Am I getting my REAL ID or starring in a Monty Python movie?

Good morning!  

So, since this whole Covid-19 thing has taken over the planet, everytime I think of something, I add "in the time of Cholera."  You know, like, "Going to the grocery store in the time of cholera."  "Filling my car with gas in the time of cholera."

"Getting my Real ID license done in the time of cholera."

Now, full disclosure, I've never READ the book "Love in the Time of Cholera."  But I have seen both John Cusack movies that reference it...."High Fidelity" (which is on my top 100 films of all times list) and "Serendipity" (which is not.)  

Anyway, today, since my work schedule got adjusted because I'm working cases in California and that state doesn't wake up until 10 AM my time, I have a significant amount of morning time free to do things.  And, since out DMV has opened....kind of...AND ALSO since my passport expires on Tuesday next week...it was time to get my federally approved REAL ID done.

Not that I'm planning on flying anyplace any time soon.  And, since, again, my passport expires in less than a week, I'm not going to be leaving the country any time soon...it still seemed like a good idea.

So, I checked the Wis-DOT website and loaded up my Social Security Card, my passport, my marriage license, and both of my birth certificates.  And I went to the DMV.

Now, I thought I was being clever, getting there at 7:10 when they opened at 7AM. It's Wednesday...no one will be there.

Said about a dozen other people.

Getting into the DMV building was kind of like being in some epic travel movie.  Like walking to Mordor with a bunch of senior citizen hobbits and a few youngling elves.  Or, really, more like Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail with the Black Knight, because once we got to the door, a large masked man shouted, "WHY ARE YOU HERE?"

Once we share with the masked guard we all got in line, holding our various folders of papers and whatnot and staying 6 feet apart.  Much like Monty Python's chanting monks.

Everyone had what they all needed.  Clearly, we all read the website and brought everything, and everyone got past the second guard guy...the photographer.

You know, the guy who doesn't give a crap whether you practiced your smile in the mirror or not, and whether you need to be photographed at a certain angle so you don't look like you're wearing a flesh beard.  That dude has no sense of artistry....

(And I look like I have a flesh beard.  Again.)

So now we go to the pit of chairs (all set 6 feet apart) and wait for the two...TWO... women at the window to call our numbers. 

Oh, remember a second ago when I said everyone had what they needed?  Yeah...no. there was one woman....the youngest person in the room other than the two wee ones getting their driving tests...the youngest adult in the room, the person who should have had it the most together....SHE DID NOT HAVE WHAT SHE NEEDED!

The first sign of trouble was that she needed to have her picture taken a second time. I didn't realize that was an option.  Wait, we get a second shot?  And did she wait in line to request this second picture? NO! She's young, thin, pretty...she gets to stick her unmasked face over the protective plexiglass and tell the second Orc that she needs a second picture. 

And the second Orc complies.

Which backs up the line.

Anyway, so we're sitting in chairs. And BTW, Dad there with the kid for her test?  Yeah, holding the phone inside the cover of that book isn't fooling anyone. We KNOW you're not reading any book about or by Temple Grandin.  You're checking Facebook and your Ashley Madison account while your kid is taking her test. Be honest about it.

Anyway....where was I?  Oh, right. I was waiting in chairs. And pretty girl was at the counter getting her Real ID.  Turns out...she got married recently  (YAY her) and had to change her name on top of getting the new federal ID.  One tiny hitch...she didn't bring her social security card.  That's like the first thing they tell you to bring.

And even if she had it with her, it didn't have her right name because she got married (Yay her) and had to change her name which she couldn't because of Covid-19.  (Changing your name in the time of Cholera.) and so she didn't think she had to bring it.

The desk clerk went over this point with pretty but clueless several times before she gave up and walked pretty but clueless back over to the photo orc and asked that she be photographed a THIRD time, this time with her old name, and she'd just renew her license and get "the rest of it done" once she had her social security card.

As they walked back to the desk pretty but clueless said, "Okay, so I can get the Real ID now?"

I give the clerk a lot of credit. I would have slapped the woman.  But instead, this lady said, "You cannot get Real ID without your social security card."

"Well, why am I here then?"

We've all wondered that.

So she finally left and it was my turn. I had it all. I had my old drivers license, my passport, my social security card, my birth certificate, and my marriage license.  I was prepared to pay the fees with cash, check, or credit.  I WAS READY!

Well, here's a heads up:  If you have a valid passport, you don't need the birth certificate or marriage license. But, for the love of all that's holy, you still need the SOCIAL SECURITY CARDS.

