A Rant on the Side

Ok, I wasn't going to do this. I was just going to write about how my husband's Navy training is currently affecting me, but no. I just have to rant about...Swine Flu.

Seriously? Are we still pretending that these "pandemics" mean anything? I read today that 100 cases of Swine Flu have now been reported in the U.S., and one person has died. To hear journalists talk, you'd think civilization is coming to an end.

A hundred cases of Swine Flu, you say? Gee, let me strap on my respirator.

It seems every spring, a "deadlier" flu starts circulating around confined spaces. People take the news seriously, get whipped into a panic, go banging down the doors of medical clinics to get the latest flu vaccine, and then spend the next three weeks blowing their noses. I can't understand why people continue to waste their time. I haven't been diagnosed as having any type of influenza since I was about 10, and I never get flu shots. Sure, the elderly need to have them, but the average person between 18 and 50 probably has a greater chance of perishing in a fiery wreck on the Interstate than dying from any type of flu.

Some might say, "Oh, yeah? What about those hundreds of people who died of Swine Flu in Mexico?" Well, duh! Mexico is practically the third world country of the Western Hemisphere. Many places down there don't even have electricity and running water. Of course Mexicans are more susceptible to dying, simply because they don't possess the type of medical care we enjoy in the U.S.

What's worse, some government officials and political commentators are trying to turn the Swine Flu "epidemic" into some sort of political issue, saying things like, "I told you we should have spent more money on pandemic prevention!" Really. What's more money for "pandemic prevention" going to accomplish? Print extra posters on the importance of washing hands to hang in public restrooms? Please. We're not in kindergarten anymore--though you wouldn't know it from sitting in on a session of Congress.

At any rate, they can keep their flu vaccine and their scare tactics as far as I'm concerned. I'm confident the human race shall endure rather well, as it has every other flu season. Right now, the weather here couldn't be more beautiful, people are smiling and driving down to the beach, and there's not a sniffle to be heard anywhere.

Maybe Jesus does like me

Luckily, my horrible day didn't turn out to be so horrible after all. The Xbox 360 is fine. My husband came home and discovered I had just knocked a cable loose. I managed to get my car mirror straightened out. My boss's request for another grammar book may have been canceled, leaving me free to finish my novel this summer. There's still epoxy on my dashboard and I don't have a single doctor's appointment yet, but, overall, things are looking up.

I started reading a biography on Jonathan Swift, most famously known as the author of Gulliver's Travels, by Victoria Glendinning. Right off the bat, I became enamored with her prose. It's sort of eighteenth-century classic English meets new modern with a little Jackie Kennedy thrown in. I would kill to hear either James Earl Jones or Garrison Keillor narrate it. Ms. Glendinning supposedly has only one work of fiction on the market, entitled Flight: A Novel, and I can't wait to crack it open.

Writer's envy. It's a monster. Today, in between tutoring students on the last day of class, I spent time promoting my blog online. I discovered many bad blogs with many followers and several good blogs with less than three followers. Unfortunately, I'm painfully aware that my writing is not particularly interesting. Sharp wit and gripping prose elude me in a chronic sort of way. Which probably means that if I do manage to get published, I won't be fully appreciated until after I've died penniless, and then my dry-as-dust prose will be forced almost as a type of unusual punishment upon countless stone-faced, glassy-eyed liberal arts students who probably won't read it after all, but will just look up the plot summary on SparkNotes.

*Sigh* I suppose it's better to die hated than to die in obscurity. I'm sure some famous person said that.

Anything Else?

I guess Jesus didn't appreciate what I had to say about him yesterday. Today has been horrible. Check this out:

1. To start things off, I managed to destroy our nearly sole source of entertainment: our Xbox 360. We not only use it to play video games, but also to watch movies and stream television shows from Netflix. I somehow managed to trip over the Internet cable attached to the console, which made it fall about 1.5 feet from the chest it sits on. I don't know how a fall from less than two feet onto carpet could break it, but I digress. I'll probably have to pay for the repairs since I caused it to fall. The last repair job I sent off for took about a month. We don't have cable, local television, or another DVD player. Did I also mention that my tutoring job has ended for the academic year and my husband just started back to his Naval training for 14 hours a day?

2. Since I recently resolved to get professional help, I called my doctor to set up an appointment to get a referral to a specialist. I also needed to get the phone number for the base dental and optometry clinics. However, no one at the appointment call center would answer the &*%damn phone all four times I called. I couldn't even get an answering machine! I finally had to get on the Internet and look up alternate phone numbers for the call center. No one answered those, either. I know the clinic is open today because it isn't a holiday and their parking lot was packed when I drove by earlier.

3. However, I did manage to find the number for the optometry clinic on the Internet. They told me that they are no longer seeing military dependents due to a staff shortage, so I will have to find a private civilian optometrist. Oh, goody.

4. My husband made his own GPS holder for the car just before we went on vacation. Today, I noticed that the epoxy he had used to repair it had dripped onto the dashboard. I don't know if anything exists that can remove epoxy from textured, interior-grade plastic. We bought the car brand new only six months ago.

5. I also noticed today that the right-hand mirror on my car has recently been dented in so far that I can only see the inside of the passenger compartment. I tried readjusting it electronically, but the mirror will only move a couple of millimeters before it pops right back into that same position. In short, I cannot see traffic approaching the right-hand side of my brand new car.

6. All of this happened before 3 p.m.

7. My husband has yet to come home and learn about any of this.

It's been a long day, friends.