The Okie in Isolation: Spring Break Begins

By Bobby Neal Winters
I am at home.  This is the seventh day in a row that I’ve been at home.
It’s not too bad so far.
Though you can’t tell it, since I’ve written those first three sentences
I’ve set up a telephone appointment with my bank;
Walked around the block;
Called Bubba on the phone (this was done simultaneously with number 2 above);
Used a battery-powered angle-grinder to turn a Tea-tin into a piggy bank for my youngest grandson.
Let’s expand on those in reverse order.
(4) My wife has taken it as a quarantine challenge to potty-train my youngest grandson.  As an aid to doing this, she is giving him coins as a reward.  She first attempted using pennies.  To this my grandson replied: “No grandma, big pennies.”  He’s not yet potty-trained but he can negotiate. I think this needs to be rewarded, so he’s going to get a home-made piggy bank for his “big pennies.”
Pig pennies, by the way, are quarters, and my wife is taking them from my change flowerpots.  That’s fine.
(3) Bubba is trapped in his house as well. He isn’t dealing with the quarantine stoically.  He has a good imagination and has never used it to imagine anything good.  I suspect this is because he’s had too much pain and disappointment in his life.  So I talked with him and it did us both a world of good.
(2) I talked while I was walking because I am a Fitbit slave.  I’ve decided this isn’t a bad thing during the Great Isolation.  We need to have structure; we need to keep moving.  Walking around outside is a good reminder that there is a lot of good in the world.  There are no unburied bodies in the street yet.  Everyday that happens is a good day.
(1) My wife and I began the process of estate planning.  Having put together a revocable trust, the attorney gave us a letter of things we needed to do.  I immediately put that aside for “later.”  That was about 4 months ago.  It is now later.  It turns out there are only a few things we need to do because--and I cannot stress this too much--we don’t have anything.  Having said that, we need to move our meager savings into the trust. Therefore, I set up a phone call.
Happy first day of Spring Break