Writer & Columnist • Santa Barbara, CA
“Just keep looking straight ahead,” the woman said as she fed the cotton-tipped stick up my nostril, through my brain, and into my soul.
It was my first time being tested. I told her so before the prodding began.
“It’s not fun,” she had warned me — and she spoke the truth. It was uncomfortable, it brought tears to my eyes, and it went on forever.
But the same could be said of the year leading up to it.
Travel story for AAA Westways magazine
It was 11:56 p.m. on her final day of her final term in office — and things didn’t look good. “I had ’til midnight to get this bill passed, and I’d been working on it for years,” State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson says of her Paid Family Leave Act, aimed at protecting the jobs of folks who take leave to care for family. It had passed the Senate but needed 41 votes to clear the Assembly.
Fresh from a C-section, Rep. Buffy Wicks (D-Berkeley) showed up with her newborn to cast the 40th vote in favor. “We were running out of time,” Jackson recalls, “and I thought, We’re not gonna get there.”
And then (get this!) moderate Democrat Joaquin Arambula, who reps conservative Fresno and had publicly spoken out against the bill, voted in favor — tipping the ayes to 41.
A casual observer might call it luck. But anyone who’s followed Sen. Jackson’s career — her stint in the State Assembly from 1998 to 2004, and her two terms in the Senate, which officially ended Nov. 30 — knows it’s the result of the senator’s political mantra:
“Never ever, ever, ever, ever give up.”
Looking back, it may not have been the best idea to get a puppy right after replanting our entire backyard. In the course of managing COVIDoldrums, they both just seemed like smart, unrelated projects to occupy our time.
Even as I type this, though, there’s a muddy-muzzled, filthy-pawed, remorseless little furball on the pale rug beside me gnawing maniacally on one of the five plants she uprooted today and lugged into my office, dirt clods and all.
It’s not like we needed a puppy. We have a perfectly good adult dog already, and our life was pleasantly predictable. We could sleep through the night. We could open our front door without fear of any residents escaping. Our hands were not covered in lacerations from tiny, “YOW!”-inducing needle teeth.
But when it became clear that life outside of our wearisome walls would not be resuming anytime soon, we joined thousands across the nation and took this quaran-tunity to adopt a furry friend.
Dear Wakaresaseya Agency,
We were recently perusing the news when among the usual fare of planetary plagues, unsurvivable hurricanes, and right-wing Christian three-ways, we read about your surreptitious services. We don’t mind confessing we’re entirely intrigued.
Can it be true there are businesses in Japan dedicated solely to breaking up relationships? And that people hire these covert agents to bust up their own marriages by luring their spouses into affairs??
It’s hard to believe — but then again, if someone had told us six months ago that we’d be marching to save the US Freaking Postal Service and shoveling mountains of money at Ole Grampa Biden, we’d have laughed in their unmasked face, sputtering, “Shyeah, right, I’d sooner homeschool my kids!”
It’s gutting the economy, ravaging health care, and battering education. But fewer are talking about the ways this pandemic may be impacting our culture, taking things from us — lovely things — that we might never get back. Rock concerts. Open-office floor plans. Fro-yo toppings bars.
You know what else is likely to be rendered obsolete in a post-COVID world? Curtains. Shutters. And blinds.
While our homes were once sacred spaces where we were free to let down our guards, the new dangers of the outside world have forced us to invite the outside — awkwardly and perhaps ill-advisedly — in. Now, between Zoom, FaceTime, Teams, BlueJeans, and Google Hangout, there are more ways to bring strangers into your home than there are good excuses to leave it.
1. During a global pandemic, the local news they’re providing literally affects your life. Their reporters are asking tough questions of public health leaders, pushing for answers from our elected officials and introducing us to local heroes who risk their own health to keep us safe.
2. A steep and sudden drop in ads from restaurants, bars, and event venues has put the Independent in serious financial jeopardy, the likes of which it has never seen before.
3. When news is done well, as the Indy does it, it feels like a public utility — like it’s our right as citizens to have access to the information reporters provide. But it’s not. It’s a business, one that requires income to pay its few tireless reporters. And we could easily become one of the growing number of towns without a legitimate local news source to keep us informed.
I’ve heard the prophecy. You’ve heard the prophecy. By now we’ve all heard it: Nine months from now, we’ll see a wave of “quarantine babies,” conceived while humans across the globe stayed indoors and *wink, wink* found ways of entertaining themselves.
But I don’t believe it for a minute.
Have you ever seen a porno featuring a couple in sweatpants and rubber gloves wiping down boxes of frozen waffles and Minute Rice with spray bleach after returning, face-masked and reeking of Purell, from a terrified jaunt to the market? The answer is no, my friends. No, you have not.
Because this moment we’re suffering through is not a sexy moment. In fact, this bizarre blip in history couldn’t be less of a turn-on if it were a glob of ketchup-flavored spittle dangling from Donald Trump’s twaddle-spewing flaptrap.
Day One
Inventoried all Lysol wipes on premises, trimmed nails short for maximum tidiness, and gathered as family to create daily germ-blasting household wipe-down regimen.
Gobbled up kale salad, popped an Airborne gummy, and added home workouts to my calendar four times/week. Health is a priority!
Pulled out old recipe books, dusted off a 1,000-piece puzzle, and upgraded video streaming services now that we finally have time to explore all those award-winning series.
Brought in logs for cozy fires, ordered cute desk lamp for work-at-home station, and dug out tub of pore-purifying facial mud mask from the bathroom cupboard. Bring on the staycation!
In the month leading up to this week’s election, I spent an unhealthy amount of time debating with girlfriends on Facebook about political candidates. Some of these women denounced attack ads, others bristled at the mess of campaign financing, and still others upbraided me for insisting that Bloomberg is just another tantrum-prone manbaby. Sometimes our arguments got heated — and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
This is what we do — the informed, opinionated, engaged women of our town. Of our county and state. Of our nation. We think about issues and develop viewpoints around them: Race-based policing. Cannabis growth. The housing crisis.
In all of our weighty pondering, though, there’s one important thing that we rarely think about: the onerous work it took to earn us the right to vote exactly 100 years ago. Putting our opinions into action by means of the ballot is a privilege we take for granted now. It’s so assumed, so obviously just, and so second nature that it’s almost offensive to have to be grateful for it, isn’t it?
