So How Do Penguins Pay Tarriffs?

The Idiot in Chief just released his tariff schedule for the rest of the world. I say "Idiot" not just from ire, or political disagreement that prompts insults. Sure, those are part of it. But I say it because he just so plainly proved it.

There were a lot of small "countries" who were charged 10% tariffs on whatever they might try to export to us. Of course there was just this tiny, silly, little hitch in his tariff giddyup: many of those named simply don't have populations. Not of humans anyway. They are mostly small southern hemisphere islands. Some are volcanoes with glaciers, or still active volcanoes. Some look like sandy atolls from aerial views. There might be patches of green. Or not.

Some actually are inhabited. With penguins. Maybe a few seals too, or at least during breeding season. I can't say how year-round those populations are in residence, mostly because I've never heard of these places before. Woefully poor attention span in school geography class, I expect. Yeah, that's it. Poor attention. Mea culpa.

I fully anticipate that you, like me, have difficulty imagining penguins and seals finding anything to export off their islands, much less have heard of us or even "have a concept of" exporting something here. No doubt those tariffs would stop them right in their... uh, flippers? webbed claws? long before they'd dream of cheating our economy by not paying tariffs, eh?

Some names look suspiciously like something out of the renowned "Onion". Or maybe somebody handed the Idiot In Chief a list on April 1st because it was his day. Not that he'd ever check them out personally, of course. There's a pair  of islands well off Australia, for example, named Heard and McDonalds. I gleefully imagine  he just churned those in his brain until it seemed reasonable that indeed, yes he had "Heard of McDonalds" and they sounded like they could bring in a whole lot of money from their imports. (Of what? Penguin Burgers?) I also strongly doubt our Idiot, like many stupid people, would admit to unfamiliarity with them, and as a result simply added them to his list. I mean, who would dare mock him this way?

Now the question is begged as to whether his staff is protecting him from awareness of how stupid his tariff list is, and what a laughingstock he is for yet another reason added to all the other reasons, both domestically and internationally. No, he'll just revel in his assumed brilliance and go on to the next way to destroy what's great in this country - or was.

But if he finds out, I'd keep my ears tuned for some staff firings in the West Wing. Maybe a run on ketchup bottles too once he throws his remaining supply on the walls. As he does.

Congratulations Senator Cory Booker!

For a record breaking 25 hours and 4 minutes, Senator Booker filibustered the US Senate with a speech designed to "cause good trouble". He not only beat the previous filibuster length record, by Strom Thurmond,  a racist determined to stop civil rights in this country, he did so under much more grueling conditions. He was not allowed a bathroom break, unlike Thurmond. He was not allowed to sit down, again unlike Thurmond, and while he was allowed to take questions so he could rest his voice for a few minutes, he was still required to stay where he was.

For those of you hiding under a cabbage leaf, or something else keeping you from noticing what's happening in this country, Booker took this action to help stop the destruction, by our nominal President and his unelected pet attack dog Musk, of everything good about this country, starting with our constitution and branching out into healthcare, Alzheimer's research, veteran's jobs, healthcare, social security, Medicaid, our ability to fight measles, or TB, or even to educate our children, and totally destroy the rule of law. I could go on as the list is seemingly endless, but Booker's 25 hours plus did a pretty good job of covering it. Unlike previous filibusters, Booker didn't do silly things like read from a huge phone book (do we still even have those?) just to continue making noise. He made his time count!

As an American, I am proud of Senator Booker. I wish others in Congress had the courage do do something similar. I hope more have the courage to make their votes count toward saving our Democracy.

And I hope a lot more of us have the ounce of courage it takes to join the many demonstrations scheduled for this Saturday all around the country, making our voices heard loud and long, signs held high announcing our beliefs, our fears of what tRump/Musk are doing to this country, antagonizing our allies, kowtowing to Putin's wishes, isolating us from the world. We don't have to stand for 25+ hours. We can let our signs talk for us so our voices hold out. We can bring chairs and sit, bring food and beverages to drink, blankets and heavy coats to keep us warm. We can take bathroom breaks. We can chat with friends we carpooled with, or meet new ones.

