A visit by the virus?

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According to our local news, our home town has a possible case of COVID-19. A 46-year-old woman tested positive at the county hospital on Wednesday. Apparently there have been some problems with the tests, so the official determination won’t be made until the CDC reviews the results. That is not particularly reassuring.

The woman had what was reported to be mild symptoms last week, but they were apparently serious enough that she went to the county hospital emergency department on Saturday. They sent her back home at that time, which is not particularly reassuring. When her symptoms got worse, she came back. According to the reports, she did not meet the criteria set by the state health department for testing, but the doctor who examined her was sufficiently concerned that he insisted on a test. That she did not meet the criteria for testing but still tested positive is not particularly reassuring.

Everyone at the hospital who came into contact with her on Saturday is supposed to be self-quarantined. Her family, too. But, of course, there is almost no way to tell who else might have been close enough to her to get infected over the past few days. And that, too, is not particularly reassuring.

She had recently traveled to Washington, DC, which is not on the list of areas with active cases. No one seems to know where she might have been infected, assuming she is. Local officials here are reassuring everyone that this is not a community-based transmission. Community transmission would mean that the virus has infected enough people who have not reported their condition, that there is no way to identify the source of the transmission.

At this point, no one has been able to determine where she was infected, so insisting that there is no community transmission might perhaps be a hard position to defend. Still, maybe they could trace it, given enough time. And also, the test might not be confirmed by the CDC.

Leah and I went to the grocery store Friday night to pick up a few items. I was curious about hand sanitizers, so I looked for them. The shelves were empty, just as the news media have been reporting in other areas. I thought, well, what about homemade sanitizer? So I did an online search and found a couple of sets of instructions. They all use isopropyl alcohol, which is still on the shelves, but the other ingredients were out of stock. I guess I’m not the only one who thought of that.

We are not particularly worried about the virus right now. We probably still won’t be too worried if the positive result is confirmed. Young and middle-aged people seem to handle the virus pretty well. Unfortunately, we fall into one of the groups most at risk for complications, the elderly. I don’t like calling myself that, but apparently the cutoff is 60, so we both quality. On the other hand, we don’t have any underlying heart or lung conditions that also make people more vulnerable.

At this point, the virus seems to be out in the wild, and almost certainly will be around for a long time.

Over there?

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Our two outdoor cats, Chloe and Dusty, were watched cat TV Wednesday night.

Something caught their attention. Over there.

Chloe lost interest. Dusty did not.

Then Chloe thought, maybe there is something over there.

Nope. Nothing to see over there.

No way up

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As both of my faithful readers know, we live on top of a mountain in northwest Georgia. We call it a mountain; it’s not very high, but the sides are steep and the road over the mountain is narrow and winding. Fouche Gap Road is only about a lane and a half wide. The road up what I call the front of the mountain, the side facing town, has a fairly sharp left turn near the bottom of the mountain. It then snakes about halfway up the mountain before making a hairpin left turn. On the right, the curve is up against the mountain. There is a small area at the edge, just big enough for a couple of pickup trucks to park. On the inside, which is the downhill side, there is a sharp drop down to a wet-weather stream.

There is a “no-trucks” sign at the bottom of the mountain. In fact, if a luckless truck driver happens to find him or herself on Huffaker Road at the turnoff to Fouche Gap Road, that driver will see “no-truck” signs on both Huffaker and Fouche Gap. What is not apparent is that Huffaker is narrow, but perfectly adequate for trucks of any size, while Fouche Gap Road is a trap from which there is almost no exit.

On Tuesday evening Leah and I went out for Chinese food and a quick trip to the grocery store — we always need cat food. On the way back we found two cars stopped just before the hairpin curve on Fouche Gap. Ahead there was a tractor-trailer truck stuck on the curve. The front of the truck was pushed right up against the slope of the bank at the right edge of the road, and on the left the rear wheels of the trailer were several feet off the pavement, very close to the drop-off. It was well and truly stuck.

We spoke to the drivers of the cars ahead of us. They didn’t know anything, so I went up to talk to the truck driver. He was a young fellow hauling a load of chickens to a little town named Menlo near the Georgia-Alabama border. He said he had been following his GPS, and it directed him to turn onto Fouche Gap Road. Now if you happen to know where Menlo is relative to our little town of Rome, you will know that there are several possible routes from the west side of Rome to Menlo, including going over Lavender Mountain by way of Fouche Gap Road. And you will also know that there are several reasonably good routes. Fouche Gap Road is not one of them. It wouldn’t even be a top pick if it didn’t have truck-trapping curves.

The driver and I walked back towards our car to see if he could get a cell signal and call for help. He eventually did so. It was probably going to take at least a half an hour for a really big tow truck to get there and pick up the back of his trailer to swing it onto the road. I suspect that the tow truck would have to back all the way up to that point because the road is too narrow for a big truck to turn around on.

