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Chapter 11 – Covid 19

I will never quite understand all the reasons we shut down our economy because of the Chinese flu, aka Covid 19. In the beginning, they said that we needed to avoid overwhelming our hospitals. When that didn’t happen, they said we need to protect the vulnerable. I was in the vulnerable group. I was 69, I had high blood pressure, and diabetes. But I didn’t want our economy destroyed because of me!

I had almost died twice. I am already resolved to the fact that when God wanted me to come to heaven, I wanted to go. I didn’t fear death. I don’t look for death, but I am not afraid of dying. I would rather not suffocate to death because of Covid 19. I would rather die in my sleep of a heart attack or stroke, but it is not up to me on how I die. I also know that I and everyone else will die someday. It is how we live that matters. Staying home avoiding God’s children is not how I want to live. It really wasn’t a big burden for me to stay home. I have chosen to write about love and writers tend to be solitary creatures anyway. However, love is not a solitary act.

Covid 19 started in Wuhan, China. The thought Nazis didn’t want it called the Chinese flu because they thought it was racist. Most other pandemics took on the names of their origin, but for some reason calling it the Chinese flu or the Wuhan Flu was now racist. It really didn’t matter what they called it. It was a virus. It wasn’t human, but it was Wuhan.

The flu started before I traveled to Haiti and no one knew of the scale of the pandemic. The Chinese and the World Health Organization were telling the world that it could not be transmitted from human to human. I could have caught it on the plane trip there or the plane trip back. For my trip to Haiti, I had to take a malaria preventing drug, Hydroxychloroquine. After I got back, I went to see my doctor and she said I might have been fortunate that I did take the malaria preventing drug. As my reader knows, I don’t believe in luck or coincidence. I do believe in divine destiny. Was this another time the holy spirit protected me?

My Xena was planning to visit me in Eureka. Before she could travel, the governments of the world shut down all international flights. Of course, I was disappointed, but I didn’t want her to get hurt or her to hurt others by spreading the virus. So, for some reason, the holy spirit delayed our meeting.

I heard many stories on the news on how stupid some of the restrictions were. A woman in Michigan couldn’t buy a car seat for her baby at Walmart even though the Walmart was open and selling other things. A woman in Texas was arrested and put in jail for opening her hair salon one week early. The quarantine rules stomped all over our basic human rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

Sherlock and I continued to find some way to have the weekly lunch that we had been having for over 18 years. We mostly ordered take out and had lunch at either his home or mine.

Sherlock and I have in common that sometimes we are stubborn grumpy old men. Sherlock liked to have fried chicken at the casino buffet. I missed the variety of food at the buffet too. Has anyone proved that Covid 19 is spread by casino buffets? Sherlock and I want to see the research.

One week we ordered our meal at a steakhouse chain of restaurants. When we got there to pick up our food, they directed us to park next to one of several barstools they had in the parking lot. When they brought the food out, they didn’t hand it to us. They placed it on the barstool in paper bags and then we had to get it off the barstool. I’m thinking: Who thinks of these ridiculous precautions? Did anyone know if this method was safer than just handing the food in sterile paper bags to us? Did they think that serving off where someone placed their butt was appetizing? At every other place I ordered takeout, they just handed me the food, so, I doubt that the barstool directive came from the Center for Disease Control.

I got out of the car and picked up the food. I stood there looking at the barstool wondering if I should tip it. I wondered how many sexy beautiful rear ends sat there before my food. How many ugly fat rear ends of men? I was losing my appetite. I got back into the car and we drove off to eat our bar stool treasure.

For me, my first thing was selling a house. I was concerned about not achieving my goal because of the quarantine. I had picked the right realtor and she didn’t give up. The family who wanted to buy the house didn’t give up either. However, they did include a test for radon gas in the inspection.

I had not opened a window in my basement for 20 years. No one warned me that the radon test was going to be a part of the inspection. If I had known, I would have aired out the basement before the test. The test came back positive. I complained to no avail. I wasn’t happy, but I had no choice but to allow an additional deduction from the sale price to compensate for radon abatement. I was cornered. I could have delayed the sale and had more tests done, but I was out of money. I complained to my realtor that I thought appraisers and inspectors were just another way of changing the price after agreement. It never results in the favor of the seller. Somehow the realtor held the sale of my home together and my “first thing first” task became moving out in time.

I needed a plan for moving. I soon realized that I couldn’t do it myself. I really didn’t have the money to hire a mover. I thought that I could move over several days. I couldn’t ask friends to help me because of Covid 19.

I rented a storage unit to move things into until my new apartment was ready. I realized this wasn’t going work out. I got a quick loan from one of the internet lenders to hire a mover. I started moving my daughter’s stuff to a storage unit. I realized that I needed another unit to store the stuff that I didn’t want to throw away because it wouldn’t all fit in my smaller two-bedroom apartment. So, by trial and error, I developed a plan.

Closing day came and the title company said they couldn’t get a payoff amount from my mortgage company. One of the reasons I decided to move was because my mortgage company was extremely hard to do business with. My realtor somehow held the deal together. I had chosen the right realtor to sell my house. Seven days later, the house closed, and it was moving day.

I did a decent job of using stickers to designate what went where. I used yellow for storage, I used pink and green for the apartment. I used red for junk. What I didn’t do so well was anticipate what would fit in the new apartment. The movers started late, and we were putting the last of my stuff in storage at 9 PM. I was exhausted.

I had to sleep on a twin bed the first night because my king size bed didn’t fit in the smaller bedrooms of the apartment. I knew at that moment I was going to miss my old master bedroom that was the size of a two-car garage. I had written so many fantasies in my first book about that wonderful room.

I was swimming in boxes. I couldn’t find anything the next day. I eventually found a glass and some formal gold colored silverware. As I unpacked, I took more stuff to storage. I eventually bought a queen size bed that was a lot more comfortable to sleep on.

Looking back on all this, I was lucky to get my house sold and my stuff moved during the Covid 19 pandemic. I now believe the holy spirit was watching over me. I don’t know how I could have done it without him.

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