Most of all we can show up and be counted!

And once we're back home we can call our congress people and let them know what we think as well, even if they're too chicken to come to a town hall, explain their actions, or answer our questions. Let them know we see them!!!

And keep calling.

Murphy Is Alive And Well After Hibernation

 You all remember Murphy, don't you? He's that infamous lawmaker, decreeing whatever can go wrong, will, and in the worst ways possible.  I met him yesterday. I would have written about him then, but, well, I was kinda busy and in pain.

The plan had been to go to work, just in the afternoon instead of early morning. After a rainy/snowy weekend, I figured I needed a bit of a thaw to be able to open iced car doors so I could get scrapers out to clear off windows, and if necessary, splash window antifreeze on stubborn ice rather than antagonize my shoulders by scraping them. Everything I needed to do that was inside the car I needed to be able to open. Because of course. Late morning I looked out and saw snow had slid down the hood and parts of the windows. It was time.

It started with sweeping off the porch steps to avoid falls, especially if Steve had to use them. Not that he was planning on coming out for anything. The sidewalk and much of the parking pad had cleared from morning sun, while the grass still had enough fresh snow remaining for clear mouse tracks to lead the way to the garbage cans when I took bags of trash out that had stacked up over the weekend.

Then I approached the car, keys in hand, to unlock the doors. No ice left!  The windshield snowpack released the wiper blades easily, so I let them stand up while I shoved snow away by hand. More needed to be done, but I wanted to go once around the car before returning with the broom to clear the top, using the best combination of hand and tools to do the job comfortably.

There was still a large deposit of snow on the rear hatch door window, it being the north side of the car, with that wiper blade holding it securely in place. After lifting that and clearing loose ice from it and pushing snow down, I stepped over to continue my  preliminary circle and suddenly found myself on the ground, painfully so, landing mostly on my left hip. I considered myself very lucky I hadn't hit my head on the way down, falling so fast with no time to react. 

It seems there was a single small piece of very slick, wet ice behind the car, formed by drips, disguised under water running off toward the street and a bit of freshly knocked off snow. I tried to roll off it but my hip disabused me of any desirability in pursuing that particular activity. OK, time to call Steve...

I immediately discovered I hadn't bothered to put my phone in my pocket. I was only going to be outside for a few minutes, right?

It was just the day before when Steve and I were laughing at how we grew up without the neurotic fear of going anywhere without that phone. Phones stayed in the house, attached to walls. How the world had changed! We take them into the store so we can talk to each other and/or find each other to discuss shopping from different locations. They are in the car with us in case we needed something, or somebody wanted to contact us, or even to announce to the store we had arrived and could they please bring out our groceries? Yet, because I was only going to be out a few minutes, here I'd left mine in the house. Where Steve was. Where help was, if I could just get his attention so he could make a phone call for me.  IF I could just get his attention... by calling him... on the phone I didn't have... and could have bypassed him with entirely by making my own call from my spot on the ground.

Thanks Murphy!

OK, so you're wondering why I just didn't get up off the ground? Even though the hip hurt - still hurts - nothing seemed broken. Just slide off the ice and get up? Seems simple enough, except, like Steve, these days when either of us goes down, we pretty much have to stay down. First hurdle is our knees. All four have been replaced, meaning we no longer have kneecaps, and kneeling is exquisitely painful, even on soft cushy surfaces or in gel kneepads. I bought a pair of those a couple years back. They are a great help to those who don't need them. Kneeling is to be avoided whenever possible. Age has robbed us of muscle mass. Steve's back barely allows him to move at all, and my shoulders, after years of repeated rotator cuff injuries followed by arthritis, don't do much of anything useful including lifting a cup of water up inside the microwave over the stove. I can manage but not happily, and always with at least some winces. It's maybe a pound and a half to lift, cup plus water, no problem as long as it's under shoulder level. So where to people build in their microwaves? Riiiiiight.