Oh, and here's something they don't tell you:  You also need a piece of mail with you name and address on it.  A check won't do.  You need TWO items with your name and address on it...and a personal check won't do.

Thank goodness, the clerk was still graveled having dealt with pretty but clueless.  She checked and said just using my license was okay.  (I had every form of ID known to man...but she had to check and make sure it was okay to do this without me having a piece of junk mail in my purse.)

But we were okay. I paid the fee ($14 for the license and $2 because I donated to the organ donor fund.) And I got my paper copy of my new license (which BTW, is only good until the original date of my license expiration....so I get to do this again in 2 1/2 years.)  The whole process from getting past the Black Knight to exiting out the side door was 37 minutes.

So why tell us all this?  Because, my friends, I'm sure I'm not the only one who waited until almost the deadline to get the Real ID and also, waited until less than a week before my passport expired (in the time of cholera) to do this, and I think you should all know a couple things before going in from someone who has been there.

1)  BRING YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY CARD

2) Bring your license and a piece of mail with your name and address on it.

3) If you have a valid passport, bring that. 

4)  If you do not have a passport, you're going to need a certified birth certificate.

5) If you changed your name, you need to bring proof of that. Ladies, bring that marriage certificate.

6)  Bring $14 ($16 if you're going to make that $2 donation) in cash. It's easier.

7) you can fill out the application online...if you can figure it out, but it's just as easy to fill out the paper app in person.

8)  Get there early in the day, but call ahead and check hours for your local DMV.

Also, bring a book.  Like, a book you're really reading.  You're going to need it.

Conversation Starter for this Mothers' Day Weekend.

Awwww, isn't that a pretty picture?  

I'm going to let you absorb that picture for a bit longer before I break everyone's brains with what blew up in my head during my morning walk today.

Are we all good?  Everyone's enjoyed the pretty flowers and the reminder that Mother's Day is this weekend?  

Okay, let's begin.

This whole blog is because I saw this flower.  

I remembered, as I walked past it, that someone on face book called it a "grape hyacinth."

That made me think of grapes. Which made me think about a conversation I had with Skippy recently where he told me he liked grapes, but not grape flavored foods.

Which reminded me how I craved all things "purple grape flavored" when I was pregnant with him.  THAT got me thinking about my other pregnancy craving with him:  Wedding cake.

Skippy is NOT a cake fan. He likes cheesecake.  But he's not really a cake kid.  When he was little, we did ice cream cakes for his birthdays.

As a side note, pregnancy cravings seem weird to many people, but I'm pretty sure pregnancy cravings is what gave us dishes like fried eggs on cheeseburgers and avocado toast.

Anyway...

On the flip side of the pregnancy coin, while carrying Skippy, I could not, COULD NOT, abide the thought of chicken, any kind of chicken.  We lived a block from Golden Chicken (one of my favorite fried chicken places of all time) and the smell from that place about killed me. If there was frozen chicken in our freezer, I made Hubby get ride of it.

Skippy's favorite meat for me to cook? Chicken.

Hmmmmm, thought I...is this science?

Then I thought about Peaches.  Her pregnancy was a little less dramatic, mostly because it was my second and I didn't have the time (because I was working, babysitting, and watching Skippy) to really luxuriate in all the many joys pregnancy has to offer. (Read here:  I had to show up to work whether I was barfing on my shoes or not and the parents of the kid I babysat didn't care if I was perpetually nauseous.)  I had one craving with Peaches, for a very, very specific chocolate candy bar.  (Charleston Chew, if you must know.)

Peaches, until she was maybe 12, hated chocolate.  Hated it.  Even now, it's not tops on her list of flavors.

The other thing about my pregnancy with Peaches was that I HATED the smell of meat.  HATED it.  I remember lying on the couch on Memorial Day weekend, begging for death because everyone in out neighborhood was sacrificing multiple pounds of dead animal flesh on the altar of the grill all weekend.

Now, yes, Peaches has dabbled in the fine art of vegetarianism, when she was a young teen.  BUT, what pulled her out of it a decade ago, was the sweet, beautiful juiciness of a double bacon burger.

So here's a conversation starter for everyone who's having a socially distanced Mothers' Day celebration this weekend:  If you're the mom, ponder your pregnancy cravings and then check in with your adult kids...do they hate what you craved?  What couldn't you eat?  Is that their favorite food?

