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Angst

Why Toilet Paper? Well…here’s why

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So we’re sittin’ around here, contemplating the mysteries of Life, the Universe, and All That, when one of the greatest of mysteries impinges upon our consciousness: Why are vast tribes of people hoarding toilet paper, in the expectation of a (usually rather mild) disease that is unlikely to cause diarrhea? Even with with quarantining a given (which it was not when the toilet paper mania began), what is the fixation on TP?

Welp, I have — AH HAH! — a theory.

Here ’tis…

Funny’s Theory of Toilet Paper Affection

Among the American affluent classes, and the somewhat moneyed middle classes, everybody and his little brother, sister, aunt & uncle has a vacation home in the boondocks: In Arizona, for example, that would mean forest and desert retreats like Pinetop, Payson, Strawberry, Prescott, Yarnell, the North Rim, the White Mountains, Bisbee, Patagonia, and many waypoints north to south, east to west. Most of these second homes are furnished for weekends; some for a month or two of full-time residence during the summer. But by and large they stand vacant and waiting.

So. If you could see Armageddon coming — in the form of a contagious disease that was likely to get you and your family confined to your home for several weeks — where would you rather be held captive? In a plaster and styrofoam hut in a jam-packed eave-to-eave suburb? Or in a glorified “cabin” (more like resort quarters) on three acres of forest or scenic grassland?

You got it.

If we still had the ranch up on the Rim outside of Yarnell, that’s where I’d be right now.

And what are you gonna do if you figure the kids are going to be shut out of school, you’re probably going to be told to work from home (or be laid off), and all of you are going to be locked up together for anywhere from two weeks to three months?

What you are gonna do is load the kids and the dog into the vehicle, turn on the burglar alarm, lock up the shack in the Valley of the We-Do-Mean Sun,  and drive up to your vacation cabin. That’s what you’re gonna do.

And if you’re going to hole up for some period up to, say, 90 days with your three kids, the family dog, the cat, and two sets of in-laws, what are you gonna need, in addition to food? That’s right:

Toilet paper!

Nor would you need an expensive, maintenance-sucking second home to feel the impulse to stock up with necessaries. Many people in our parts have campers — either pickup shells that convert your Ford F-150 into a rolling hunter’s cabin or fancy living-rooms on wheels of various sizes, some as capacious as a small house. What would you bring with you if you figured you were going to be living out of your car or camper for anywhere from three weeks to three months?

Hell, yeah:

Toilet paper!

Even if you don’t have a vehicle tricked out to accommodate the Life of Riley, plain old camping is just not that hard — even over the long term. SDXB and I did it for three straight months, trekking through the outback of Alaska and Canada. With a camp tent, a propane campstove, a few dishes, and a couple of towels. We slept under a roof one (1) night, when it was raining too hard to cope.

We did it for fun, so trust me: it was no particular hardship.

But…if you weren’t an experienced long-haul camper but you figured you’d better be prepared to stay in the boondocks for a good long while, and you planned on car-camping rather than hiking, what provision (other than food) would you really, truly, NOT want to run out of?

Yup:

Toilet paper!

heee! So this is the theory. People aren’t buying TP to stock their houses here in the Big City. They’re using it to stock vacation homes, campers, cars, duffle bags full of camping gear. They’re not stocking one home. They’re stocking two, or even maybe three, if they have a vacation house and a camper.

Adventures in Panickland

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Be afraid. Be very afraid…

The Old Folkerie where my dear friends are dwelling these days has locked itself down. Staff are so terrorized by the covid-19 scare that you have to pass a test to get in the door!

Welp, they needed some grocery items and their cat was out of food, too. So I added a side trip to Safeway onto my planned junket to AJ’s.

Holeee maquerel… Shelves were empty in every department. For every rack of shelves, at least one shelf was empty.

Couldn’t get the cat’s preferred cuisine, so bought something else and then searched for it at AJs. Not carried there. Thank gawd I know how to cook Ruby’s food, though plenty of the commercial stuff is presently in-house. And thank gawd my roommate is a dawg, not a cat.

AJ’s, because it’s a spectacularly overpriced specialty store, was not overrun. But the Safeway was maxed. At one point the manager came on the intercom and announced that they were running out of bags and would people please forego bags if they could possibly just put their purchases in their car or if they didn’t have many purchases. I have a lot of grocery bags in the garage, because I use them to pick up after the dog. So I’ll probably take a few fistfuls up to the store for them to re-use.

All public schools in the city are closing (which may not make much difference for the kids’ education but does make a difference for the poor little guys and gals who get their only full meal at school). Some churches have closed. I believe (but do not know) that All Saints contemplated whether they should close in this week’s emergency meeting, but so far they have not done so. Apparently they’re going to move most or all of the school’s instruction online. The church itself is staying open, though.

