no one cares, i figure, what i'm doing way out here at the end of the road, day in day out, while the coronavirus rages across the land and republicans steal elections in wisconsin. not much i can do about it, out here, so i take my dogs out for a walk, work on the land, try to keep my kids in good spirits about being cut off from their friends, and help my wife out any way i can. she cooks and bakes like crazy, and tries to oversee the kids' homework and classes. she also does the groceries though i usually go and pick them up. on the trip to town, kids get mcdonalds, and we buy pizzas to pop in the microwave as the week goes by.

most of the time i'm out on the land, raking, removing brush from near the house, cutting down dead trees, that kind of thing. it's an unusual thing to go to town, and i'm wondering if i should wear a mask, as we have several stops. we stop at the water place; we get the pizzas, we go to mcdonalds, we get meds, but the big thing is the groceries. walmart says the groceries might be as much as four hours late. we don't want to go back to the mountains, and decide to wait.

it's me and two teenagers with phones. when the phone dies we turn the car on to recharge it. we are in total suspension as we settle in at the walmart pickup bay and wait our four hours, actually more like three after we've done our errands. to them, it's all suspension anyway - school has let out, and they don't see anyone at home, and at least here there are some people around, people to look at. they are not angry. they are willing to wait.

i however am disturbed by the disruption of the supply chain and the whole four hours late thing. it seems outrageous to me although i am very polite to everyone. the walmart is down in the valley so it's really much sunnier and warmer than up in the mountains; it's a kind of interesting suspension in the desert clime. but nothing we can do will make the groceries come any faster.

so cheap, we are, with gas now, even though the price has gone down, and once a week is more than enough to go to town anyway. it's like this is how country life is supposed to be, although i am so poorly prepared to support us here, with no way to hunt, no chickens, no resources; we do have an income, and i even have two jobs though they don't amount to much any more. i'm perfectly happy to putter around my five acres every single day. it's a mountain hilltop, with sleepygrass on part of it, tall pines down here below, and a few pretty green meadows and clearings. it's really very nice, and whenever i go out in it, i find things i want to do to clean it up. i kind of avoid the bigger projects, like building a deck, or moving the huge logs.

but mostly i get sucked into the horrible news. day in day out, i wake up, and i go straight to the news. this saps all my creativity, so all the writing i'd like to be doing, forget it. people are dying out there. people are dying and other people are making money off it in a brazen sociopathic way. my blood does a steady boil, no writing for the rest of the day, the best i can do is something like this, when it's all over, and i make no demands on myself, but simply put back down some of what has happened during the day. today and last night, it was john prine - it so happens that my entire facebook feed, maybe all 800 of my friends, are john prine fans, at least it would seem that way. there was remarkable agreement on how terrible that was, to lose him. but it's part of the era. every day, there are what, a few thousand, and some of them are friends of friends of mine. and some die, just because their time has come up anyway. they aren't all covid victims.

people are so remarkably social, a lot of them are thinking, if life is just being cooped up all the time, maybe it just isn't worth it. they can hardly bear it, to not get out there and start hugging everyone and getting into their faces. and i'm pretty social too, though i'm getting used to this fresh air and the general pattern of pulling on my muscles every day. I yank stumps out, and pull rocks out. i walk the brittle straw over to the straw pile. i can be as attention-deficit as i want, and nobody's around to care too much. one young daughter helps me occasionally. but most of the time, it's just me and the shovel or the rake.

suspension is a good word for it, really. it's like we've been told to freeze, and just hang out as a family unit. that is, in fact, all we are. we are six people, only a few of us even biologically related to each other, but we are a unit, and these days we rely on each other for most things. that's why, in the end, the twins, the teenagers in the car, had to entertain themselves. basically, it was one's birthday - he was fifteen - and it worked out about as well as it could. suspended. not having to put up any front, whatsoever, in school.

sometimes i teach my granddaughter korean. we pull out the k-pop and try to read the lyrics. i'm not sure she cares all that much. she might be too young for k-pop. she loves her grandpa, though, so that's something. i try to give her whatever wisdom i can conjure up. we use zoom. she's in kansas and boy does she have a life, unlike mine. to me, she's about the only person i see outside of this little unit we have here, so i try my best to entertain her. today she played a game of chess even while she was learning. i should have been offended. but she's precocious, so i didn't mind. it reminded me a little of my brother. we learned useful phrases. she knows things like "i love mom" and "i love dad" and "little brother is a stinker." or, my favorite, "there isn't any." "little baby is cute," is a useful one, and reminds me of my korea days. it's a lively language. i just have to give her reason to want to use it.

might have to get some friends in on this.