If you're the kid, ask your mom...I promise you she remembers. That whole thing about forgetting the pain of labor and delivery?  That might be true, but the memory of pregnancy is forever.  Do you love the foods that made her vomit? Did she crave something you now find disgusting?

So there, I've taken care of that sense of discomfort some of you probably feel trying to talk to your adult child/aging parent.  Now when you're skyping your mom and the only part of her face you can see are her eyebrows because she hasn't figured out how to get her whole face in the screen, or when you're face timing your kids and you're mortified because your phone screen is not at all flattering when it comes to your wrinkles and extra chins, you have something to talk about!

You're WELCOME!

For all you moms, grand moms, moms to be, aunties who are second moms, I salute you. It's a magical, messy, noisy, dirty, hilarious little club we belong to.  Happy Mothers' Day to us all!

A Post from Easter Past: It's EASTER! No one is safe from my rant!

Hey all, Sarah here.  Thanks to COVID-19, the most interesting thing that's happened to me in the last four weeks is that yeast infection in my armpits, which, I'm happy to say, will result in a blog later this week. However, it's Easter Saturday and I figured I'd send out rant from the past (5 years ago) just to sort of break the boredom we're all experiencing and remind people that at some point we're going to have to interact with family and people in general again...and we may not like that. LOL

Anyway, here's a blast from the past! Enjoy and Happy Easter all!

Good afternoon all!

So today is the day that Christians get a break from Holy Week. If you are a Christian who doesn't miss church, you know what I mean. We've got Sunday, then Maundy Thursday, then Good Friday, then Easter Sunday and in between all that church is "get ready Saturday."  And if you sing in a church choir, like I do, well, then you're double duty on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Yep, I'm giving my Sunday best clothes a work out.

Wait, I don't have Sunday best clothes. I have black pants and whatever top doesn't make my skin burn.  I'm one step away from actually wearing pajamas to church.

Now, if you are celebrating Passover, or something else I'm not aware of, then happy and blessed Passover and any other celebration to you!  I don't want to leave anyone out, but I'm Christian so any sort of religious celebration is going to be that.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh, right.  Get Ready Saturday.

Now, my mother and my grandparents called it Holy Saturday.  Of course, these are modern times, but in deference to them, sometimes I call it, "Holy Crap I have to go back to the store AGAIN" Saturday.

Which brings me to the rant portion of today's blog.

It's not Friday, but I've got five rants, so let's call this the "Holy Crap it's five on Holy Saturday." (And I should mention that as I'm writing this, Hubby just came in and said, 'I have to go to the store for something.'  We just came from there.)

5)  And you don't have peeps why?

You may not like them, but Peeps are THE Easter candy.  At this house, we eat AGED PEEPS which means the Peeps I give the kids tomorrow will sit, in open air, for about 9 months.  (It gets humid here in the summer, so we have to wait for the dry winter air to properly age Peeps.)  Once good and stale, we will chip teeth on them and enjoy.  (The short cut method to this is frozen Peeps.  Almost no wait time needed.)

I bought what I thought would be enough Peeps for the people staying in my house, but them I realized we may have one more person on Easter Sunday, so I happened to be in a store that had nearly a mile long aisle of Easter candy...but no Peeps.  WHAT? WHO DOESN'T HAVE PEEPS?  (here's a warning...Blaine's Farm and Fleet doesn't have Peeps.)

GRRRRRRRRRRR.

4)  And this is why I have moldy strawberries.

I signed up to bring fruit to our church's Easter Breakfast.  I normally sign up for butter or milk or

Wine sampling at Sam's got a little out of hand.

something that's self contained and requires no assembly.  Sometimes I make coffee cake.  But this year I decided on fruit. Why?  No clue.  But okay, as luck would have I was also volunteered to bring fruit to my family Easter Dinner.  (My mother doesn't trust me to cook.   She'd rather we eat her over cooked ham than mine.)  So Hubby and I went to Sam's to get fruit.

Sam's is not a good place to be on a Saturday and when it's Get Ready Saturday, it's worse.  And who decided WINE SAMPLES WAS A GOOD THING AT SAM'S CLUB?  80,000 people with their screaming kids all trying to buy ham and fruit and you're handing out wine samples between those two spots in the store?  STOP IT!

But that's not the rant I have for #4. Nope, my rant is directed at the woman standing in front of the strawberry cooler, taking up all 9 feet of the cooler so no one else could get any strawberries while she was standing there searching for the HOLY FREAKING GRAIL of strawberry packs.  

