No Bleach

Yesterday, it was theorized that people try ingesting cleaning products to cure the virus having its way with America. Not to mention the other parts of the planet…Okay!

DO. NOT. DRINK. BLEACH.

It’s poisonous. It will cure the virus because you will be dead. But that’s rather extreme, dontcha think?

And sunlight? It also won’t do much more than give you a sunburn. Sorry.

So I saw all that flurry yesterday caused by these batshitteries and…

This is where we are now as a country? Debunking loony pronouncements by the POTUS that will actually kill people if followed? Yes, indeedy. That’s where we are. Been there for a while.

At Thursday’s White House coronavirus taskforce briefing, the US president discussed new government research on how the virus reacts to different temperatures, climates and surfaces.
“And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute,” Trump said. “One minute! And is there a way we can do something, by an injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that. So, that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”

 

I couldn’t even begin to write something approaching the levels of WTF here. Fiction has to slink off and lick its wounds after trying to compete with the actuality of hey, inject or drink bleach, whaddya got to lose?

Sipping coffee, considering where to plant the rosemary, rejoicing that my bachelor button’s are sprouting, happy I got some cheap manure and generally in a spring frame of mind. Instead of, oh, writing. I did get off three submissions yesterday. I plan to write today, even if it’s just a paragraph. Bad habits lately, not writing lately, wonder why that is…mmm.

No, I can’t blame the VIRUS for my utter disinterest in writing. I get into cycles where I write a lot, then just don’t, then write a lot, then eh…that’s all this is. I also need to dust off a project, give myself a deadline, then go from there. Oooh!

I have a stack of novels I need to work on, for instance. I need to rework short stories, spruce them up, trim, throw out and start over, etc! Poetry needs to be written!

Jaws the cat is doing splendidly. She is now twice as big as she was, with a gorgeous shiny coat overlain with ginger tones. A sort of tabby with auburn patches. I don’t know my cat coats. She’s sort of striped with orange patches here and there. Short-hair. The dogs are bored! The fields around the house use drip irrigation as well as being organic so dogs not welcome at all. Normally I would take them out in the afternoon, for a jaunt down the bank and into the fields so they can hunt rodents.

To sum up this hodgepodge—DO NOT DRINK OR INGEST OR SHOOT UP BLEACH INTO YOUR BODY. No!! Bad!! Sunshine is not a miracle cure, either. Sorry. I am not in a writerly frame of mind but will overcome that by opening files, staring at words, perhaps doing more than that. The cat is well, the dogs want to get out and run.

I don’t know who came up with this but I laughed, then I burst into tears. 

 

America seems to have lost what little mind she had. This is common rhetoric lately. The Red Scare, y’all. 

This one won’t die. That the virus is bio-engineered. Ugh. 

Lobster Ice Cream

Seth Andrews posted this pic on his Twitter account, so that’s where I got this pic. You can go look up who he is, if you don’t know already. 

I just want to clear this up. No lobster anything should be placed, folded within or otherwise added to ice cream. Gross.

Which leads me to the show Chopped.

Ever seen it? If not, you should. It’s great. You get a mystery basket with four ingredients. Random ingredients. You are on a timed deadline. You have to incorporate all four ingredients into one dish. You then get judged. If your dish sucks more than the other dishes served up, you get…CHOPPED. It’s just brutal and so much fun to watch! Three rounds, starter, main course, dessert. Starts with four chefs, whittles down to two, with a winner declared at end of the hour.

I’ve seen things like Spaghetti-O frozen pops. Goat head. Salmon ice cream. Dried tarantulas. Vienna Sausages, in the dessert round. Vienna sausages. In your dessert.

Now they can do with these four ingredients as they want, with a full kitchen to help out.

Okay.

I’m trying to make myself write. I thought I’d do a quickie blog post, maybe open that short story I’ve restarted several times now. A story already written, where I switched POV and yeah, it’s a whole thing. I did manage to finish it but it…ugh. It’s not right yet. I didn’t hit that groove. I might have a last go today, then just…let it go, let it go. Let it ferment and pickle if that’s what it needs!

Waiting for stimulus check, of course. It’s like a game. Check my account, still not there! A bad game.

I streamed JoJo Rabbit. Loved it! That’s my professional film critique. I have it stored away for a month on Red Box, so might watch it a couple more times, then do a post about it.