My first option was to check who along the street is out and about. It's a senior community here but anybody would have a phone, either with them or back in their house. It was just that time of day - and year - where the ones who weren't snowbirds were out somewhere, or maybe inside with the TV on or even napping. At any rate, nobody was out walking or even shaking a rug off their porch. Scratch that for help.

I still had some option for movement. I was sitting on wet ice, so the first thing was to sit elsewhere. I learned to butt-walk as a kid and could still do that - probably a good indication that the hip I landed on was not broken, only bruised. As it got colder from still frozen ground, it was harder to tell its actual condition, but butt-walking was possible.  15 feet away was the little porch. I'd shoot for that. Maybe I could get myself up a step or two so I could manage to stand from there. Ten minutes later, including a few pauses and after figuring out how to turn myself around so I could sit on the steps, I discovered I'd put myself down in a hole. My shoulders wouldn't lift myself up and out by themselves, and the pavement was covered in formerly invisible sand, just enough to forbid any traction from my supposedly high-traction shoes. I already had given up on being able again to wear the new knit slacks I had on, thinking them likely full of snags and holes, though much later close inspection impressed me with their sturdiness. Final decision awaits laundry results.

Time for plans B, C, and D.

There was a bed of rocks next to the porch. With metal siding, maybe I could make enough noise that Steve could hear... if he was in this end of the house and the TV volume was down. I started hitting the siding, first in single loud taps, then in threes, then in S-O-S. He's a former military guy after all, right? Of course there's usually some kind of outside noise around, somebody roofing or building a shed or making a repair or who knows what all. We're used to it. We pretty much ignore it, at least as far as going to look out the window to see what's happening. No results to my tapping. Steve might even have gone to take a nap and be in the wrong part of the house.

Plan C was to take my keys and use them to make the car horn beep. You hit the lock, then hit it a second time and it beeps to let you know you did... or where your car is in the parking lot or whatever. I found if I hit it 4 times in a row, the last three beeped. I did that for a while. Nobody noticed. Or nobody around here knows that three somethings is a distress signal. Lost and need to be seen from the air? Lay out three visible equal things spaced side by side - driftwood for example along a shore. Big sticks or bright clothing in an open field.  It's not natural so it stands out. I guess don't count on deaf neighbors to hear car horns though.

Plan D was wait for SOMEBODY to come by. Eventually they would, either driving, or walking on their way to get their mail. The only question was when? Mail probably wasn't due for another hour. I'd already been down half an hour.

By now my butt was really cold. The rest of me had sun, but it soon would be blocked by the house. 

I finally heard an approaching engine. I could stick my arms out past the stair railing and wave them to draw attention. As it turned out, it was the FedEx driver, and he was delivering a box to our house a day early! Take that, Murphy!!!! He called 911 for this "elderly lady", and within 5 minutes there were two squad cars and an ambulance here. Of course everybody waited for the paramedics to lift me up to a stand, and only after a consult with me to understand why I couldn't get up and whether lifting me might, say, further injure a broken hip. Once they heard I'd butt-walked my way over from the car, broken hip concerns vanished, though we all realized things might change once I was standing, putting weight on it. Leaving me on the ground rather than yanking my shoulders was also common sense as well as a kindness, and the paramedics wound a sheet around me under the shoulders to put the strain on the torso instead. After sitting so long and being so cold, my first steps were a bit wobbly, but they supported me to the car to sit down while lots of questions were asked and vitals taken. Yep, my blood pressure was way up after all that, but eventually they let me go.

The cops left, after one of them taking the broom I had outside, pushing the remaining snow off my car, and spreading the salt, which I'd stupidly left up on the porch, over the ice patch hidden behind the car. Every person who approached had wanted to step right there, and I had to keep warning them. A dog-walking neighbor stopped by to check things out, and the paramedics prepared to leave, after having me sign that I declined a ride to the hospital. I told them thanks, but they'd given me something much better than a ride.