Hubby brought several packs of berries to our cart.  I pointed out one that had several very moldy berries.  "We'll throw those out," he said.  "I'm not fighting my way back past her."

3) If you're going to bribe your kids, do it better.

We've all done this:  You're in a store, you've got the kids, one of them is howling for whatever reason, so you let them have a small toy. It's why we have over 100 Hot Wheels cars.  Skippy didn't like shopping, but a Hot Wheels or Matchbox car was a cheap fix.  But there was a mother today at Kohl's, of course, why wouldn't a bad shopping experience happen there, who was NOT doing it right.  Junior was SCREAMING. I don't mean the kind of "I want" demand howl most kids put up.  No, this kid sounded like he was one FIRE.  They were in toys, we were in housewares.  He could have been standing next to me.  This was also a prolonged, mom and junior moved from toys to bedding to children's to men's and I could still hear them!

I'm a curious person.  I had to see just how on fire this kid was.

First of all, kid? Not on fire. Nope.  And not so junior.  Nope.  Junior was probably seven, maybe eight.  Well beyond the age of spontaneous howling in a store.

But the thing that got me was he's walking alone side the cart, yelling and howling and screaming and mom's saying, "No, we are done in toys.  You got your two Lego things.  And the bunny is coming tomorrow!  You've got your toys now and the Easter Bunny is coming tomorrow."

Oh dear.  Mom....if you're going to use a mythical holiday character to shut your kid up, using the reverse works better as in, "If you don't stop screaming right now the Easter Bunny is not only going to not come to our house tonight, he's going to come in your room and take away the toys and candy you already have!"

Telling a kid to stop asking for toys because you're buying him toys and he's getting more toys tomorrow is like telling the kid to keep screaming.

I was shocked when her method didn't work.  

2)  It's not brain surgery, it's scratch offs...oh wait...is that brain surgery to you?

I'm an optimist and as such I buy a lottery ticket now and then.  And when I do buy lottery tickets, I typically get them where I get my gasoline because it's convenient, and it's right there.  I go to Kwik Trip because they are local to Wisconsin mostly and because I know where everything is in a Kwik Trip.  They don't have everything, but if you're making a run for the basics, they have it.  

Which sometimes tempts people to do all their grocery shopping there.  And that's about the time I get behind that person.  

So I went in to buy a lottery ticket.  This is a transaction that should have taken exactly forty-five seconds.  Maybe a full minute if I got behind someone.  Which I did.  A little old lady with one bag of onions.  Easy peasy.

Nope.  Her husband walks up past me to her with an armload of stuff....at the same time the cashier is done ringing up her onions.  And something doesn't have a tag.  And something has to be weighed. And we get all that sorted and then she says, "And I'd like a Power ball for a dollar and a megabucks..."  

Well the clerk had to stop her there because as the lottery ticket buying public knows, Power ball is TWO DOLLARS.  And yes, the clerk explaining that to her wasn't just a one sentence thing either.  So she gets her groceries and she gets her tickets and I'm thinking, okay, we are ready to move up. \

Nope. NOW she had to pick out her scratch off tickets.  And if you've been to a Kwik Trip or pretty much any gas station, you know there are like fifty different scratch off games.  And this woman had to find out, from the clerk, who didn't know, which ones still had the top prize available.  (I don't play scratch offs myself...it's too silly.)  About the time she was pointing to the fifth ticket she wasn't going to buy, I made some sort of noise and a clerk down the line called me over. I told him I wanted a Power ball and I handed him a five dollar bill.  I waited for my ticket and three dollars.  I got a ticker and two dollars.  Now, I know Power ball didn't go up in price because the clerk three feet to my left just said they were two dollars.  So I had to point this out to the clerk.   Who had already closed the cash register.  Who was also a trainee who didn't know how to open the cash register.

Next time, I'll buy my lottery tickets on a Tuesday morning like God intended.

1)  Oh you knew this was going to be number one like you know your own name. 

Remember several weeks ago when I ranted about how sick I was of winter and hey, let's all keep our twinkle lights up until winter goes away?

Yeah, kids, it's APRIL!  TAKE THE FREAKING CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS DOWN!  Take those nasty brown wreathes off your house.  Take your lights down.  Take the SANTA OUT OF YOUR YARD!

At one point today I saw a house that had Christmas decorations AND ST. PATRICK'S DECORATIONS up.  I said to Hubby, "Yep, I may have to egg that house."

If this is still on your house, be prepared.  I'm coming
to mock you HARD.

