COVID-19: Day 208: Well. Here we are.

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We’re on Day 208. I had gone back to the office because working at home was just tooooooooooooooo strange. I had my work hours and my personal hours mixed up, days and nights, workdays and weekends. It was a mess. So now, for the past few days, I’ve been working at home again.

My birthday has come and gone and there’s not much to report.

Oh, wait.

I’m waiting to hear on my COVID-19 testing results.

I woke up not feeling well on Monday. By Tuesday I was worse and my mom had the same symptoms. I called the doc. The doc said to get tested and off we went.

It wasn’t that bad. I mean, I wouldn’t do it for entertainment, but I had been led to believe it was one step short of torture. But, then again, I understand they’re not going as deep into the nasal cavity as they had been.

I still feel like crap. And tomorrow is the earliest I can get results. More likely it will be Friday.

I’ve been fairly careful. Yes, I’ve been going to the office, but in most instances there are only 4 of is in 8000 sq. ft. of space. I’m at home or I’m at work and I’m masked a lot of the time. (Oh how I loathe the mask.)

I’m pretty sure I don’t have COVID. My symptoms are vague and I don’t have the biggies — difficulty breathing, fever and loss of taste/smell.

However, I recall that way back when, they, the infamous they, said it wasn’t a matter of if you got it, it was when you got it. Hmmmm.

So there.

In other news. I quit smoking. According to the app on my phone, it’s been 1 month 24 days and change since I had a cigarette. Yay me! (Wellbutrin is a hell of a drug!)

7 Year Ache – Rosanne Cash

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The Wisconsin night (early morning?) is -4F factoring windchill and the snow is falling to the beat of the windsheield wipers.  It falls across the road in arcs, not sticking, just blowing around. A metaphor?  Perhaps.  I am driving too fast, but the music is so good and I’m feeling lucky.  Might be there’s a full moon behind the clouds.

So much for too cold to snow.  I’m cruising down I-94 East from Okauchee Lake headed towards Milwaukee.  The year is 1981 or so.  I’m listening to Rosanne Cash on 8-track.  This whole album could be the soundtrack of my life for this year and the previous two.  7 Year Ache has a nicer ring than 3 Year Pain in the Ass.

Young.  I would have been 22 or thereabouts.  Tall, thin, 6 feet of hair and legs, some say a knockout, but an absurdly assured insecure one.  I was a contradiction always.  I came across as having moxy and confidence, but in reality I was just a 22-year-old girl trying to find my way.

The heater in the 1980 Mustang can’t keep up with -4F and my breath fogs the windshield.  I am wiping the windshield with the sleeve of my coat and singing at the top of my lungs.  I am steering with my left hand and claaping my thigh to the beat of the song.

“Girls in the bar thinking ‘who is this guy.'”

Who is this guy?  Forty years later I still think about him.  My Baby Things He’s a Train is a better choice and I switch tracks on the 8-track, trying to get close to that song.  I’ve memorized what song is on what track and where I need to start to get to a song I like.

“Man, he’s hard to take.  What you supposed to do when you’re baby thinks he a train? “

I see a car in the median, I slow, knowing it’s a trooper.  I’m doing a sedate 55 when I pass him.  He leaves me be.   Yeah, I’m lucky tonight.  Headed home, alone.

The whole car is shaking from the vibration of the shitty stereo blaring Rosanne Cash singing under the tutelage of Rodney Crowell.  Geniuses, the both of them.

It takes one to know one, baby
I know how you feel
You got your hunger
And some problems that are real
And you’re dealing with some demons
Who are driving you insane
And I’ve seen them drag you screaming
Down the hallways of your brain.
But wait!  Thats a Kristofferson song.  Sung by the great Emmylou and Rodney.
Evidently, I have a thing for damaged men.  Who play guitar.
You act like you were just born tonight
Face down in a memory but feeling all right
So who does your past belong to today?
Baby, you don’t say nothing when you’re feeling this way
Face down in a memory, but feeling all right.  Yeah….  Feeling all right.
It’s -4F and I’m singing myself home on a frigid Wisconsin night.  And 40 years later, I’m sitting in a converted barn remembering the cold of that night, the heat of the music, and the attention of damaged men.  Listening to rain fall on a tin roof wondering if the snow and cold and heat will come again.

Cold Mountain Review — Stench

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My short story Stench has been published by Cold Mountain Review — the literary journal of Appalachian State University.  I couldn’t be more pleased with the home this story found.

I set out to make the story as viscerally disgusting as I could.  I’m told I succeeded.  But there was a point to the disgust and I’m hoping that comes through.

You can read (or listen to it) here.  

Let me know what you think!  I love comments.