Skipping the Fourth

Dear George,

Thanks to the coronavirus, this may be the most un-Fourth of July since 1776.  No fireworks extravaganza on the riverfront, no band concerts or parades or community-wide picnics.  You don’t even see that many flags.  Just a lot of firecrackers that have been going off late at night for the past two weeks and terrifying neighborhood dogs.  It’s just as well.  Between Trump, the country’s failure to control the pandemic, George Floyd, the uproar over monuments to white supremacy, and economic collapse, it’s hard to dredge up any feeling of patriotism.  Here is my optimistic, if somewhat delusional thought.  Six months from now we’ll be inaugurating a new president, they’ll be distributing a vaccine to hundreds of millions, police reforms will be in place in many U.S. cities, racist monuments removed, and an increasingly successful reopening of business and industry worldwide.  Probably too much to hope for, but some of it could actually happen.

This is pretty much a lost year so far since virtually everything pleasurable has been put on hold.  On top of it all, I woke up on June first with every muscle in my body aching.  Thinking it due to the statin I take for high cholesterol, I emailed my doctor’s office and asked if I could stop the statin.  During these perilous times it’s difficult to see or talk to a doctor, so the nurse-practitioner said by return email it was o.k. though she thought it more likely to be arthritis.  My son and daughter-in-law, the two doctors in our family, tentatively diagnosed my condition as Polymyalgia Rheumatica, a mysterious but not uncommon ailment apparently linked to being older than one should be.  I relayed this to the nurse-practitioner, and she started me on a low dose of steroids (prednisone).  That helped quite a bit for the first two days, then seemed to reach a plateau.  The pain is tolerable, gets better in the course of the day, and I’m patiently waiting for it to go away altogether during my three-month steroid treatment.  

The other painful thing is that my close friend Jennifer and her partner Brian moved this week from Cincinnati to Virginia where she’s taken a high level position in the state university system.  Jennifer came here twenty years ago, and, because she lived right down the street, we walked home from work together practically every day.  That’s a lot of walks and talks, maybe 3 or 4 thousand.  This is the second time in a couple of years that one of my closest friends has moved away, and these are losses that are pretty much impossible to overcome. 

A bright spot is that our son J and grandkids V and L will be coming to visit in about a week, and they’ll stay with us for two weeks, the longest get-together we’ve ever had.  I think it’s a great opportunity.  I worried that with so many things shut down it will be hard to keep the kids entertained, but J reassured me that they are very content to spend the whole day playing video games.  I myself have never played a video game, so I’m going to ask them to give me some lessons.  At the end of their stay they’ll drive back to New Orleans, taking one or both of their dogs with them.  J asked if we might want to keep Iko in Cincinnati.  Katja’s been wishing for that for some time, but then she changed her mind, thinking back to a childhood trauma when her veterinarian dad said she couldn’t keep the new puppy he gave her because its original family wanted it back.  Dog arrangements will work out one way or the other.   This three and a half month visit from Iko and Lil Paws has been a great treat and has reminded us how much we are dog people.  

Katja sent me off to Clifton Market yesterday with a grocery list that included some challenging items, e.g., unsweetened cocoanut, cider vinegar, two avocados.  A staff person stocking shelves found the cocoanut for me, and I actually found the vinegar myself, though I had to call home to see if apple cider vinegar was correct.  Another staff person pointed to the end of the aisle where the avocados were, but unfortunately the labels were missing from the various fruit and vegetable boxes.  I picked up two dark green lumpy items shaped like small footballs and took them back to the staffer, asking her if these were avocados.  She looked at me strangely and nodded yes.  Then she asked if I would like her help in picking out which avocados would be best to choose.  I declined but sincerely thanked her for her offer.    

So we are muddling along.  Cincinnati is one of the worst places in Ohio for spread of the virus right now, so we’re trying to be as careful as possible.  Take care, wash frequently. 

Love,

Dave