Hubby thinks I should write holiday greeting cards.  His suggested my first one be:  

TAKE YOUR D*** CHRISTMAS LIGHTS DOWN.

and on the inside it would say:

HAPPY FREAKING EASTER.

Maybe that's the career path I should follow. There's got to be a market for cards like that, right?  I mean, we can't all keep giving each other those "awkward Family photo" cards.

Truly, truly this is something that could only happen to me.

Good afternoon everyone!

Okay, so here in the US we're "social distancing" which, for us, apparently means we're all meeting in the toilet paper aisle of every grocery store.

Admittedly, things have gotten very strange for a social country like the US.  Several states have gone on full on "shelter in place" lockdown while others, like Wisconsin, are still reminding their folks to wash your hands, cover your coughs, and don't stand so close to the guy in front of you.

Basically, everything your kindergarten teacher taught you.  (Guess what, I still haven't found a use for algebra...)

But for me, in this weird new world, stuff just got weirder.

Of course it did, Sarah, tell us how!

Well, before I do, remember one thing: Long ago, when I set up this blog, I made a promise to myself and my readers that I would always tell the truth and I would always share, no matter how gruesome or potentially embarrassing a topic might be. My goal has always been to laugh at myself and my pitfalls so that someone else going through the same problems might be able to laugh as well.

I believe in that I've earned your trust.

Today's topic, yes, is going to be a bit touchy and a little gross. But it's not what you think, really.  So, readers like my friends, Todd, you've been warned, but really, we aren't getting into a "GIRL TALK ONLY" kind of topic, even though it might feel that way at first.

Let's just dive in shall we?

I have contracted a yeast infection in my armpits.

I'll stand over here and let that sink in.  But let me also just share this headline, which is what came up when I googled "can I get a yeast infection in my armpits?"

Yes, You Can Get A Yeast Infection In Your Armpit ...

It started a couple months ago.  No, who am I kidding?  It started 52 years ago when I was born and stuff just started happening to me. But this latest affliction...some years back I started having itchy skin.  I've chronicled that in this blog.  So a couple months ago when my armpits started itching, I thought very little of it. And when little bumps popped up on my skin, again, I thought little of it. I have some skin tags, which are super sexy, I figured these were just more of that.

When my armpits started looking like this:

 I thought maybe I should try something other than baby oil to soften the skin and ease the itch.

Baby oil didn't work. Baby oil gel didn't work.  Cetaphil cream didn't work. Neosporin with itch relief didn't work, finally, some fairly expensive analgesic cream we found in the health an beauty aisle at Meijer...did not work.

What I was noticing, however, a certain yeasty fermented dough type scent emitting from, well, me.  I've always loved the smell of baking bread, I figured my body had just taken on a sort of nice natural smell now that I wasn't covering it with deodorant (if Matthew McConaughey can do it, why can't I?)

And then this morning, as I was again scratching the living life out of my armpits, it hit me.  I have a yeast infection...but not in a normal place.

And just to remind you all:  Yes, You Can Get A Yeast Infection In Your Armpit ...

Thanks to social distancing and the fact that I'm a bit down today (having discovered that while everyone is locking themselves away because of Covid 19 I'm dealing with...this.) hubby, who already had to be out, picked up some yeast infection crème for me which I'm now applying and which, hopefully, will cure my ailment. The tube says 7 to ten days...but I've never used it on my pits.  

So there's that.

Covid-19 Sort of Reminds Sarah of a Childhood Winter.

Hello everyone!

I like to think my blog reaches across the globe, spreading laughter and general silliness to folks no matter what language they speak. So today, while sitting at my desk waiting for an email from my employer that may, or may not, mean a whole ton of free time next week, I thought about our current "social distancing" and quarantines thanks to Covid-19 and weirdly I feel a bit the way I did many years ago while growing up in the Flint, Michigan area.

As a side note, yes, I grew up in the area where the water has been silly with lead for years. Sort of explains a few things about me, doesn't it?

Anyway...

Winters along the edges of Michigan tend to involve a lot more ice than I've seen in Wisconsin or Minnesota. (The other places I've lived.) When I was a teacher in the Detroit area, the layer of ice on top of the snow was so hard and second grader could walk on it without breaking through.

Back in the mid 70's, it was not uncommon to lose electricity in the winter as power lines broke under the weight of the ice encasing them.  One such winter, the outage was very widespread, and repair crews were stretched thin, meaning, in my household where Dad and Mom both taught school, we were all home, in the dark, for the duration.

