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a different homecoming for Powerful
Wednesday, November 10 2021
Gretchen and I don't usually wake up together except in the Adirondacks, but this morning for some reason we did (mostly because she woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep). Gretchen likes it when we wake up together because of the wildly absurd places our conversations go. This morning she asked me if I remember when Jelly Bellies first came out. I was familiar with the name, but doubted I could "pick them out in a lineup." She then explained that Jelly Bellies came out in the 1980s and are "jelly beans 2.0." She said they came in more colors and had a wide range of flavors, including piña colada. I said this reminded me of [Crayola] crayons, and then mentioned the "flesh" crayon that used to be in the big 64-color box. We had a good chuckle about this, though Gretchen (most of whose friends were not white when she was using crayons) said she never thought anything was amiss until later. (Most of my friends were white, and it didn't occur to me that there was any problem with that crayon's name when I used to use it. It was handy for quickly coloring in the faces of the people in my family or the fictitious people standing around outside a house.)
Today while I worked from home, Gretchen took the day off from her bookstore job and drove down to Westchester to retrieve Powerful, who was having his second grand homecoming in less than two years. The first, of course, had been in May 2020, when he was released from prison after 24 years in prison, emerging into a free world beset by a global pandemic. Today he was coming home from the hospital after a bout of heart trouble so bad that he received a heart transplant. His new residence will be with friends in Tivoli. Gretchen had been to his new home yesterday to help prepare the room, and this evening after bringing him home to it, he, she, and his two new housemates celebrated with a vegan lasagna. Out of consideration for his dietary issues, which includes temporary diabetes and a low sodium requirement, Gretchen had made the lasagna using brown-rice noodles.
At a little after 4:00pm, I drove in the Bolt out to Woodstock, where Gretchen had arranged an appointment for me to receive a covid booster shot at the Village Apothecary. I'd never been to the Village Apothecary before, and it's, as one would expect, an old-school small town pharmacy. There's much less of a back room in the Village Apothecary than there is in say, a CVS, so behind the counters are lines of shelves stuffed with prescription bottles. Looking at them from a distance, I wondered how many of them contained adderall. They're pretty no-nonsense there, and, unlike most retail establishments, there's an absolute requirement that everyone in the store wear a mask. Their covid vaccination program was a fairly well-oiled machine, with a woman near the door asking everyone as they came in if they were there for their booster shots. Nearly everyone was. Nobody was there for their first shots; evidently anyone patronizing the store had received those months ago.
I'd done some research and learned that the Moderna vaccine is somewhat more effective than the Pfizer vaccines I'd received back in March and April. Since there is now no restriction on mixing vaccines, I decided my booster would be a shot of Moderna. Not only does Moderna's effectiveness wane more slowly than other vaccines, but there may also be a benefit to mixing vaccination brands in an effect similar to hybrid vigor, since some parts of the coronavirus spike protein might be more easily sensed by one brand of vaccine and another part might be more easily sensed by the other. It only took about twenty minutes for me to get my shot (which went into my right arm). Since this was an actual business supplying the vaccine (instead of a makeshift clinic at an abandoned Best Buy), I had to supply my insurance card even though the vaccination was free. I don't know what would've happened had I been uninsured (as I have been several times for long periods in my life). After being vaccinated, one is supposed to then wait around for fifteen minutes in case there is a bad reaction, but I only waited around for at most two minutes (even the woman giving me the shot was pretty sure waiting the full fifteen minutes was pointless for someone who hadn't had bad reactions to earlier coronavirus vaccinations).
On the drive home, I stopped at the Hurley Ridge Hannaford to get a four pack of a strong "flavored stout" that tasted like what I imagine chocolate milk tastes like (though I've never actually had chocolate milk). It was 12 percent alcohol and had a bourbony aftertaste that I rather liked.
Tonight after Gretchen got home, we watched the final episode of Squid Game. I found the ending anticlimactic and weak, but it left the door open for another season, which I would definitely watch.
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