The COVID Chronicle, May 1-15, 2020

May 5 [Tuesday] 

The Trump UBI [Universal Basic Income] money was received today. $2,900 for the four of us. This is the COVID Federal stimulus money to assist individuals to deal with the financial difficulties of lost jobs, diminished wages from reduced hours and continued expenses. I spent my portion of the Trump UBI [$1,200 for each adult, $500 for a minor] on subscriptions to the New York Times and The Washington Post. The thought process is that it might be good to follow along what the ‘enemy’ [liberals] are saying, plus I’d like to read their Business sections. The ‘Trump UBI’ moniker is mockingly applied because UBI was presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s anchor idea. The balance of my $1,200 will be allocated to a drywall removal project seeking out the structural issues with which the home is struggling.

May 10 [Sunday] 

Happy Mothers Day! This felt crummy. I’m only 30 miles away from the Safehouse [my parents’ home] but felt inclined to abide by the Shelter In Place protocol, so I didn’t see mom today. Actually, I even called on Thursday and Friday, both days asking if I could visit. Each time I was politely declined as a Covid precaution. So, we wrote a card, mailed it a few days ago. I called today to say the nice Mothers Day things, but it was a let down not seeing her in person today even though we’re close in proximity.

         Mothers Day in San Dimas was nice, though. We took a morning walk as a team, then I later walked to Vons, down the street, for a pre-packaged wrap of flowers. Dinner was a robust batch of Red Robin burgers. So tasty. After dinner I walked down the street across from Dead Grass Park [the grass was entirely dead two decades ago when we moved here and the name stuck, it looks nice now] with a backpack and hand-shovel. I dug up a small California Poppy flower, put it in a plastic bag, brought it home and planted it in the backyard on the slope. There’s got to be a hundred or more poppies down the street there, nobody will miss one little guy. [Wife Klem] admired the poppies this morning on our walk, their big white petals and yellow center. The decision was made for the Mothers Day heist.

[Postscript: The transplanted flower died within a few days. These flowers, as I later came to understand are offshoots from the roots of other poppies. These are not freestanding flowers. So, it was compromised when I dug it out. Sorry, poppy.]

May 12 [Tuesday] 

[My daughter] has been occupying a good deal of time each day split out three ways; Animal Crossing [a video game whose format is the Nintendo Switch and played on the TV in the family room], reading and playing piano. She enjoys the game consisting of an island, which she designs and oversees, which is occupied by six animated and personified animal characters. She’s designed houses for the six animal, island residents, plus herself and characters for [Wife Klem] and [the boy]. She can tell you more about it, this is what I’ve gleaned while doing my own tasks in the background. When not gaming she’s been commendably working her way through the summer reading list for her junior high school year this fall [she’s reading Nate Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter and will read, later this summer, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, plus work her way through at least one of the Harry Potter books again]. Oh yes, also, she’s teaching herself piano! We have an electric piano and she’d taken piano lessons two years ago. But lately, she’s taken a sincere interest and has been practicing. She looks at piano lessons on her computer and has been playing, and doing it well, some classic songs that are easily recognizable. Progress is clearly being made and is audibly evidenced.

May 14 [Thursday] 

[The boy] left the premises today to assist [Wife Klem] at Lowe’s. She’s starting an aboveground garden in the backyard, tomatoes, peas and banana peppers, and needed an assist lugging around the bags of soil. But so, back to [the boy]. The guy didn’t leave the premises for all of April! No joke. He’s concerned about Corona, of course, and his overriding instincts for precaution have dominated. He’d been out in the backyard, but had not left the premises, not even to the mailbox, since late March. Six weeks without leaving the house. By the time he got halfway through April I was rooting for him to complete the month. He’d been rocking [Wife Klem]’s cardio machine several ties per week to beat back atrophy. When we got to May, though, he was still resisting. I was happy to see the guy don a mask this morning to hit Lowe’s for the soil lugging.

-klem