Random Thoughts of All Sorts
By Rudi Raab and Julie Freestone
It’s a chaotic time — at least out there in the world and in our email, where we get comments of all sorts about our blogs, but not necessarily in any kind of sequence. So today we’re sharing some random thoughts about a range of topics.
The women from the car wash
About four times a year, Rudi takes each of our cars to a nearby car wash. A few days ago he began thinking about the Latina women who worked there. Since lockdown, the place is chained and empty. In the good old days (he doesn’t really mean that pre-shelter-in-place was good, because it was already the reign of the sharpie dude), there were at least 30–40 cars being worked on at the same time and all day long. Since March 17, nothing. What do the Latina women do who dried and polished and vacuumed cars all day long with minimum pay? Rudi used to be happy to give them a hefty tip. How do they feed their families now? He says he doesn’t care about the schmutz on his car but he does worry about them.
The bartender at our neighborhood restaurant
We used to leave the house when it was being cleaned. (first, because we didn’t want to be in the way and second, because Julie feels weird watching other people clean our house). Often, we went to the shoreline, took a walk and then stopped in for a drink at our favorite restaurant. (Julie had her retirement party there, we had a our book launch there). The restaurant closed and instead, we go to another local, long-time restaurant with a small bar and nice murals of Italy. Often, the young woman bartender would chat with us. A single mom whose mother babysat her children while she worked. The restaurant is only open for take-out now. They send out email to remind their regular customers they are still here. We asked about her. She’s working several days a week on the to-go business. It probably isn’t what she earned before but at least she has some income. We will give her a big tip. Maybe even before this is over.
Cocktail hour on our lawn
When the shelter-in-place began, our friends Deb and Sylvia suggested we have a date with them on Face Time. We had a delightful hour visit, exchanging news (we still had some then, only a week into the lockdown). Several other virtual meetings followed with other friends and some with family. Then our neighbor suggested a few weeks ago that we try having social-distanced cocktail hour on our lawn, She has been extremely conservative about going out of her house and she’s a nurse, so it seemed like a mostly safe idea.
We set up our chairs on either side of the path that leads to our front door and had a lively hour plus chatting. She brought her own drinks (we had to give her some gin but she took the bottle home) and we didn’t eat any common appetizers from shared plates. We’ve done it one more time with her and then this week with a couple who live nearby. It feels slightly decadent but we are maintaining more than our six feet of separation and not breathing near each other.
Victory with Air B and B
We had an exciting series of summer outings planned with Rudi’s nephew Matthias, who lives in Dusseldorf, Germany, his two kids and his wife, who is a nurse in a hospital. Weeks ago we all agreed the trip had to be cancelled. Matthias had made most of the arrangements, but Julie had reserved a cabin in Yosemite and we had planned to meet them there at the end of July after they toured Southern California. The location was a special one, because when Matthias was a child — maybe 12 years old — he came to visit with his parents and older brother and we all stayed in a cabin in that same area. That trip even included a close encounter with a bear.
Julie cancelled the reservation through Air B&B online and received confirmation of the cancellation and notification that we were receiving a $50 refund. Since we had paid more than $600, this didn’t make sense. A note to the host seemed to indicate they agreed: we should have gotten a full refund. But transactions about money had to be done through Air B&B.
Much time was spent with Ryan at Air B&B. He patiently read the rules about cancellation. The problem seemed to be the shelter-in-place that had been announced did not extend until the end of July. He did say, however, that if the hosts agreed to waive their cancellation policy, we’d get a refund and that he would contact them. Three phone calls later to update us about his progress in reaching them, we had our full refund.
When things stop making sense
Finally here are some things that occur to us: when does “color extender” shampoo stop making sense? When all the gray/white in your hair is completely visible and you can’t even remember what color you were extending? Or is what we are now doing is extending the grey color?
Why is it that you decided that your house cleaners couldn’t come during the shelter-in-place? (this thought has occurred to us when we washed the kitchen floor for the third time, cleaned the microwave and both bathrooms). What they do when they come in to handle and use all the cleaning products that are being sold out at the stores. The ones we wipe down the door knobs and lights switches with multiple times. Wouldn’t our house cleaners be the safest people to interact with?
Julie has always taken a water bottle with her on her walks. And whenever she leaves the house for that matter. But since you can’t drink water with a mask on, does it make sense to even take the bottle?
What random thoughts do you have?
Rudi Raab and Julie Freestone are sheltering-in-place in the Bay Area, California. They are cooking, taking walks and writing a blog every day. They wrote the novel Stumbling Stone.