Some writing, some cooking tips and a movie. I’ve also been outside moving rocks about, looking for stray sheets of metal and whistling back at the ground squirrels. I do live in the boondocks, in the middle of actual nowhere. It’s vastly easy to social distance if there’s nothing much around you but dogs, a cat and some cheeky rodents.

Lobster ice cream. Not even once!!

Actual in process pics of rock garden re-do. 

 

Rock Garden

My transplanted daffodils and Madam Jaws. 

I promised myself I’d write a blog post. I did try to get one out once a week or so. I also somehow stopped WordPress from sending me weekly nods for other blog posts I follow and enjoy reading. I have yet to figure out how I did that and how to turn that back on. So if I have not been liking posts lately, that’s why. I have to now go hunt them down, try to find them…okay.

The weather has turned spring-like.

I’ve a big project I wish to get done before the truly hot weather hits. The front rock garden looks like a drunken murderous clown had its way with a tractor full of tourists and locals.

I’ve gotten one side done. I ripped out all the old plastic I had put down to keep the weeds down, plus moved each and every rock, then put down some metal sheeting that’s been hanging around for, well, years. Over this, I placed the rocks just so. It looks better, more suburban white trash than just flat out white trash. Ha ha.

I’ve also been moving the clumps of tulips and iris. So far, it looks like I haven’t killed more than few doing that. I put a ring of them around the stump in the yard, with plans, today, to place a ring of stones around that. I can also get water to them far easier this way.

Anyway! Idaho had an earthquake last week. A big one. We felt it here in Eastern Oregon. Challis area, again. Stanley, I believe, was the epicenter.

It’s a tiny mountain town next to the church camp I used to go to and then work at. It’s a tiny world indeed. Camp Perkins, Lutheran. 

6.5 or so for the magnitude.

I was in the kitchen. The day had been stormy, a windy rainy mix that invited one to stay in bed, watch Sex and the City or read some Terry Pratchett. Evening, meal over, spraying everything down with a bleach-water mix. The house shook. I thought, my goodness, here comes the wind. Then, noticed that the entire house seemed to be shaking. What is this?

Earthquake.

It was an earthquake.

Of course I and literally the entire interior West rushed to the internet, asking—Did you feel that? We did! We all felt it! Well, no, it didn’t shake everything on the other side of the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean. Of course not. But it did hit about seven states—Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Montana, Utah, Colorado maybe…I heard seven states. Spokane to Salt Lake City, which also just had an earthquake.

Something is going on!

Plates shifting a bit, but you start to wonder.

I notice that my life has not really changed since this pandemic has settled in for a bit of a stay. I already avoided nearly all human contact.

I don’t go out to eat. I have no money to go shopping or go ‘do stuff’. I generally go to movies alone. I have not traveled anywhere for a long time.

I tend to putter about in the yard or try to write a bit. I’m pretty much a hermit, an actual cat lady since the advent of young Jaws last Halloween. I’ve long been entertaining myself or finding this or that to do. I find I do a lot better if I keep away from others. I’m not desperately trying to fit in with those who find me amusing or something to be pitied. More than likely my fucked up perception of my actual charms and worth but still…I also find, that since I’ve just given up trying to be social, that I can ride out the truly low cycles of my depression without being told I’m just a drama queen. Or that I’m doing it for attention. Or the other things people used to say to me that often times had me sitting alone with a razor blade and a little cut or scratch on my skin, the blood welling up a bit, just a bit, the little sting.

You should be stronger, not let them get to you so…yes, I scolded myself with that one, too. All the time.

I didn’t mean to get so honest. But my mental health is so awful all the time and I have no means to pay for the nice pills that make me float in a zombie haze where I feel nothing at all. Which is fantastic. I took the less strong stuff but after a while, it stops working. And there I am, a snarling cringing mess, with people looking at me as one might look at an actual monster. Again, my fucked up heightened perception, my depression, whatever. But I’ve been too many times faced with trying to mop up my life after one of my depressive lows had produced the most ghastly results. Where I couldn’t pretend enough or tamp down all the raw icky shit that had piled up…and it spewed forth like a shit fountain. Hallelujah.

So I keep to myself now.

I understand how this forced isolation wears on people who like and enjoy other people around them. I get that. I do. But for me, this is my normal.

I didn’t mean to write any of the above. I meant to write a short, cheerful little blip. Oh well.

Harbin, China. The Ice Festival. A carved wall of ice and snow.