We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
Tao te Ching
Yesterday we ventured out of the house, INTO the heart of the zombie apocalypse.
While traffic was definitely thinner than usual, I was surprised not to see the empty streets I expected, replete with tumbleweeds and the skeletal remains of those who’s brains have been consumed.
There were people out driving cars and living lives and shit. It was VERY weird. Maybe they were all infected and in the real zombie apocalypse, the dead can drive energy-efficient Priuses. Robert Kirkman might have to rethink his whole universe.
We left our plague-ridden town and drove out 20 minutes or so to some of the farm stands in the area to pick up some fresh veggies. I think the stands are far safer than the grocery stores. Open air, all the veggies haven’t been touched and handled by a million infected hands (including all of those of the shoppers who compulsively walk by going touchy-touchy-touchy on everything they see like sticky-fingered toddlers in a fabric store), AND the stuff is fresh and the prices are excellent. Support your local farmers. /End of PSA.
There were a few shoppers there, for the most part looking like normal, nonzombied people, although I’m pretty sure you can’t actually tell, so… social distancing was happening on a large, almost choreographed scale. There was that one masked woman who looked like she stepped off the stage of Mad Max (the original franchise, not the ridiculous reboot), but I have a sneaking suspicion she dresses like that all the time, not just for plague-avoidance. Plus she was arguing with the farm guy about why she couldn’t grow her own tomatoes indoors, so I think she’s a bit daft. “But what if I put them in front of a WINDOW?”
We managed to procure some excellent produce, and I got to remember what unfiltered air feels like in your lungs. Frankly, it’s a little scary, and I can’t say I wasn’t happy to return to my hypo-allergenic HEPA-filtered clean zone.
Although the drive was lovely and the weather perfect, Charlie still found some stuff to get really mad at. While the man can pretty much rebuild any pre 1985 vehicle with duct tape, pipe cleaner, and some choice swear words, these new-fangled computerized aspects make him squint his eyes suspiciously. I don’t think we’ve ever driven anywhere without him getting in a fight with the turn signal, hitting the poor wand harder and harder as it struggles to obey him. Each time he is done turning, he whacks the thing so hard it switches to the other direction. You can practically hear it crying out “Yes, sir! I’ll try, sir! You want to go the other way now, sir? Please don’t hit me anymore, sir!.” My pleas for a gentler approach tend to trigger him, so I’ve learned to remain silent and turn my face towards the window so the giggles don’t make things worse.
Then there’s the gas-saving auto-shut-off thingamabopper. He hates that thing. He hates it with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. You can turn it off each time you start the car, but he forgets, which is clearly the fault of the button. So each time we hit a stoplight, the car engine politely turns off to save the world from planet-raping emissions, and Charlie curses and slams the button hard, so it will learn to not infuriate him again.
He says that it is hard on the car to start/stop/start/stop like that, and I believe him. I know very little about cars except what I learned when I was 16, which was to say “Daddy? My car is broke, ad so am I.” So I’m sure him turning it off all the time is a good thing. But I’m a bit concerned that one of these times he’s going to smash the button down into the console of the car, and then the real rage will begin. Shudder. Needless to say, I learned 3 new curse words during the outing based on that button alone.
To counterbalance my story exposing the rage of poor sainted Charlie (with his eternal patience with my journaling… my sister-in-law says I’m immortalizing him, so maybe it’s a good thing), a little bit after we got home I heard him calling out from outside the window of the room where I was sitting.
I got out there to find him sitting by the fire pit with a picnic, including a fabulous bottle of zin left untouched from the holidays. We sat under the glorious blue sky, drank wine, ate some fresh guacamole and some mixed nuts, plucked citrus fruit from the tree next to us, and marveled at the hidden blessings of sheltering in place together.
Sometimes survival is sweet.
Up the Tao Staircase 