Return of the Ancient and Worshipful Art of Homemaking?

For many people, the current shut down of entire economies and nations has them stuck at home, without work or school or unnecessary shopping trips or restaurant visits to interrupt things.  While many are fleeing into the virtual world for solace and comfort, I wonder how many will rediscover the art of homemaking.  Not much has changed at our house, both parents are in 'essential' lines of work.  My son is home from school but otherwise it is pretty much business as usual, more like summer break than anything else.  Who knew I lived in self-quarantine on a regular basis?  We cook our own meals, we watch our own kids, I even cut our hair!  For our household, this crisis hasn't been much of a change out of our regular routine, but then we live at the backend of forever, the nearest big box store is 90 miles away and with our food sensitivity issues we rarely eat out at our town's two restaurants!  But what of families with full-time working parents whose kids are in daycare or school most of their waking hours?

If they don't each venture into their own virtual reality or are institutionalized through boredom or cohabitant induced madness, what is to come of them?  Will we rediscover game night?  Will we rediscover baking cookies or bread?  Will we discover a hundred projects around the house we can accomplish with a screwdriver and YouTube?  With food supplies in a weird state of flux and out-to-eat not an option, will we discover how to cook with what we have on hand?  With so many unemployed or underemployed, will we rediscover frugality, budgeting, and living within our means?  With no social outlet but distant contact with our acquaintance, will we rediscover neighborliness and the wonder of a good conversation?  Will this weeks long 'snow day' force us all to reconsider the important things in life, namely the non-things?

At out local grocery store, there was no bread or milk initially (last week there were no eggs but plenty of milk) but so too was the yeast and flour wiped out.  I could understand the pasta and sauce, the boxed dinners, but yeast?  Could people be actually making their own bread because they couldn't just buy it?  How cool is that!  Don't get me wrong, this whole mess is no fun from one end to the other, and the suffering, economic strife, and chaos it has caused hurts, a lot, but on the bright side, it may just be the wake-up call our weary modern life needs.  Just stop, put life on pause, remember that life doesn't have to be hectic, busy, or exhausting.  Your house can be a home, a haven, a place of comfort and fun and fellowship, not just a place you collapse after another hectic day, tossing aside your backpacks and briefcase to fall into bed and race out the door next morning, day after exhausting day.  So what are you doing during this enforced 'sabbath?'  Are you rediscovering the joys of a simple life?  I hope so!

New Heights of Human Stupidity?

'...a commodity which, after hydrogen and stupidity, was the most common in the universe..."

~Michael Stackpole, I, Jedi~ 

I've been waiting decades to use that quote, thank you coronavirus!  I think we have reached an epochal moment in the history of human stupidity.  I was baffled by toilet paper shortages for a respiratory virus, but a story I heard yesterday makes that confusion almost sensible by comparison.  I live in cow country.  I have spent my entire adult life working with the critters professionally.  You can buy cattle vaccine at the local gas station/ranch supply along with your soda and cigarettes.  Yesterday I heard about someone shopping for cattle vaccine, not a strange occurrence this time of year.  We are in the middle of calving, cows and calves will need spring shots soon and there are certain vaccines recommended for baby calves.  But this fellow was eyeing a vaccine made for pregnant cows, given 6-8 weeks prior to calving, intended to build up the antibodies in the colostrum (first milk) to help protect the newborn calf from diarrhea (scours).  Nobody around here calves in June, that vaccine should have been given 2-3 months ago.  Worse, when the clerk asked how many head he had, the guy just smiled awkwardly and looked blankly at the salesperson, apparently he didn't know how many cows he had or maybe the clerk was speaking a foreign language as the guy didn't have even one cow.  But he wanted the big bottle (250 doses) rather than a smaller one, just in case he had more than 200 cows and wasn't aware of it?

He bought a bottle of bovine coronavirus vaccine and I really hope he doesn't try to use it on himself or administer it to others.  The least of his problems is that it won't do any good.  The bovine coronavirus has very little in common with the current human variety, it won't do squat to protect him from covid-19!  The real problem is that the vaccine reaction will be worse than an actual case of human coronavirus.  That is a nasty vaccine, at least from a human perspective, the cattle tolerate it fine but accidental (or intentional) human injections have severe side effects.  When I googled this topic, besides for a conspiracy theory currently circulating on social media, the other item that came up was a case report of a guy who lost his finger because he accidentally shot a dose of this vaccine into his hand.  I've done it personally (accidental), only a poke with a needle but no injection, but my whole hand swelled up and the pain was severe.  I know a guy whose whole leg swelled up because of an accidental injection.  It's not just coronavirus in that vaccine, and a couple of the other bugs are rather nasty, not to mention the oil base is inflammatory in its own right.  Please don't be stupid!

While this pandemic is bringing out the best in some, it also seems to be bringing out the worst in others!  I used to laugh at the sticker on cattle chutes that say 'not for use on people.'  But now I just wonder how we have survived this long as a species!