The driver imagined that once he was around that curve, he would simply drive the rest of the way over the mountain. I told him it would probably be a better idea to turn around at the top of the mountain and go back down the way he came up, because there is an even sharper curve on the back side of the mountain. I told him he could turn around at the cross road at the top of the mountain.

This was the second time we have been blocked by a truck stuck at that same curve. The only choice we have in these cases is to turn around, drive back down to Huffaker Road, and go the long way around into Texas Valley. Then we drive along the north edge of Lavender Mountain to where Fouche Gap Road comes down the back side of the mountain. Then we take the road to the top of the mountain. The hairpin curve is about a half a mile from our house. The detour is a little over 11 miles.

We had been home for about a half an hour when we heard the roar of diesel engines. We couldn’t see the action, but apparently the chicken truck was rescued.

The odd thing is that just that morning one of our neighbors had posted on Facebook about a tractor-trailer truck trying to come up Fouche Gap Road the same way this truck came. Apparently that truck made it.

Back to work

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I almost never get up early enough to see this kind of sunrise.

On Friday, however, I had to get up early enough so that I could drive over to Huntsville, Al, to get my fingerprints made, and my appointment was at 9:30.

I have been doing a little work every so often for the company I used to work for. Till now, each job has amounted to less than a full day, and I could do it at home. A few days ago, my old boss called and asked if I would be interested in doing some more work. She said, “You can make a lot of money!” That got my attention.

The job, which I agreed to take, will be about half time for six months. The fingerprints, which were done electronically, were required since it had been so long since I had been printed. So, I drove over. It’s about a two hour and fifteen minute drive. The prints were made at a company that specializes in that. After I left there I went by my old office to see a former colleague, Kenneth.

We talked for a while, and then I said I had to leave for home. Kenneth said since it was almost lunch time, I should stay and go to Rosie’s, my favorite Mexican restaurant. I couldn’t resist that.

I took our new dog Zoe with me. She loves to ride, or maybe she’s just afraid she’ll be left behind if she doesn’t hop up into the truck. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to take her with me to work. That means Leah will have to do all the dirty work with the dogs, and Zoe is still not leash trained.

Leah is not entirely onboard with my new job. She doesn’t like for me to be gone that much, and she is not looking forward to trying to walk Zoe. To be honest, I am ambivalent about going back to work, even half time for six months. There was, after all, a reason that I retired, and I have been enjoying having all my time free.

Except for doctors’ appointments, of course.

a fighter by his trade

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Now tell me again just how many lives a cat has. We aren’t sure how many Sylvester has used up, but surely he must be getting close to the limit.

He came home Saturday limping — was that morning or late evening? I can’t remember. Leah said he seemed sore all over. He complained when she touched him almost anywhere on his body. That is pretty much normal for him these days. Not the limping, but the overall sensitivity to being touched. Maybe it was a sprain, we thought. Maybe he would get better, we thought. He was still limping badly on Tuesday, so we took him to the vet. She dragged him out of the carrier and palpated his leg while her assistant held on firmly. I don’t know why he didn’t kill everyone in the room, because he certainly would have if we had tried that. She said she couldn’t feel anything except a swollen leg. No breaks, no obvious wounds. So he got an antibiotic shot and came home with us. Today, Thursday, he can still barely touch his left front foot to the ground.

His routine lately has been to come in, maybe in the morning or maybe late in the afternoon, eat, and spend several hours asleep in a living room chair. Then he might eat, and go to the door to go back outside. And he goes, no one knows where, but he stays out all night.

There are at least three new cats around, two all white and one black and white. We know who “owns” them, but no one keeps them inside. At least one of the new cats is a male. We know that because we have seen him spraying in our front yard. The other two are probably female. We don’t know whether Sylvester is fighting them. If so, he’s not doing well. We are wondering whether he makes the rounds, visiting each one on successive days, getting his butt kicked by each one in turn.

We were trying to think of how many times Sylvester has been to the vet for ailments or injuries. We believe that the number is countable, but for us it is unknown. He has one large, hairless scar on the back of his head that took weeks to heal. There is another scar lower on his neck. I can’t remember which that one is. He also recently recovered from something (someone?) apparently taking his head into its mouth, with one set of teeth on the top of his head and the opposing set on his face, which included his eye. That was the time he had an actual dent in the cornea.

And, of course, there was the time he disappeared for six weeks, apparently spending much of that time in a neighbor’s garage/storage shed. He came home thin and with ailments of his fundament, probably caused by lack of fluids.

Before that he has spent time in stir I mean boarding at the vet’s for urinary problems. Was that only once, or was it twice? Who knows?

When he goes outside, I think of old movies about boxers. Sylvester is the one that staggers to his corner with blood coming from his nose, one eye black and nearly swollen closed, dizzy and confused. And still he goes back out into the ring.