I’ve baked you cupcakes because it was your birthday recently but can I send them? What if they have coronavirus in them? Does coronavirus die in the baking process, if so at what temp? If I use a glove to put them in a bag will that keep you safe? What if these are death cupcakes?
So many big questions for such small baked goods and hardly worth the risk, but you don’t know my aunt; she loves chocolate AND I’ve put an added surprise in them the will make her flip! (Not coronavirus.) She has assured me it is worth the risk and I feel her there. I hate to put her in the position to have to choose between her life and cupcakes but also, I really wanted to send her cupcakes. I think if we both did die and there was a heaven, my aunt and I might be neighbors who bake each other pies and cakes and eat them together forever. Last year for my birthday she sent me peaches, all individually wrapped in tissue and expertly stored to prevent bruising. It was genius and the best present ever.
How to show love in a pandemic? Stare deeply into your loved ones eyes over zoom and try not to think about all the data major corporations are collecting on you. The soul is not code-able, yet.
Last week my friend Kate expressed a deep and burning desire to get out of town. She has roommates and they are all still working inside their apartment, so before our governor announced the late to the game, stay-at-home order, we were considering, quite unoriginally and irresponsibly, camping. As the plan was coming together and things were falling apart, the weather stayed cold and it started to feel like a terrible idea but I went ahead with the planning anyways. I do not feel the same urge as Kate to get out but that is because I live alone, am not working and I love my cats more than anything. Also I want to follow the rules. I want clear leadership that I trust to know what is best. I want to be able to always take the moral high ground so I can guilt trip those who don’t and be able to say, “I sheltered in place and didn’t even go to the grocery store for 3 weeks, what did you do?” But, as you may have already picked up, I have a hard time not throwing what I want to the wind for my relationships and I think thats what I was doing.
Feeling the drag of doing something I really didn’t want to do to accommodate someone else, while also writing these blogs was the perfect parallel to teach me a lesson. So I shifted, too deep in to back out; I found a good compromise. A shorter trip- just two nights rather than three or four and we’d backpack, instead of camp, eliminating our exposure to public facilities. We are going to drive out, park our the car somewhere and walk into nature. I am fully aware that we are disobeying the law and losing all rights to any quarantine aplomb but there is a hotspring at the end of this trail and this is the off season so the trail. may be impassible but also we may have the place to ourselves. If you feel suddenly betrayed because there you are, in your house still, I am sorry and I bow deeply and in reference to you and your shelter. And if you stop reading because this is a diversion in solidarity, I will understand. BUT! If you want a good story come Monday…. this is likely to be a shit show of a trip that teaches us a lesson. I’ll post again on Sunday or Monday, should we survive.