Steering Clear Friday Round-Up

When we asked Nurse Molly about side effects, she laughed and said she had diarrhea the day after her shot. She said this, double-masked, wearing a down jacket and a knit hat pulled down to her eyebrows. She wore jeans and boots with thick socks and seemed to be smiling the whole time she was reaching through the windows of our truck to give us our second shots. It was 15 degrees. I love Nurse Molly.

President Biden came to Milwaukee this week for a town hall and it felt like making it to the pitcher of iced tea after being lost for hours in a corn maze in August. Someone who knows how to drive and seems to be able to keep his eyes on the road is driving the bus now and the rest of us can just look out the window or do the crossword puzzle or read about the Trump years. We don’t have to keep looking at the river below and wondering how we’d escape the bus when the loony, incompetent driver crashes through the guardrails. It feels very freeing.

The situation in Texas, exemplified in spades by Ted Cruz’ jetting off to Cancun and leaving his dog behind, tells you all you need to know about the Republican Party. It is a party of grandstanding and two-bit showmanship, willful ignorance, and pomposity. Republican elected officials protect their positions, not the people, whether it’s about protecting the power grid or supporting public health measures to stop a pandemic. The GOP is full of Ted Cruz’s – little ones, big ones, boy ones, girls ones – they’re everywhere and if we relax, if we don’t keep working hard, they’re going to keep thinking they own the place.

Robert, the guy who was filling my online grocery order, sent me an urgent text message that the store was out of beef soup bones, attaching a picture of neck bones with a Reduce Price sticker. I usually steer clear of reduced price meat but I’ve been yearning for beef barley soup for a week. Then Robert texted that the neck bones wouldn’t be okay’d by InstaCart and would oxtails be okay and I said no, not really knowing what oxtails were but seeing they’re were $10.52 which seemed to be a lot for a bowl of soup.

In what is a remarkable and courageous move in light of our months’ long near-quarantine, we are having the plumber come on Monday. We will stay yards away and have all the windows open and wear double masks and probably wrap scarves around our faces and it will be a fabulous celebration of freedom for us – a watershed moment as they say.