We’ve been in lockdown, our self-imposed quarantine, for more than five weeks now, and the primary emotion around here is boredom, even with our books, TV and YouTube. I guess I should be glad that it is not depression, but it’s safe to say the novelty has worn off.
I will admit that I am getting tired of feel-good advertisements telling me we’re all in this together and how these car brands and big stores are there for me during this difficult time. They are offering zero percent financing because they want to “help” me. No, they are desperately trying to move inventory. Don’t they know we can see through their bull?
My wife and I both continue to read a great deal. Yes, I have a Kindle, but I prefer good, old fashioned paper books. I’ve finally run out of books that I have not read before, so I ventured into the attic and pawed through the boxes of once-read books from years past and pulled out a few from Stephen Hunter, William Dietz and some old Harry Harrison Stainless Steel Rat novels that I have not read since I was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club back in the 1980s. It will be interesting to see if I find those somewhat farfetched stories as much fun now as I did 30+ years ago.
My wife is doing a good bit of gardening and I’m knocking some chores off the honey do list. Yesterday found me navigating an 8-foot folding ladder through tight doorways, stairwells, and a basement with a ceiling that is shorted than the ladder. Luckily, I didn’t bump anything hard enough to add another entry to the honey do list — but it was close! I think I’m gong to tackle some electrical projects next.
We’re still walking and doing some light working out. This is to offset the extensive home cooking and baking that is taking place. We consumed quite a bit of chocolate after Easter, including a pecan chocolate bourbon pie someone gave us that had been in the freezer since December.
My wife has made soup at least twice this week and is giving the InstaPot a work out. I bought 30 flour tortillas at Sam’s Club the other day, so I’m coming up with different excuses to eat them. I’ve made breakfast burritos and quesadilla so far. My favorite, is a non-traditional quesadilla made with, pepperoni , salami, and two kinds of cheese. (I think I may try to add grilled onions next time.) I figure, if you can bastardize a pizza with pineapple, chicken, barbecue sauce and other non-traditional items, why not change up a quesadilla?
Always Learning
There’s not much I can do while confined to the house and yard related to prepping, other than writing about it and helping in the garden, so I hooked up the Amazon Fire Stick to our big screen TV and started catching up on YouTube videos by some of the folks to whom I subscribe. Some of my favorite channels include:
- Off Grid Homesteading with the boss of the swamp
- Step One Survival
- Back to Reality
- Justin Rhodes
- Canadian Prepper
Every now and then I throw in some live music or gun-related videos to spice things up!
The content on some of these channels are quite good and the topics are interesting and valuable. It’s like reality TV without the multi-camera views and higher production values as you would see on National Geographic or Smithsonian channels.
If you’ve got a favorite prepping-related video or YouTube channel I should be watching, mention it in the comments below.
Coronavirus Crisis Compared to TEOTWAWKI
I know I’ve mentioned before that the presence of electricity and other utilities sets the coronavirus crisis apart from what we usually consider an end of the world event. The other positive is that the rule of law continues to exist, mostly, in my opinion, because there is still food available. That means we have the luxury of surfing the web, watching TV and talking on the phone. We also don’t have to stand guard, walk the trap line, forage for wild foods, wash our clothes by hand, cook on an open fire, or haul water, all tasks we’d be doing in many other disasters.
I guess, when you come right down to it, boredom is far better than the emotions we’d be facing in most world-changing event. And while the death of 160,000 people around the world is sad, it’s hardly a world changing die-off that we could expect to see in a nuclear exchange, an EMP attack, a comic strike, a Yellowstone caldera explosion or similar catastrophic event.
When it comes to survival, boredom isn’t bad.
If you missed any of our quarantine diary, you can see all of the entries in chronological order.
