0114blog

Lucky Me

I am so incredibly spoiled and at the same time I have a slight, very slight, almost imperceptible, minuscule, practically invisible feeling of guilt or conscience about how others have much less than I have, but for now, I’ll just wallow and stow those feelings aside because I am so sick and tired over thinking about sympathy, empathy, COVID-19, Trump, white supremacists, police brutality, wearing a mask, a lousy baseball season and not being able to go to the beach when I damn well want to.

That felt very good to vent but my problems are my problems and I deserve feeling put upon even if my problems are microscopic in the grand scheme but then everything is sub-atomic in the grand plan, whatever that is and wouldn’t it be nice to understand the plan. Today I had to tackle the problem of low, rear tire pressure on the Subaru and had to wait 20 minutes while my handy-dandy portable air pump gizmo inflated the tire to the recommended 30 psi so that I could drive my son back to his apartment on 37th St. in the city, relatively unconcerned about having a blow out or a flat, which I didn’t have, fortunately.

I do recall harder times when I had a car with many, many miles on it and I would drive to New York and watch as the temperature gauge moved higher and higher and higher because the thermostat was not being very agreeable and I had to blast the heater because that would help knock down the overheating, even though it was summer and driving to New York with the heat on high and it’s 95 degrees is not my idea of comfort. I had the gnawing fear that I would break down somewhere in the depths of the South Bronx where I would walk to a nearby gas station for help only to return and find the car on blocks as it was getting dark and it was in the day long before cell phones. If only a car with a lousy thermostat was the top problem of the day, if only.

I suppose I should thank my lucky star or stars that we’re not in the middle of a hurricane or a nor’easter and the power has gone out and I have no lights and no heat and the word is that this could go on for another week or more and I kick myself because once again, I didn’t get a generator in an expression of procrastination, irresponsibility and magical thinking that another storm wouldn’t dare arrive before I got the generator.

And yes, there are other reasons to feel blessed, like the fact that I tested negative for COVID19, although that was three weeks ago and who knows if I’ve gotten infected by the plague since then, but at least I have no symptoms even though I understand that asymptomatic people can still get the plague. But it’s all good, for now.

So I have power, I mean the house has power, I have relatively no power but that’s another topic altogether; I have no signs of COVID19, like a fever, sore throat, loss of taste or smell or death; my tires are fully inflated for the moment; the thermostat is hunky dory; my daughter is happily listening to music and looking up Bulgaria on the Internet because that is where she lived until we adopted her; my wife has a job that keeps us afloat; my son will start graduate school in international economics next week; and nobody I know has dropped dead lately. Now that’s very nearly a perfect life and I am so blessed.

Then why don’t I feel blessed? It’s because I am worried about the safety of my family, my community, my state, my nation, my world and one of the worst of all feelings is that I don’t understand what is happening, I don’t get why people are filled with such hate, I don’t see the point in allowing the world to get warmer and warmer and get closer and closer to self-destruction.

The good news of the day was that people 65 and older, which includes me, can now get the plague vaccine and I looked up the state website and found that the ShopRite in Washington, not far from me, is offering the vaccinations so I called and was told that there are no appointments available and they won’t be accepting any appointments any time soon but to try back in a week or two, by which time I could be dead from COVID19.

As you can see, I am somewhat perplexed today and I am trying to find a way to unperplex myself. Feeling at my wit’s end as my world unravels, I’ll think about my toes or as they used to say, I’ll contemplate my navel, otherwise known as omphaloskepsis or navel-gazing as an aid to meditation. And when the navel has lost its attraction, I will put one foot in front of the other and assault another day.