However, our choir director has told us that choir members who feel they should absent themselves may do so without consequences. And given that I’m im the middle of the allegedly most vulnerable age range, I guess I’ll have to take him up on that. {sigh}

The high hysteria, though, is not surprising, given  the amount of screaming and yelling from the news media. This evening we learn that EEEEEEKKKK! AWWWKKKK! OMIGAWD!!!!! 12 CASES OF COVID HAVE POPPED UP IN ARIZONA!  Heavens to Betsy!!!!! 

Twelve cases. Arizona has a population of 7.38 million, as of 2020. That’s less than 1%. Microscopically less than 1%.

Meanwhile, call up news.google.com and you find 53 stories about the covid-19 flap and 20 (count ’em, twenty) on all other topics. That’s not including the sidebar content, which also is preoccupied with the supposed plague. No wonder people are obsessed with this stuff.

Don’t allow yourselves to be panicked, folks. Humanity has been through worse, and we’ve survived. Just keep clean and stay out of public places.

Watch Out: Covid-related malware

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As usual, bad actors are taking advantage of a crisis to take advantage of you. MarketWatch, one of my favorite financial sites, warns that hackers are playing on the present coronavirus hysteria to trick users and infect their computers.

Most annoyingly, the popular Covid-tracking map from Johns Hopkins University has been targeted by hackers imitating the site and trying to get users to download software. The real Johns Hopkins map does not ask you to download any programs! View the map only from the Johns Hopkins site or from the one operated by ArcGIS Trust Center.

The respective URLs for these sites are as follows:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html?mod=article_inline
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6?mod=article_inline

And (in case you’re forgotten), remember never to download an attachment in an email from a source you do not know. A number of fake emails are on the float, as we scribble:

  • One pretending to be from the CDC, inviting you to click on links for information about the virus
  • RTF files emanating from hackers in China that exploit MS Word
  • Lures to fake and look-alike websites

None of this stuff is anything new; it’s the same old BS, only coronavirus-themed. Be alert, and don’t get suckered in.

A Strategy for the Plague?

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Don’t be deceived: I have none. Neither, far as I can tell, does anyone else, other than recommending that people follow what should already be routine sanitary practices.

The coronavirus has arrived in the Valley of the We-Do-Mean-Sun. Nine cases have been reported in the state, five of them in Pinal County, which is just up the road.  One wretch spent time in two crowded nightclubs and 80 people in the state have been tested for the disease. Entertainment venues are closing, and the Democratic debate slated to take place here will have no live audience in attendance. And, always happy to share, we sent two positive cases on a plane from Phoenix to Toronto. In Massachusetts, 72 of the state’s 90 cases occurred in people who had attended a Biogen corporate meeting.

None of this would get me very exercised, except for the fact that I’ve been so sick so often in the past few months. And that I still have an infection where the orthodontist stuck that post that probably will have to be surgically removed. Honestly: I just do not want to see the inside of an ER room again! Not for a long, long while.

And at age 75, I’m smack in the middle of the group most at risk of serious outcome from this fine disease. No doubt made more so from having been weakened by the late series of epizootics and unhealing dental surgery.

Sooo…. Given my proclivity to catch every bug that comes along, I’m thinking maybe I should step out of choir (and concomitantly, church) for the duration of this epidemic. Or epic flap, whatever it really is.  One epidemiologist suggests we avoid gatherings and face-to-face meetings. There’s a limit to how practical that is. But…it would seem that if you don’t have to be at a gathering, maybe you shouldn’t be.

I will say, one year I got splendidly sick when one of my fellow singers plopped herself down behind me and spent two hours coughing at the back of my head and neck. So…yeah. Choir is potentially a sink of contagion. And this is one particular contagion I’d like not to partake of.

Tomorrow I have to go staff the church’s front desk for four hours. Cannot even begin to imagine how I can gracefully get out of that…

Fortunately, though, I scored a couple more canisters of Lysol wet kitchen counter wipes, supposedly disinfecting. My plan is to take some of those in and wipe down the desk and the phone, plus have some to wipe my hands every time I think of it. Not as perfect as putting light-years of distance between oneself and the bug. But one heckuva lot better than nothing.

In the same vein, I laid off the cleaning lady, who was supposed to come by today. I’d already scored the 80 cash dollahs needed to pay her, and offered to give it to her when she’s over in our parts at WonderAccountant’s place. She declined. So this means when she comes back I’ll have to find some gift for her, maybe a Costco or Walmart cash card. That is a figure-it-out for another day.

Cleaning Lady begone, because she now has a LOT of cleaning customers, so she’s rooting around in sheets, bathrooms, and kitchens of many unknown folk. Plus she has a middle-school-aged daughter who will enjoy the predictable exposure to every bug that comes along, and most certainly will bring this one home to Mom and Dad. Since I’m fully capable of pushing a vacuum cleaner around, that’s a risk we can forego for the nonce.

