Ants vs. Grasshoppers

 My long-time friend and fellow doomsday conspirator called me during the swine flu dustup and said, “I found a deal on N95 masks. Are you in?”

“I’m in.”

And I was. I stocked up on N95 masks against a when-not-if pandemic eventuality. A few years later, I found myself pulling them off my shelf to donate to our local hospital during the long awaited pandemic of the moment. It was a situation that left me scratching my head.

Who am I to be giving protective gear to medical professionals? Nobody, that’s who.

Had everyone at doctor school been absent the day they discussed the repeating, one-hundred year cycle of plagues? Apparently.

Without expertise or training, was I better prepared than the smarty pants people at doctor school? Yep.

If they need a phone number for where they can buy N95 masks cheap they should let me know.

Preppers are more like ants than grasshoppers. They work and store and get ready. They plant while the sun shines. They are mocked and laughed at, until someone needs that case of toilet paper they’ve got tucked up under the guest bedroom nightstand.

For the ants who are prepared, it’s hard not to fell smug. Don’t. Grasshoppers going to grasshopper.

For the ants who take twenty bucks a month and turn it into a stockpile against a time of fear and want, keep your chin up and keep prepping against the coming of winter. 

The grasshoppers are going to need you.

Linda (Ants Be Ready) Zern   

 

  

   

The Covid Question - Do You Know Anyone Who Has Had Covid?

 

Yes. 

Me.

It was one of those strange, unscientific surveys on Facebook. It was a yes or no question. And I found that annoying. I wanted to fill in the blanks. I wanted to talk about my unsung, unheralded life and death experience. I wanted someone, anyone, to listen to my COVID story. 

The problem is that I had COVID before it was on anyone’s hysteria radar. 

My husband works for a huge, international corporation with the huge international headquarters located in the once lovely city of San Francisco. In January of 2020, my hardworking husband traveled on a Jet plane to the once lovely city of San Francisco. At the huge international headquarters of his company he talked, shook hands, chitted and chatted, and hung out in the huge international cafeteria. Note: International means people from all corners of the world travel back and forth, to and fro, in and out from all corners of China . . . er . . . um . . . I mean the world, including the North Pole. 

He came home—coughing—his guts out. I blamed the Jet plane. “Yuck, dirty, dirty airplanes. Go to the doctor.” He did. They gave him the standard protocol and said, “You have a virus. Go home.”

He did.

And promptly infected me.

Sick for three weeks, from January into February, I kept saying to anyone who would listen, “I’m dying. This is the weirdest cold.”

Ha. Ha. Ha. They all laughed. YaYa’s dying. They laughed some more.

“I feel like I’m drowning,” I cried out. No one answered.

Snot bubbled out of me like lava. When the coughing started, I coughed until I was light-headed and near fainting. “This is the weirdest cold I’ve ever had,” I cried to the empty air, which I could not get enough of into my body.

Three weeks and I was cured by Cuban chicken soup from a good friend. 

When I heard a woman on television describing her, finally acknowledged, pandemic symptoms, saying, “I felt like I was drowning.” 

“Yes!” I cried to a woman on television who could not hear me. “Yes. I had that too.”

No one answered me.

And then everyone went hysterical, but it was too late. I was better. Sigh.

And then we got COVID again, a year later in January, and if I get this stupid thing next January, vaccinated or not, I’m tapping out.

Linda (Breathless in Saint Cloud) Zern