Now, kidlings, let me explain something about power outages in the 70's.  Anything that was wireless ran on batteries and batteries cost money and we didn't have any money.  So, my brother and I played in our rooms, separately, because playing together got to be too noisy for my mom, who was tense.  (Face, it, that woman was tense throughout the entirety of my childhood.  Moms didn't drink wine during the day yet and the only thing that relaxed my mom was watching her "soaps" which she did two hours every day.  "As the world Turns" and "Guiding Light."  This was before Tivo, dvr, and even vhs.  Somewhere, those shows were running, but in our part of town, we had no power, which meant we had no TV, which meant no soaps for mom.  Basically, she and dad sat at the kitchen table, next to the biggest window, and read books or stared at each other. Electric stoves meant cold sandwiches for every meal.  And no electricity meant every time someone opened the fridge my father would yell, "GET OUT OF THERE YOU'RE LETTING THE COLD OUT!"

The worst of it was the water situation. We were on a septic system and well.  We needed Electricity to stop the water from running.  This meant we couldn't really do laundry, wash dishes, get drinks of water or...and this is my point...flush the toilet.

My parents were big on limiting the number of flushes.

Now, it's not like this went on for weeks and weeks.  I was a kid, so it seemed like forever, but we were probably without power four days, tops. Friday, over the weekend, and fixed by Monday, is my guess.  My bother and I were fine. We dragged toys up from the windowless basement room and played in our own rooms. I read as much as I could until it got too dark, or until my mom found the flashlight I snuck from my dad's workbench.  (This implies my father used his work bench for something other than general junk storage. He did not. My dad is a man of books, not so much with the working with his hands, at least not back then. Now, well, now he's learned a ton of repair stuff.  Mostly because Mom learned first.)

Anyway, the worst of it was that my parents somehow thought that if we slept a lot the time would go faster and their lives would be easier.  I mean...okay.  But back then I did not love naps like I do now. I was maybe eight.  Who loves naps when they're eight?

So at some point in this shut down, everyone had found a place to lie down and we were all NAPPING.  Except, well, I had to go.

So I went.

And I flushed.

I'm eight. Potty training wasn't that far removed from my brain. I flushed out of habit, even though my mom taped a sign to the toilet tank "DO NOT FLUSH."

From comfort of the couch, over the sound of the running toilet, my mother yelled, "WHO FLUSHED?"

This caused my father to burst out of the bedroom.  We lived in a tiny little place, and he was a tall guy. He filled the narrow hallway, and his booming voice has always, always been a giant deterrent against general tomfoolery in my life.  "You're not supposed to flush!" He said loudly.

"I forgot!"

"You can't forget stuff like that!  Now, go to your room and lie down!"

More than four decades later, I wonder if this wasn't the start of my bathroom issues.

Anyway, I went to my room, weeping. I buried myself under all of my covers. I was convinced at that age if I hid under my covers nothing could hurt me. Not robbers, not angry parents, not rattlesnakes.  (That's a story for another day.)  So I hid.

A few hours later, darkness now settling upon us all, my mom told us that we, and by we I mean mom, my brother and I, were going to her friend's house across town. They had power. They were going to make dinner for us.  Dad was going to stay home and eat cold meatloaf sandwiches by candlelight in case the repair guys showed up.

When we got to the friend's house, everything was dark.  "Oh I hope they didn't lose power too," mom muttered, easing the light brown station wagon into the driveway.

No, mom's friend met us at the door. Her house smelled awesome!  More importantly, I heard the distinct sounds of a television playing. Sure, the boy of the house was in my class and was a totally annoying guy who didn't like me. But, on the plus side, his TV worked and his mom let him watch 6 Million Dollar man, which my mom did not, but what, my mom's going to send me out of the room?

The reason the house was dark was because the friend lit candles.  "For Ambiance" she said. That was the first time I'd ever heard that word and the first time I'd seen candles used for fun.

Which started me on the path to my current Partylite addiction, I'm sure.

Anyway, it was a great meal.  I got to see television.  We may have even slept over at their house, since they had, you know, HEAT, and we did not.

The point of this all is, my friends, is that we will be okay.  It's going to be a struggle, sure. But we are far better stocked and set up for quarantine and social distancing than my family ever was for a four day black out.

Wash your hands, stay home as much as possible.  Check in on your elderly friends and family, see if they need something when you do head out to the grocery store.

Also, SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL EATERIES AND COFFEE SHOPS!  These small, local places are suffering.  Get carry out, call for delivery, buy gift cards.  Don't let small business die!

We got this!