Speaking of the which, the penicillin (recently determined not to be one of my many drug allergies) the orthodontist prescribed seems to have beaten back the infection around the dental post but not completely killed it off. It still aches, and the gum still feels odd near the damaged socket. Dollars to donuts, that will have to be removed…to the tune of an expensive and sterling unpleasant procedure.

The next appointment I have with him isn’t until the 18th; but this penicillin runs out tomorrow. I can NOT get past his front office staff, because I can’t make the woman understand what the concern is — i.e., I do not want to let an infection grow for a week if the penicillin didn’t kill it all off, nor do I want to promote resistance to the penicillin by stopping for a few days and then starting up again. I don’t know whether the woman is too uneducated to understand the issue — highly likely, given the quality of Arizona’s public schools and colleges — or whether objectively there’s nothing to worry about.

But…I did just get through to my regular dentist. He’s going out of town tomorrow, so they want me to show up in his precincts in…about an hour and 45 minutes. Yeah. Schlep through the rain over streets infested by lunatic drivers who don’t know how to drive in rain, and do it right this minute.

And so…away!

Panic à Costco?

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Went over to the Costco on the I-17 this morning to stock up on some products the store here in the po’ folks’ part of town doesn’t carry. Amazingly, for example, you can’t buy a chunk of blue cheese here in the low-rent district. But the store up north has a very nice Bel Gioso blue that’s wonderful. They also have a propane dispenser, the only Costco in town that does.

It’s always wise to plan one’s trips to that place propitiously. So a bit before noon on Friday morning I figured the store wouldn’t be too crowded. Hit the Albertson’s first, then hit the freeway, where a couple of those lighted message signs informed us that a construction worker had been killed. So got off the freeway to avoid a traffic jam and got to the store the back way.

Not too crowded? Hah! The Coronavirus Panic run on grocery and hardware stores has begun.

The place was jammed.

But it was weird. Normally Costco customers are exuberantly oblivious of their fellow grocery-cart pushers. And a lot of noise goes on and people are happily rolling toward whatever doodad they think they can’t live without. Not so today. Not that people weren’t talking and kids weren’t carrying on…it was that they were strangely quiet. And bizarrely polite — people would motion you ahead instead of cutting you off to get there first.

I got one of the last packages of toilet paper. People were buying a lot more TP than paper towels, but the paper towels were also going fast. And I nabbed the second-to-last package of boned chicken thighs. Drumsticks were gone. One of the butchers told us they were out of chicken and wouldn’t get more in until the first of the week.

It really was just…kind of a weird experience

Anyway, if you haven’t already done so, now may be the time to make a provisions run. If Costco is any measure, it looked like paper goods (especially TP!) and easily cooked or grilled meats were going fast. In these parts you can’t buy hand wipes, but countertop wipes by Lysol will work as well or (probably) better.

Don’t forget to keep the gas tank topped up, too.

…And I’m complaining…WHY?

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Ever have one of those moments when you find yourself wondering “Why am I whining about _[fill in the blank_“?

Coming nigh to the close of another full day of batting from pillar to post — doggy walk, grocery run, Home Depot run, Lowe’s run, Best Buy run, electric supply store run, bird feed project, mess pick-up, correspondence catch-up, real estate surveillance check, feast cooking, raccoon tracking, and on and on and endlessly on — I find myself wondering…why the hell do I worry about the chronic insomnia that rousts me around 2 or 3 every morning, when in fact during the day I DON’T FEEL TIRED?

In fact, I feel quite peppy all day: no sense of insomniac fatigue or crankiness.

Maybe — could it be? — just maybe going to bed around 9 or 10 p.m., waking up at 2 or 3 (= 5 hours’ sleep), loafing in the dark until 4 or 5 a.m., then falling back to sleep and waking up around 6 or 7 a.m. (= 5 + 2 hours sleep, for a total of 7 hours) is perfectly reasonable? The upshot is around seven hours’ of sleep, despite a two- or three-hour hiatus. Seven hours is thought to be normal and healthy for the agèd human. What is the difference whether you sleep 7 hours straight from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., or 7 hours off and on between around 9 p.m. and around 7 a.m.?

Seems to me if you feel fine the next day, all day, there really is no difference.

How many other things do we whine about when…really…they make no difference?

  • The homicidal traffic and our fellow moronic drivers? If we get from point A to point B without killing each other, does it really make any difference?
  • Our crazy relatives whose political opinion pigheadedly differs from our enlightened wisdom: this makes a difference how?
  • The gas price at the QT was 22 cents higher than at the Costco, where we had to drive an extra 7 miles (14 miles round-trip) to avail ourselves of the bargain: this changed our lives how?
  • The city raises its monthly trash collection bill by $2.46: our lives are destroyed by this to what extent?

Huh. Think o’ that.

What’s your favorite whinge?