March 18, 2021: WHAT a Good Idea!

I got an email from All4Oregon, telling me that I could now make a vaccination appointment at the Convention Center. Depending on how you count, I shaved off maybe 15 days, or 19 days (given the first actual appointment dates available), by doing my whole “search websites in the wee hours” thing, and bailing on Multnomah county, and driving down to the Walgreen’s in Albany.

Either way – 15 days or 19 – I didn’t save much time compared to the entire pandemic year so far, or compared to my age, or whatever other measure we want to use for perspective. And the rollout is speeding WAY up in the past few days. And I lost climate points by making the long drive.

Still, it was worth it to me (sorry, climate). I’ll emerge a few weeks sooner than I would have. I didn’t spend all those days fuming and fretting under the uncertainty, awaiting a random lottery. And much as I feel like an earnest undergraduate when I use the word, I do like having agency, exerting SOME control. Waiting felt so horribly passive. Being a mighty vaccine huntress felt active.

Getting an appointment was also a good thing for the few humans who have to deal with me, these days. Before I got scheduled, when I was still in high dudgeon, only the fact that we were on Zoom during a recent book club meeting prevented me from murdering a 90-year-old friend who wanted to give me some shrewd advice about how to buck the line: I should go with my husband to his vaccination appointment and tell them I was his caretaker!

When my kid was little, I developed the ability to respond to unwanted advice by smiling brightly and saying, “WHAT a good idea! Thank you!” But I’m out of practice, didn’t even remember that maneuver, and instead I said No. NO, he isn’t doddering nor would he pretend to dodder. NO, I don’t want to buck the line, and furthermore, I seriously doubted they had extra doses just lying around for people who showed up with perfectly healthy spouses and claimed to be caretakers, and anyway, it wasn’t TRUE - I WASN’T his caretaker.

A few days later, I confessed to a pal that I envied some folks who had gone to a gathering. He asked if I was okay, and I said yeah, just jealous, and then he said "Envious or Jealous?" I said "huh?" and he explained the difference between Envy and Jealousy, a factoid that would have been right up my alley, if I weren't disgruntled.

I even got snarky watching a church service where the minister said, tears in his voice, how happy he was to see faces in the congregation again. I thought: oh, you’re moved NOW, but by the time I emerge you’ll be all Ho-Hum.

In other words, I was SOUR. (Right now, I’m horrified by the murders in Atlanta, but that’s different than being sour. I’m mad about misogyny, racism, classism, and the bad-religion that makes some men think they should murder women who “tempt’ them, but at least I’m not begrudging people who are happy to see each other.)

Sourness in point: our governor is getting flak for being too cautious around COVID safety, and I understand why, but let’s at least give credit where it is due. Our state, if death rates were the national average, would have lost over 6,000 people. Instead we have lost over 2,000, one of the lowest rates in the country. An article on this observed that because of the governor and the citizenry practicing much safety, 4,000 Oregonians are alive. You should have seen the sour. WHERE did the author come up with 4,000? WHERE was the so-called “science?” 4,000 was TOTALLY made up! I ventured in and said that the math was actually right there in the article, see, right here: if you subtract 2 from 6…..

Why did I do it?

And then another article appeared: Portland is getting a trash czar to deal with our garbage problem. GREAT explainer: We have no central trash authority, and if you abandon a car, it might be the responsibility of one of three different bureaus to tow it away, depending on the block. The decision not to disturb tent camps during the pandemic led to garbage problems we weren’t prepared for. And so forth.

And again, the SOUR poured out - why even PAY taxes, Portland has gone to hell, the homeless should just get a job, etc. One of my friends tried to restore compassion and good cheer: Yes, there was garbage around the tent camps, but alas no garbage CANS, and a trash czar was a good idea.

Then a sweet and caring guy from  my choir appeared in the mix, saying (the illustration for the article featured a mattress, so you could see his point) he wondered if efforts to clean up were somehow removing things that homeless people NEEDED. Stung, I said I’d volunteered with SOLVE twice, and we were instructed very carefully not to disturb any encampment, any site that looked inhabited, we were told to respect people and give them space, and I really thought none of the teams I’d been on had made things WORSE.

And a dear buddy posted that chart of all the good things in the American Rescue Plan, and got scolded: anything we spend on these problems takes money away from “normal” people; why should Black farmers get assistance, what about white farmers; and (in CAPS), a long disquisition full of “FACT: (blah, blah, blah),” “FACT: (blah, blah, blah),” at the end of which the writer excoriated her for not responding quickly enough to his FACTS. Sheesh.

Part of me thinks we have all gotten habituated to outrage, and certainly outrage has been and continues to be warranted, ever so much of the time. But a trash czar could be a good thing, and picking up litter is a good thing. 4,000 people alive is a good thing, and cutting child poverty in half is a good thing, and speeding up the vaccination rollout is a very good thing. You can say NOT GOOD ENOUGH, but you can’t convince me that they have no merit.