They'd given me a lift!

Once back in the house, it turned out Steve had been close to where I'd been stuck. He hadn't heard any of the noise I'd made, and hadn't worried that I hadn't come back in because he'd thought I was heading straight to my job rather than just clearing the car of snow/ice and coming back in. When the ambulance pulled up in front of the window next to him, he just figured some neighbor needed something. It happens around here. The squad cars were out of his line of sight, and no sirens were used, so logically, no real emergency, whoever it was.

I'll be making sure in the future to keep my phone on me, rather than laughing at our paranoia about having them handy at all times.

For the rest of the afternoon and early evening, I dosed with ibuprofin, and huddled  under my double-polar-fleece lap blanket trying to warm up. Sleep was a whole 'nother issue. The sore hip is on the opposite side of me than my worst shoulder is. I'm a side sleeper. There was no comfortable position, both were wrong. Somehow I managed almost 4 hours, despite aggravating the hip in finding out just how unforgivingly hard toilet seats are and how perfectly positioned to hit the bruise.

Murphy may have taken a break for a while, but refused to be ignored for long. This morning even the cushion in my recliner is too hard in all the wrong places. At least walking reassured me that there was no bone problem, but I'm taking a second day off from work since I never made it yesterday. Of course, the weather forecast calls for the same rain/freezing rain/snow combo that started this in the first place. And that's no April Fools!

WTF Kind Of Scam Is This?

 I think the first mistake was him ordering something off an ad on Facebook. It was a special kind of knife he likes, and had owned before, but it "disappeared" from the house before we were packing to move north. (Yeah, we're pretty sure how, who and why. Other things took that same hike at the same time. )

This order was from a company in Italy, and he sent his payment online, something less than $40. I tried not to tell him he should have looked for one through a reliable company, meaning a large firm which had safeguards when something doesn't show up, isn't what's ordered, or arrives dead when alive was specified. (Plants! I'm talking plants! I don't order live animals...... any more!!! Those honeybees were a long time ago, and arrived from Sears just fine. Anyway, that used to be a thing!) The reliability of feedback is a reason I used to spend so much time and money on eBay, because the people on the other end of your transaction give you a rating, and when things go wrong, the world can see it. If they've made 5 transactions and had a 40% approval rating, forget it.

He got a tracking number after a few days, in an email saying it was on its way. Tracking international orders can be interesting, especially when you see how long it takes your package to clear customs, even what port they enter through. You can see what company takes over the delivery job after it clears, what route it takes to get to you, when it's expected to show up so you can be sure to watch for the package. Sometimes you can watch while it goes wildly astray. 

Most shipping companies give detailed information, especially the US Post Office. The number attached to your package is a huge, long one, and for the last ten years or so has always started with a 9. When I'm shipping out packages, say over the holidays, I can send several at one stop at the counter, and find the last numbers increase by perhaps 40 or 50 between quickly handled packages. Every number in the entire system goes through that system, so in the time it takes your clerk to accept the next of your packages, perhaps a full minute, all those other packages have entered the system from over the country. Before you leave you get a receipt strip with full info on every package.  Every address and tracking number will be on it. Once home I can email each recipient, send them the tracking number, and we both can follow it through the system.  Last year one package took a long detour, but we could follow it, hopefully laugh a bit, but know it was where, and hopefully guess when it might finally arrive.

The Italy package's email gave a short tracking number which had no relation to the US postal system numbers. We waited for more info, and waited some more. I was sent outside several times to check both our porches to see if it had somehow magically appeared. It hadn't, of course, or I wouldn't be bothering with this story. What kind of story is "Hey we bought something and it came, no problems"?

Well, besides short, I mean. Really, really short.

After a few weeks, he got an email claiming his package had just been delivered! Out I went. It wasn't there, not on either of our two porches. I checked our locked mail box. Not there either, nor was there a key inside to access the separate large lockers for big packages. It simply wasn't here.

He emailed the company back - no package arrived - could they provide any more info on where it was delivered to? Nope. It was delivered. Period. End of their story. 

