Fully in the COVID funk
Which is not as bad as actually having Coronavirus, I’ll readily admit. The combination of being laid off, existential angst, and uncertainty have cast a pall over the proceedings in the past few weeks. I haven’t been motivated to do any of my usual practicing, studying, or creative endeavors. It’s mostly been the basic daily tasks (exercising, household chores, walking/feeding the dogs) and then maybe a bit of cooking and otherwise passive activity like reading, watching television, or playing video games.
The reduction in work schedule hasn’t been the biggest adjustment because I was already only working part-time. It has been a challenge to accept being laid off indefinitely, however. Watching our money, it appears we’ll be able to do okay for a long time if not indefinitely, but this is assuming no large scale financial or other disasters are added to COVID-19 and being laid off. We’ve already experienced a few unplanned expenses, which is honestly fairly typical in the grand scheme. I had already decided to start mowing the lawn again after our service had jacked up the price for the third year in a row. This on top of the fact that I’m pretty sure they stiffed us for two weeks worth of service at the end of last year.
With my reduced schedule at work, it only made sense to start cutting the lawn again. It’s only about a 90-minute job and the additional sunlight and physical labor won’t hurt. As luck would have it, storing a lawnmower for over three years plays a bit of havoc on the engine and fuel system. The carburetor was stuck open, so the fuel immediately began to leak out after the fill-up. I replaced the carburetor and did a bit of cleaning up and managed to get it started. It was chugging a bit so I cleaned up the now very old spark plug and can’t say whether that helped or not. All that to say at best it sounded like an asthmatic hay fever victim with Coronavirus after attempting a marathon. It was huffing and puffing with even the sparsest grass and the plugging of the carburetor leak revealed a few additional leaks on the backside of the engine.
Assuming it was going to be a cascade of equipment failures leading to parts replacements yet never achieving a satisfactory end result, I made the command decision just to replace it with a new mower. I attempted to buy one at Home Depot but found they were social distancing customers and the queue looked like it might take 30-60 minutes just to get into the store, with no guarantee they’d have what I needed. Being that the lawn wasn’t yet at the critical stage of shagginess, I decided to look on Amazon and found an electric model by the same company as the chain saw I had purchased last year. I’ve been pretty impressed with the power the chain saw motor generates, so I was more willing to go against the lifelong convention of small gas engines on mowers. So, new lawnmower is inbound for Wednesdayish.
Present circumstances have conspired to diminish the significance of this week, which is our thirtieth wedding anniversary. I think I had mentioned a few posts back (in the journal maybe) that we had canceled our travel plans several weeks ago, just assuming that we’d either be on lockdown or that it would be the prudent decision to get out when refunds were still available. So, that out of the way I still wanted to mark the occasion, so I’m thinking I’ll bake a carrot cake. Aeyong always loves them and it’ll be something different to try out in the kitchen. I need to gather a few ingredients depending on which recipe I plan to follow.