On the one hand: tired of this shit.

On the other hand: fuck it.

Things are simultaneously great and terrible, somehow. We have moved to a new place, which is great. I no longer have to treat my room as an all-in-one work-from-home/reading lounge/therapist’s office/entertainment center/zen yoga shala/sleeping zone where I also eat my oatmeal every morning (in bed). I now have separate places for all those activities. And yet I still do everything in one place: the kitchen. My laptop lives on the counter, at which I am sitting, my ass parked on a beat-up stool as I write this overlooking the stove, which is well on its way to its filthy and terrible final form. Jackson’s learning to cook, for one thing. He made a terrific carbonara last night, but the pancetta spattered like a mf and who’s going to clean all that up? Not him. Also, my oatmeal boiled over several mornings in a row as I was systematically using each wrong-sized burner until I found the right one for the One Can of Beans pot. Perhaps you would have been the sensible one who tried the smallest burner for your smallest pot first. Yes, my faith in the capabilities of my little blue friend may have outpaced its true capacity, but it’s the Little Pot That Could in my book. It’s the kindergartener with a face full of makeup whose mother pushes it out onstage to obliterate “Strange Fruit” and make everyone uncomfortable. What am I talking about? I don’t even know. The pandemic has ruined my focus, my ability to see a creative notion through a promising start to a sensible conclusion. My freak flag, as they say, is at the top of the flagpole, snapping in the hurricane-force winds of COVID-19.

Nineteen, just to remind myself, is the year this disease is named for. It’s now twenty-one and yet people have the unmitigated gall to go to a Santa Barbara county board meeting and call our local government Nazis for wanting to vaccinate everyone. These people, they keep using that word and I don’t think they know what it means. Nazis literally rounded up people they considered “undesirable” and put them in death camps. Our local government, on the other fucking hand, believes that everyone’s life is worth saving and a vaccine can help do that, which is the very opposite of Nazism, JFC, you can’t call someone a Nazi who merely wants you do something that’s for your own good. Unless your parents were literal Nazis, in which case I imagine you’re deeply confused and I’m sorry you had such a terrible childhood. BUT THIS IS NOT THAT.

Honestly, some anti-vaccine people sound more like actual Nazis in that they are okay with people they deem “unproductive” dying (remember the guy who said grandma ought to be happy to die to keep the economy churning blah blah blah what? I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you through all the smoke leaking out of my ears). I tend to believe that we’re all worth saving, and it alarms me when certain religious folks act as though God likes them best. Or maybe you believe that some people should die, that’s just unconscious knowledge. God bless, I’ve heard good arguments for that, but let me just reiterate my main point, which in fairness I don’t think I’ve made yet: we’re all free to weigh our own risks, but the law makes it crystal clear that if we put others at risk there will be consequences. And speaking of consequences, I have no problem if some people believe that death will be a glorious reward, yet I do find it ironic when those same people make a beeline to the nearest hospital when they’re suddenly face to face with the prospect.

OKAY, WE GET IT. WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING IN YOUR LIFE, MRS. KENNEDY?

Brian has packed the entire contents of his Denver house into boxes and those boxes are being packed into a truck RIGHT NOW. Then, tomorrow, having waved goodbye to his belongings and his car, Brian will fly to Santa Barbara, changing both our lives forever, and arrive just in time for the dog show! The dog show is my favorite local summer event. The solstice parade got cancelled again this year, and so did Fiesta, but not even Covid can stop the Santa Barbara Kennel Club, baby! Mask up and bring the family! Brian claims never to have been to a dog show, so I am giddy at the thought of all that awaits his virgin senses this weekend. The sight of dogs calmly being blow-dried in the heat of a pop-up tent, a web of power cords stretched taut across frying sidewalks; the smell of warm pee-saturated grass. Grown men and women in vaguely corporate attire trotting around in circles. Flat-faced dogs, dogs with tails like feather-dusters, dogs that leap into their human’s arms when they’ve won: this show has everything. Everything but an untrained mutt division in which, if allowed to enter, I’m sure Willy would make a handsome showing.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Nope, that’s it. Come back next month and maybe I’ll have figured out who to blame for climate change.