We tried their tracking number again. Usually one can simply google the number, needing no further information, and get some kind of reply. It will mean something somewhere on the planet. Parts numbers get the same treatment, so if all you have is a serial number, Google can tell you what it is and have a list of places who sell which replacement parts. Money rules the system. Nope, the number meant nothing.

After checking with the local post office, and giving them time to check with our route delivery worker, the post office had no information, nor ideas of where that kind of a number might mean something. You know, like was it a UPS number? DHL? FedEx? No, no, and no earthly idea. 

At their recommendation he contacted the Italy source again, and oh my goodness, they'd given us a wrong number. (Ya think?) This time there was an actual USPS long number, even starting with the usual 9, along with their assurance it had been delivered. Because, you know, back when they had claimed it had been delivered, it had been. Even though it hadn't.

He called the post office with the new number. They checked on it. Yes, it had been delivered, through them since it was sent within our 5-digit zip code,  so out on one of their trucks. But the name was different and the address about 7 miles north of us, judging from the number of the road given, though they did not give the precise address on that road, way out in the boonies, nor customer name. They were not providing any further information. 

That was fine, since it obviously wasn't our package. We have no intention of heading out to their address and demanding our package from them. It seems like a fast track to an arrest for harassment, best case.

The originating company was contacted again. That's if one can claim to be "originating" if nothing originated from there. They stood firm: They had sent something to our zip code, so obviously it was our package, and while they appreciated our polite patient inquiries to this point, would we please quit annoying them?  (Or something to that effect.)

Steve is resigned to being scammed. He plans to put something to that effect on Facebook for the person or three who will read about the failure to send his package, though likely it won't be anybody who has interest in whatever they advertise there, or needs to be warned away from their version of "business practices." If he does eventually decide to try to order one again, it will be through somebody different, like some seller on eBay or Amazon or at least has a connection they wish to protect to another large company who can do lots of business relying on each other's reputations.

*     *     *     *

But really: Best, most innocent possible case, do people in Italy think a single five-digit zip code refers to a single address? There are who-knows-how-many addresses in our zip code alone, including those for people who use the post office itself for their mail delivery. With the 4 digit tail on the end for just our little mailbox, that's 9 digits, so just under a million possible addresses any single post office delivers to if all the numbers were used. 

They aren't all used, of course. Or at least not yet. The first two digits designate a large area - or smaller if it's geographically compact like in a city. The next three designate post office locations within that area. Being rural, and having the knowledge from memorizing a lot of local zip codes over a lot of years, they are assigned by town names, alphabetically.  Here a particular town "c" falls in -012, an "f" in -025, and "s" towns in the -070s since we have a lot of towns starting with "s" around here. St. Paul divisions all fall after 551, while Minneapolis ones fall after 554. Our Phoenix suburb started with 85, and already after a year I find I have to start chanting the full address to come up with the rest of the zip code. The 4-digit tail refers to only our box, whether standing out along the road, attached to our house, or in a wall of boxes in a building.

Just in case you think those numbers are so confusing, especially if from reading this in another country, that you think the post office would deliver something within a zip code to person 1 at address 1 when it's addressed to person 2 at address 2 miles away, and consider it a valid delivery when they've had a history with each being at widely different addresses and no information to the contrary, well, pardon me for claiming either you are an idiot or you think we are inept idiots who would make/accept such a misdelivery.  ESPECIALLY when a package has a tracking number! 

Not saying we can't be idiots, mind. We just choose different ways.

Eau De Joy(less)

 Short and sweet: De Joy announced he's stepping down immediately. If you don't connect the name, he's the one who's screwed up our postal system for the last several years. He's the reason corner blue mailboxes have disappeared. He's the one who ordered sorting equipment, much more accurate and faster than people, removed and destroyed. The list is longer but I promised short and sweet.

