Written 4 November 2020
America’s election day, after Trump has ignored the virus all year- for 221 or more days – and today 102,000 new cases in the US per day, while their hospitals are too full of sick and dying people. Yesterday we came back from the city, darling K ensconced in her tiny apartment with care by the NDIS, and GG’s hearing test – he’s hearing much better now, in fact he’s complaining of noises!- carrying in the boat a huge blanket box. We never bought furniture here to this holiday house become a home, so we bought it on EBay but the sellers mi-informed us that it was smaller and lighter. Fifteen kilos they said, which GG and I can manage between us up the cliff. Oh well, I said, as we gazed at this huge, heavy object, we’ve driven all this way and it’s a nice antique, cedar, tongue and groove and only $27. Wonderful Dave Brown said no problem, the trolley can handle that. And when he trolleyed it down the jetty to our boat, there was an old salt, (old salts are usually strong) painting his sailing boat, and willingly helped Dave get it inside. Twenty-five kilos at least.
We hadn’t any idea how to get a twenty-five kilo box up the 42 steps to the house, or even where to put it. It’s a monster. We’ll leave it in the boat to think.
However, we got distracted. Not only was it the US election, but in our little life, we’d gone to Harvest Seeds and brought 43 tiny Native Plants seedlings from G’s list of hundreds of plants that once grew in this area. I just want to bring back the birds, I told the assistant. They’ve been gone since last summer’s fires.
I explained I was sharing the plants with neighbours T and Dee.
You’re doing bush regeneration, she said.
I was delighted to hear it sound so grand. I just want more birds to sing.
So I invited To to come and select tiny seedlings. i’d cook a celebration cake for we bush regenerators, of course gluten-free, Rosalie’s recipe made with almond flour and desiccated coconut, four eggs and too much sugar. I’d planned to be able to tell T what each seedling looked like in flower from the illustrated list I did with Dee. However, the list on the memory stick is corrupted, Dee is away and I need help from him to put his uncorrupted version on FB, the US election took over my morning and by 10.15, the cake wasn’t in the oven and I was in my nightie when T turned up. I scampered off and quickly changed while GG showed him the seedlings.
Harvest Seeds had carefully labelled everything but many of the labels had slipped.
Anything that flowers, T said. I assured him that I’d been promised they’re all flowers. Harvest Seeds said that the next time we went to them, they’d sell us edibles from this area! T went off with his seedlings to help M, another new neighbour to paint his house. I said I’d bring the cake along when it was done- that’d give me a chance o sticky-break inside the house, which I’d never done. It’s the old post-office house from Brooklyn, bought over by barge, and one of the first houses here. But my cake was a disaster – the gas went out, the cake hadn’t risen -in fact, it was one of those miserable cakes that deflate as you watch, and in the middle was what looked like yellow mud. We changed gas bottles, I shoved the cake back in the oven- something you’re not supposed to do- and 30 minutes later, it emerged flat but delicious. Meanwhile, on the TV, Donald Trump seemed to be winning. Oh no! he’ll let everyone in America die of the virus! He doesn’t care who gets it.
GG reminded me that Donald Trump, who still thinks the virus is just a flu- he’s always said that, especially now that he’s recovered from it, of course with state of the art medical treatment – Trump had told his supporters to ignore the medical advice and come out and vote on election day- today – whereas Biden had told his supporters to mail in their votes, to keep co-vid safe.
So Biden’s votes will take longer, GG said. Opening those hundreds of thousands of envelopes.
Three things happened this afternoon.
I planted fifteen little seedlings and then the rain bucketed down, watering them for me.
I took the cake to M and T, who’d just finished lunch so it was dessert, and as we sat around chatting, I happened to mention the 25 kg box in the boat, and T and M jumped up, they wouldn’t be stopped, they loped down the track, bundled the monster box out of the boat and brought it upstairs.
Twenty-five kilos is our benchmark at the gym, they insisted.
So now we have a huge coffee table and we’re deciding where it’ll stay. So far it’s where they left it. A nice coffee-table.
And the third thing – Donald Trumph has declared victory! He says the only legitimate votes are the ones countable today! If any other votes are counted, he said, then this is fraud!
As one commentator said, it’s like declaring a football team has won depending on the score at half-time.
So we’re in for a long night.