Month: March 2022

            Sometimes on the weekend, Matt and I go on what we call “walk about.”  It is running errands but inevitably, the errands lead us to places we never intended.  This weekend, we went off to the car wash.  

           It turned out I needed a few things from the grocery store.  We were near an Aldi.  Aldi’s is a German company.  I’ve never been to an Aldi, and I thought this would be an opportunity. But I never made it past the front door.  The grocery carts were locked and could be freed only with a deposit of a quarter, which would be refunded to me when I returned the cart.  I can only assume the intention is to prevent people from walking away with the carts.  But would a quarter really stop a cart thief?  Maybe in Germany that works.  But maybe taking that cart and walking off with it is worth a quarter.  I don’t know.  

            Well, it did not matter.  I did not have a quarter.  In fact, I wondered who in this day carries around change of any kind.  I searched in vain for a hand basket or something to carry around the few items I needed.  Nothing.  I decided I did not care enough and if Aldi really needed my quarter to enable to me to use a cart, then they were not for me.  

            We continued on our walk about.  

            I went out today on a walk/run.  I walk some to warm up, then run or fast jog as far as I then I walk again.  It was a gorgeous sunny day and it felt like spring was in the air.  I have not exercised by jogging for months.  It sure did hurt later.

            Why do I live in Burtonsville?  Honestly, I have no clue except it was an inexpensive place to live, we got a lot of house and land for the money, and there was no homeowners association, a requirement for us.  

            Burtonsville is named after some person I assume.  I have no idea who and I am not sure I care.  They have a parade every year for Burtonsville Day.  This puzzles me.  I have never been to the parade since it takes place on a Saturday morning, and I am not getting up for it.  But what is it for?  There is nothing here that makes Burtonsville worthy of a parade as far as I can tell.  I’d like to say it has its charms but honestly, there is nothing charming about it.  There is barely a town.  It is just a strip of restaurants and businesses along a highway and then houses, some in subdivisions, some not  

            When we lived in Wheaton, which had its charms, Burtonsville seemed like it was a million miles away.  It is on the very northern border of the county, midway between D.C. and Baltimore.  From that perspective it is the center of the universe.  Although it is only about 15 miles from downtown D.C. it takes a good hour to get there given traffic.  Virginia is reachable, but we never really go there.  

            Burtonsville used to be known for its Dutch Country Farmer’s Market where you could buy Amish food and crafts.  But developers came along and forced the Market to move.  The store it occupied had to be torn down and replaced with a new strip mall anchored by a Giant Food.  Why would we ever put up with Amish folk, the one charming thing about the place, when we could have a Giant?  

             My plumber grew up here.  The farmhouse he grew up in is just up the street from our house.  He now lives in West Virginia and commutes here every day.  I guess that gives you an idea of the attraction of Burtonsville.  He tells me that when he lived here there were mostly farms.  It was country, not the suburbs.  You can still see old farmhouses along the roads today.  But we are now an outer suburb and the farm fields have long since been turned into housing.

            A long, long time ago, when I was in my first job, I worked with a guy who lived in Burtonsville.  His wife worked in Baltimore and this was the best place for them to commute.  He was actually ashamed of that fact and tried to hide it.  I remember being puzzled about the town.  I did not know where it was but he did not like to talk about it.  As I look back, I think that was a little harsh.  This place is nothing to be ashamed of.  It is just no place to write home about.  

             Don’t get me wrong.  I love where my house is located from a flora and fauna perspective.  We have land, lots of trees and wildlife, it is quiet and peaceful.  It is great fun watching hawks and foxes. There is a forest preserve next to us that prevents development and there is a lake not too far away.  But I have no relationship to the town itself to the extent there actually is one.  

            There is a band from New Zealand who we love without limits—Fat Freddy’s Drop.   They are a reggae, jazz, funk R&B band to kind of summarize it.  Every record is a little different.  We learned about them when we went to New Zealand in 2005. We have loved them ever since. We are even going to Europe to see them this summer.

The most important part of this band is the horn section.  Tremendous horns.  Here is Matt playing along with Fat Freddy on his Trombone.

            Having JoJo is like having a toddler.  I need to JoJo proof everything because he is so curious.   He will poke his nose into closets and spaces he does not belong.  He has to check out everything he comes across with a sniff and examination.   But worst of all, JoJo does not have a discerning palate.  He will eat or try to eat most anything he comes across.  He will sniff it and then bite into it.  Right now he is very busy chewing apart a kicker toy tearing a hole in the cloth cover and pulling out the stuffing.  He tries to chew it then spits it out realizing it does not taste right.  Then he moves on to the fallen leaf, the crumb from last night’s dinner or a random spider.  Chomp, chew and swallow.  A couple of bites and it is gone.

            But this one was alarming.  I was playing with JoJo with a teaser toy.  A teaser toy is a stick with a string attached and then a toy attached to the string.  Cats will chase them for hours if you are willing to waste your time amusing a cat. 

            I put the toy down and turned my back for a minute, when I turned back, I found the stick with nothing but a stub of string.   The toy that had been attached to the string was also loose seeming to have been chewed off from the string.  Missing was the string itself.   I searched everywhere.  I could not find it.

            I asked him, did you eat the string?  He did not answer.  If he ate the string, he sure did not show any distress.  The bigger worry was that it could become lodged in his intestines and cause a blockage.  That would kill him.  The only way to know would be a trip to the emergency vet.  So off we went.  

            JoJo howls like a banshee when he is in the car.  He sits in his carrier and cries.  After a while he starts to claw the bottom hoping to escape by digging his way out.  The emergency vet is 45 minutes away in rush hour.  I had to listen to him howl the whole way.  He was showing no signs of being sick.  

            The vet did an exam and took x-rays.  She could not see anything.  She tried to induce vomiting. He did not vomit.  Finally, we agreed we would wait until he either passed the string or he started to show signs of distress.  Six hundred dollars later we went home.  I still have not found that string, he has not passed it and he seems just fine.  Who knows what happened?

            I have boxes and boxes of old t-shirts that I keep as mementos.  As I look back, I am dismayed at how things have gotten so out of hand.  I have two shirts in particular that just amaze me.  One says “I Believe in Science” and the other says  “March for Science.”  How dumb and how absurd is it that we marched to say we support scientists? We actually had to march in the streets to argue that science was valid.  We had to stand up for science in this warped world where no-nothings think they can find all the answers in some rabbit hole on the internet.  At the time the protests were about Trump and the GOP talking down climate change and rejecting scientific predictions.  But it was also about the effort by Trump to weaken environmental laws by adopting regulations that would discount “scientific theory.”  

Sadly, marching makes no difference in today’s world. It is cathartic. I love to march and have my voice heard. Unfortunately, it is only heard by the like minded people around me. Politicians have learned to just ignore it or spin it away as nothing more than radical extremists blah blah blah. So I have concluded that protesting and marching does not really move the needle in relation to the people who you want desperately to listen. I am not against protesting. It feels good. I just know that in the end, it is pointless.

We marched for science and they went ahead and did whatever they wanted–revoked and decimated environmental laws, ignored climate change, and rejected scientific evidence when it suited them. Little did we know at the time that the war on science was only starting and that COVID would make those days look serene. 

            Jesus, we are so fucked up.