The "eau de joy" was a stench. I don't know if we'll get the service back as we were used to having it, one of, if not the best in the world. Tuump and Elon have their own plans for destruction, their ultimate goal, as with so many things, to privatize it so a huge profit can be made from it.

BUT HIS LEAVING IS A DEFINITE JOY !!!!

Coffee and Cholesterol?

I still have fun with Science X Newsletter. Of course there are a lot of articles way over my head, starting with anything mentioning quarks or going into way technical jargon without explanations of what they're talking about. Obviously those aren't meant for me. And many are the kind that confirm what a few seconds thought will confirm as obvious, while even others beg the question, "Yeah, OK, but have you even considered ________ ?" What's almost a painful waste of time and energy is reading that melting glaciers, with the resulting rivers being responsible for some large area's prime source of water, will be endangering their water supply after they are gone. It's almost too obvious to bother studying. OK, maybe if they're looking for numbers to plug in, but the bare facts, DUH!!! A is what produces B, almost everything uses B, A goes away, there's no B left. HELLO !!!

Or there was one on bees, showing that bringing in domestic populations result in declining wild bee populations in an area. Here's where the "have you considered____?" comes in. If there are domestic bees, that means agriculture of some kind. That usually means, these days, chemicals are likely being used as the easy way to get rid of weeds or pests (meaning insects), and those are likely to be harmful to bees. We're already looking at colony collapse in domestic bees. What are the odds the small changes in domestic populations who survived the chemicals in the last 20 years or so have mutated from inadvertent  selective breeding, and their offspring are a bit better at dealing with the poisons we spread while wild bees, not so much? Is anybody looking at that as their next  question to ask?

There are always some new things to learn. For example, an ice sheet split off from Antarctica, described as the size of Chicago, and we can suddenly see the previously inaccessible sea floor and its denizens. There are some interesting new-to-us critters down there!

Of course there are other discoveries that in my opinion are badly over-hyped, like a far away galaxy that is judged to have been like ours but did this scary other thing instead. OK, so what are we talking, 8 billion years ago? One? Pardon my Alfred E. Newman, but at that time scale, "What, me worry"?  Somebody just had to put "Frightening" in the study title. Must have needed more attention, eh? Grants hard to get these days?

While those above are not likely to affect me, there was one I did take note of. As a senior citizen, I try to keep abreast of practices for my own good health. I count carbs, for example, and try not to keep eating too late in the day when a swig of water might achieve the same results of satisfying me. I take recommended pills, and a few extra on my own that I believe help me, like some B vitamins and a little extra C. I try to avoid too much sun on my skin, though I suspect that ship sailed decades ago. Oops. It fully accounts for that one speedy cataract which blinded one eye. (The replacement lens is perfect.) I'm slowly losing weight, and while I'll never be slim, there's 70 pounds I'm not toting around any more. Apparently I've traded those in for lumps and wrinkles. (Sighhhhh) Some would call that "interesting". I have other words for it.

Now I never would have thought of coffee as having any connection to cholesterol. Would you? Unless  you add fatty things to it to make it taste better or perhaps less acid in the stomach, it's pretty hard to believe. There were reassuring studies a while back showing that 2 or 3 cups in the morning are good for our cardiac health. Cool! I'll still keep it to one cup though. But what the heck were they talking about with cholesterol?

No it's not actually in the coffee, but there are some chemicals in coffee that get your body to produce more of the worst kinds of it, the diterpenes cafestol and kahweol. (Just rolls off the tongue, right?) That doesn't quite jibe with the heart health info, though, so I read on. They were studying different methods of producing the drink itself. It turns out that coffeemakers which have paper filters are pretty good at - ahem - filtering out the chemicals that produce cholesterol, Other kinds of filters, or none at all, don't do that. Only the paper ones. There is some kind of affinity there.

Now since I drink instant coffee, I decided to take those chemical names and google whether they are in instant, and should I be concerned? It turns out most processes for making instant coffee use paper filters. So I mostly shouldn't worry. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether the stuff I buy uses that process or some other. So I'm getting a supply of paper filters in the larder. I'll be working on a way to make sure my instant brew goes through a paper filter to clear out whatever of those chemicals might still be in it before I drink it. I figure mix powder and hot water first, then pour it through a paper filter lined mug, pull out the filter and toss it. 

