WFH

It’s Saturday morning, and I’m sitting outside, thinking about how an above-ground pool might look in the one consistently sunny corner of my backyard. It’s come to this. It’s just wishful thinking though, because even if I could convince my husband to buy and install and fill and clean an above-ground pool, there are none to be had. Above-ground pools in June 2020 are what toilet paper was in March--scarce and highly coveted.

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I like hot, humid, tropical weather in the summer; so today, with its bright blue sky and its crisp September-y air and its cool temperatures, is not my ideal summer day. But it’s really quite beautiful. The grass is freshly cut, the annuals are blooming, and the birds are chirping happily away. They don’t care about coronavirus. I took a picture of an oriole yesterday. Orioles look very much like robins, but they’re prettier--their heads are black rather than gray and their beaks are a yellowish-orange that contrasts nicely with the black head and the reddish-orange breast. Orioles are a Maryland thing. We even have a baseball team named after them. They’re not my team, but they have the best logo in all of professional sports.

He's not wearing a mask, and you don't even want
to know when he washed his hands last. 

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It’s Sunday morning now, bright and sunny and breezy again. We’re trying to find another patio umbrella to match the two we have, and patio umbrellas are in short supply. Maryland is starting to “reopen,” whatever that means, but we’re all bracing for at least a few more months of limited interaction with the world, which means that we want home to be as pleasant as possible.

For lots of people, home can’t really be pleasant. Family situations aside, too many people just don’t have the resources that would allow them to have a simple, clean, comfortable home, with enough food and clean water and indoor plumbing and electricity and a little bit of green grass and a few birds chirping. I don’t see why this should be so. There’s more than enough to go around.

It’s a fallen world. We’re human and we suck, so there will always be inequality, for as long as imperfect humans have the responsibility for governing other imperfect humans. But there’s no excuse for how badly we’ve managed distribution of the world’s wealth. It’s all a gift from God. I know I’ll never vote for Trump, but I’ll vote for the candidate who will make it a priority to ensure that more of my fellow people can live in a place that could rightly be called a home. If that candidate exists.

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It’s Monday now. I worked in my backyard all day, wearing long sleeves and a jacket, in June. It’s still nice out here in the backyard, just me and my avian coworkers, but I didn’t even think about a pool today. A blanket maybe, or a hot drink, but not a pool. It’s a fallen world and a cold one today, too. I didn’t see any orioles today, but I saw several robins and I’ve decided that they’re much less attractive than their Baltimore cousins. But everyone is welcome. Mi casa es su casa unless you’re a mouse, in which case get out. We finally found a third umbrella, so we’ll soon be able to shade the entire patio if we want to. Now all I need is an outdoor heater and maybe a selective electric fence that will let the birds and squirrels and rabbits in, and keep the mice out. It’s not fancy and it’s not fashionable but it’s comfortable and homey and that’s all I need. That’s all anyone needs.