This ain't no party

If you were one of those people I was making fun of last week for still having your snow tires on, I salute you and bow down before your superior wisdom. 

Things get weird quickly sometimes, don't they?  Most of us now find ourselves in the middle of a pandemic we never even considered when we were toasting the New Year in just a few months ago.

Here in Oregon, the Governor decided to close all the schools in the state for the rest of the month at about the exact same time the White House officially called the pandemic a national emergency. 

And just like that, people started hitting the stores (even more than they had already been) and throwing items into their cart like it was the end of the world. I should know. I went out to do my weekly shopping today and, unfortunately, ran into panicked hordes of families buying five of anything they could get their hands on.

There was one woman running down the aisle with four giant packages of toilet paper and, I kid you not, at least 10 gallons of ice cream. Priorities. When I was at the feed store I watched a guy almost get wrestled to the ground after attempting to steal the cashier's large bottle of hand sanitizer, which she had sitting next to the register. It's probably a bad idea to try and steal anything from a rural tack and feed store, where at least 50 percent of the staff and shoppers are open carrying. But I guess panic beats reason these days.

On the way home, it snowed. And the freak March snow was by far the most normal part of the day.

So I guess, as the COVID cases in our area increase every day, the time has arrived to hunker down and be at home a LOT more. Other than the supermarket, almost everything is closed now anyway, so I'm not sure where we'd go even if we wanted to. I'm thankful we have a great state parks system and miles of coastline where one can walk without running into a soul -- we'll definitely be doing a fair amount of that in the next month or two. 

Big Ag and I went out to a really nice restaurant last weekend, fully aware that it was probably the last time we'd be doing that for awhile. 

Thankfully, we're on two acres, and so at least we have the advantage of being able to step outside, walk around the property, and breath deeply. I feel bad for the urbanites all over the world who maybe, if they are lucky, have a balcony to stand on to get some fresh air, but not much else if they're being advised not to go out in the city. 

For us, it's almost time to start planting the vegetable garden, so seed germination, planting and weeding will be a welcome distraction from everything that's going on in the big, outside world.

These little tomatoes would rather not go outside right now. 

And The Met has decided to stream operas all this week online! Monday it will be "Carmen," and I think Wednesday is "La Boheme." So while you might have to look to find it, there will even be plenty of culture available, with nice people trying to make good TV and internet programming available to those cocooning in place.

I expect I'll be here at the blog a bit more often, as a lot of the outside world has closed off a bit. My plan is to do some writing, some planting, and of course, enjoy things like "Carmen" and some good library books while I wait this whole thing out (the actual physical library system in Oregon is closed indefinitely, but thankfully the Overdrive online portal remains open for now for our Kindles and other tablets/readers). 

Stay healthy out there, friends. I'll share some pictures of the garden this weekend once the snow has melted. And take it easy on the ice cream -- you can buy 10 gallons at a time, but where in heaven's name are you going to store it? (answer: in your belly.)