I'll have paper towels or a dish rag handy of course. If you don't anticipate drips and spills during that process, you just haven't met me! 

And then of course, there'll be the cocoa to deal with... afterwards. No way I'm filtering that out! I don't care how many studies might find something less than ideal in cocoa! It's already sugarless, and I have powdered milk to add. No point in getting totally fanatical about it, now is there?

Careful What You Wish For

 Of course, wishing for something isn't going to bring it to you, make it real. Sometimes it's just an enjoyable fantasy, like an exotic vacation getaway or winning a large lottery jackpot, where reality would bring complications into your life. Other times it's something more grounded in reality, something small, practical, something where it coming true isn't likely to turn into a disaster, like having a nice bit of weather for an outdoor party, or a timely phone chat with a friend when your schedules mesh.

One seldom has to really be careful about their wishes because wishes have no real power. Even so, sometimes those wishes happen to come true, but in the most unfortunate ways, because of course they do. Life is just like that. Murphy's Law, and all that.

Now you know I just happen to have a story about a wish coming true.

Let's go back just a few years, when covid vaccinations were finally available, and we seniors were #2 in line to get them. Of course we did, and loved being able to travel again. We headed north a couple weeks earlier than normal, before the summer travel rush was on, and had some great experiences in national parks before arriving at our usual summer destination. We got to see family and friends again, though still keeping social distancing most of the time. Before heading south again for one fast long-haul trip, we had one last outdoor bonfire party.

Arriving home, I was exhausted unloading the car. Shortly afterwards, I had a fever and felt sick for the first time in years. I had covid! After warning everybody I knew I'd had close contact with, I took my positive test to the ER and got Paxlovid to help fight it. In a couple weeks I felt normal again, though still waiting on a negative test, and feeling cooped up that extra week, now that brain fog was clearing. 

Fast forward another couple years and I caught covid a second time, despite masking, distancing, and keeping up vaccinations as often as offered. I didn't actually feel sick this time like the first, but repeated the ER visit and asked for Paxlovid again. This time it wasn't covered, and I declined paying the price of over a grand for it. I seemed to be having a milder case anyway.

But there was one thing. I shortly realized I had lost both my sense of taste and smell.  Well over a year later I started tasting things again. But they were different. Certain things were blocked, like whatever it is in fresh tomatoes that makes me hate them. I actually loved to gobble up tomatoes! I still do, in fact. As time passed, more flavors came back... mostly.

But the nose stubbornly refused to come back. Aside from pregnancy, when everything edible smelled like rotted garbage in a puddle of chemicals, I had what I referred to as my mother's nose, the most sensitive one in the family, something I totally enjoyed. I would smell something burning before the smoke detectors went off, for example. I could tell what in the refrigerator was spoiled, smell flowers and freshly mown grass, lake algae in a most pleasant way when others around me were repelled. 

Now two things above all I missed. There is a wild white or yellow spiked flower called sweet clover, and every year in late summer when they bloomed it was the same instant revelation that this was the thing I had been missing all year since last summer, and had even forgotten existed until I suddenly smelled it again. The other thing I haven't smelled for years due to our snowbird travels, but I call it the smell of fall, where plants have begun to fill the  air with tannins after a frost, as they prepare for winter. It had been a notice to me of every fall bringing the best things in childhood, returning to school, birthdays, leaves changing colors and playing in piles of them, Halloween on the horizon, south-migrating flocks of birds overhead, and the end of mosquitoes for months, the very best part!

After the second bout of covid, I had none of that any more. I also couldn't tell you if foods had spoiled or were still safe to eat, whether something was burning in the oven, or even if it wasn't and wonderful aromas filled the house - for other people. I couldn't tell whether I stunk, or clothes needed washing without obvious dirt on them, or whether anybody had farted quietly. (Loud farts I heard, but still couldn't smell.) There was a noxious leak on the floor behind the toilet in the bathroom I don't use that a guest had to point out to us. It had to get fixed twice because I assumed the plumber did the complete job the first time.

