecurities. The first words out of the Peloton's mouth when I turn it on are going to be, "Why didn't you put the me in the den? Just for that we're going biking in San Francisco!"

     I'll be here at home during the storm trying to get the cat off of the Roomba- he's using it as his personal Segway. And I guess I'll have plenty of time to clean up the kitchen, now that I bought my wife that "Forged in Fire" knife. I demonstrated it in a disturbing spree where I sliced four bottles of water in half, hung an albacore from the ceiling and bisected it, and screwed a tomato to the table from underneath and sliced it into 40 paper-thin disks. I'd like to perform an autopsy with it, but I'm afraid of what I might find. I won't bother trying to dig myself out of the driveway, instead I'll stay in and figure out the directions to a coffee maker that were published in Chinese, translated to English and then back to Braille, where they came from. 

     We'll all be inside together, and Dr. Anthony Fauci has already warned us of the painful few months to come. He tweeted that not only will there be many more covid infections, but that there may not be any new episodes of "Forensic Files" this year. Plus a new mutant strain of coronavirus has been found that has been shown to be able to give you a wedgie, just for starters. We're in for a long stretch of arguing about the immunizations before normal life resumes, assuming that my life could be called normal. We would have to reach "herd immunity," and we're not even at "gaggle immunity" or even "clowder immunity" yet.

     Since I voted Democrat this year, I'll have to wait in the queue until my number comes up for the vaccine. I'll be just behind the people in solitary confinement on Death Row, but ahead of raccoons, so I feel pretty good about things. I picture myself over 100 years-old, and the first person in line, but as I'm celebrating my good fortune I fracture my hip, and they ship me back to my private room at the nursing home for three months, and my immunity is wasted. Yes, it's going to be long, hard stretch until the spring and I'm going to get bored and stir crazy. Then "This is Spinal Tap" comes on the telly, and I feel like I just might make it through the winter.