In my many reading wanderings, I started finding stories from people with long covid. At first it was a battle with their doctors to get their condition recognized, and named. Early on, those sickest had the easiest fight with acknowledgment. Later less severe things got mentioned, including some people who'd lost smell and taste, though it didn't seem to stir the medical community to name it as long covid, or to research it, much less find solutions. After all, we could still move around fairly normally, go to work, interact with others. We just weren't enjoying some of the basic small pleasures in life, boo hoo hoo ... yawn. There are really sick folks out there (so get over yourselves!) seemed to be the attitudes, and I do understand them, after how burned out so many medical professionals were. It simply wasn't helpful for us.

Last summer things started to change. The newest shots came out, different ones that were supposed to be able to adapt to the mutations that were coming at us more frequently. Steve and I got ours right at summers end, to best protect us from being indoors with others who might be incubating who knows what next. Now I almost never feel a sore arm from any shots, and I didn't this time either. They say the worse your arm feels, the better your immune system is working. They were saying it a lot back then, so I was asking myself whether I'd know if it was working, or I just had a lousy immune system. But within a couple weeks I started tasting my food! I concluded this different shot somehow found some reservoir of the virus in my taste buds and nailed the little pests. So.... why not my nose?

Around then hints were coming out that losing taste and smell were being considered a kind of long covid. Well, that's helpful, I guess. Much more recently I was reading a study that stopped "maybe-ing" the idea, and just declared it flat out. I officially had long covid. At last, a name!

OK, and so....? 

It went on to talk about some kind of surgery to deal with the lack of smell. Hmmm, something to think about. How much do I want smell back? But I also put that diagnosis in my personal health record, with clarification of which symptom(s).  A few days later a similar study claimed those particular symptoms tended to go away after around 2 years. OK, so scratch surgery then, or at least wait a bit more to see what happens. But why the delay with the nose?

I'm looking forward to summer, watching my flowers come up with all their blooms. I have no idea if the ones that bloomed here on bushes last summer have any fragrance. I'm also looking forward to cut grass smell, now that we're back living with an actual lawn instead of a rock bed, and not having to depend on Steve's nose to clear out the fridge since his never was that sensitive the way mine was. I found myself wishing my nose would come back into use soon if that two-year thing was true.

Then I walked into one particular room in the house and without thinking, out popped "Boy it stinks in here!" Then it hit me what just happened. Sure there was some cleaning up to do, but it felt like a celebration! The nose was coming back, "blessing" me with the most obnoxious stench in the house, because that's the way some wishes get granted, the ugliest, nastiest way possible. 

So far it's still the strong things, but that's how taste came back too: not dependably, not fully even now, but no longer absent. I know what burned on the stove a couple days back. I now know how awful the large waste basket under the kitchen sink stinks after food scraps collect because it holds over a full week's worth, and the bags have to be purchased for that, unlike the small wastebaskets which hold smaller free bags from shopping and get emptied every few days. I can smell fresh baked pizza, and my sap sago grated cheese. I know the eggs are good and the week-long opened package of brats is too. Someday I might smell coffee again, but I've been drinking it for years now without needing to enjoy it, and plan to continue. Laundry will get done more often too along with other household chores.

It's not just sanitation issues or food spoilage issues that will be improved. There is one major health issue  for me as well. I should soon be able to smell cigarette smoke. I need to avoid it, because after more than 40 years of second hand smoke, it affects my cardiac rhythms. I'm looking forward to being able, again, to be three feet outside somebody's front door and tell if they smoke in the house. I can chose not to go in.

After this morning I can finally tell you that the antiperspirant I chose arbitrarily over a year ago is actually quite pleasant smelling. Lucky me! 

Luckier you! I'll be sure to use it every day again.