The Great Reopening, Act I

As for our family, we’ve all journeyed twice through the queue at Nick Rodriguez Community Center in Antioch to get our recommended shots. Roni and Glenn went to appointments just minutes apart on April 21, while Ben rolled up his sleeve for the last time on April 27. Our only side effects: a bit of tenderness around the injection site and some lingering muscle aches in our sacrificial arms. Other than that, we should all be ready to take on the world, or at least appear in it without fear that we will contract one of the least understood infections of our lifetimes.

Mask on? Mask off? That confusion continues, no thanks to the CDC and its endless flip-flopping on policies concerning whether it is safe to ditch the masks once we’ve been vaccinated. Mask on? Definitely when it comes to shopping at the grocery store or sending little ones to school, in the unlikely event they are allowed back in the classroom. Mask off? Sure, if you happen to be outdoors and away from crowds, regardless of whether you can no longer spread the virus to anyone. Mask on… mask off… We’ve got more moves than the Karate Kid. Now they are telling us it may be months yet before we can ditch those ill-fitting, uncomfortable strips of fabric and resume our lives as normal without fear of prosecution or political repercussions.

One thing we are certain of is that getting vaccinated has allowed families to safely be families once again, or at least be together in the same place without standing six feet apart. Such was the case on April 11 when, for the first time in more than a year, Ben and Glenn got to spend time with Sean on a day hike at Round Valley Regional Preserve in Brentwood.

It was a Gehlke Bros reunion — the football picks trio getting to reconnect on the sloping foothills of Mount Diablo on a warm morning that embodied spring. Ben and Glenn drove down to meet Sean at the park, Ben handling the driving duties on unfamiliar, winding backroads. From the parking lot that was unusually crowded with other cooped-up souls tasting their freedom, the three made a 6-mile trek that started on the relatively forgiving Miwok Trail and wound up on the relatively unforgiving Hardy Canyon Trail — the latter appropriately named because it takes a hardy individual (or a determined one of less stature) to successfully make it to the summit and then navigate the way back down through lightly forested and rocky terrain.

The route was not unfamiliar to Glenn or Sean, who had hiked there together in May 2017. It was a new experience for Ben, who thanks to his daily duties at the grocery store and a recent obsession with fitness activities seemingly had little trouble negotiating the steep grades. The same couldn’t be said for his dad and uncle, who needless to say are a bit out of shape from their months of staying mostly at home. But a few well-timed breaks and everyone made it around the loop and back to the parking lot just fine.

We all worked up an appetite after the hike, so it was decided (by Ben) that we should go somewhere to grab lunch. That led us to Digger’s Diner in Brentwood, where we ordered burgers, fries, shakes and (for Sean) a large salad. Remarkably, it was the first time since the beginning of the pandemic that we had been to a restaurant and dined outdoors, usually preferring to take our grub home or have it delivered to us. Contra Costa County had only days earlier entered the so-called orange tier that allows restaurants to resume indoor dining at 25 percent capacity. We were surprised to find every booth inside the diner filled, and while we hadn’t planned to eat indoors because we had only received our first round of vaccines by then and Sean still didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of being in close quarters with other diners, we would have expected the restaurant owners to be more cautious about the rules.

We wound up at a shaded table on the front sidewalk. Fortunately it was a nice day and it felt good to have a bit of breeze on us while we enjoyed our meals. Still, we all found ourselves longing for the day when we will again be able to choose where to eat our food because we want to and not because we have to.

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D

ESPITE A SETBACK last month in our quest to purchase new windows and doors, when our sales consultant failed to keep an appointment because he was on vacation and no one knew this when they put us in the schedule book at Lowe’s, we did manage to make some progress in April. Well, if you count progress as going through a reality check.

After we failed to make a connection with our consultant Justin the first time, Roni succeeded in rescheduling the appointment for the first week in April. And this time Justin showed up, armed with his tablet computer and a few relevant sales brochures we needed to look at while we discussed the ins and outs of our project. Masks on for all, we sat outside on the front porch and talked about materials, workmanship and cost of the various products we were considering. Oh yeah, the cost part… Justin quickly shattered any illusions we might have that this would be an inexpensive venture just because we were going through a big-box home improvement store rather than a specialized window and door installer.

We told him we wanted to replace the sliding patio doors in our dining room and master bedroom with French doors — the kind with sidelights that open independently to let air in, and with a regular door in the center that swings in or out. Then came the sticker shock: Around $8,000 per door, or roughly double the price we’d been quoted at Home Depot. The reason, Justin explained, is because sliding doors and French doors are not the same size, off the shelf. Most homes are built with inexpensive (read crappy) sliders, and going from one to the other means custom-building the replacement. Custom = expensive. Could the wall be modified to accept the larger French door? Well, yes and no. Yes, a contractor could do this; no, Lowe’s doesn’t do this because it involves altering load-bearing walls and other tricky tasks. So, our choice becomes go with the more expensive doors or compromise on price and accept the sliders we have (and hate.)

Next it was on to discussion about windows. We are looking at purchasing three — one for the living room and two for the bedrooms at the front of the house. Energy efficiency is a consideration, but the most important feature on our wish list is better soundproofing to combat the increasingly noisy environment we live in. It was quite convenient that the neighbors came home and cranked up their home stereo speakers while Justin was with us, so he could hear first hand what we are dealing with. We talked about types of glass — double panes, triple panes, and laminate — the latter being the ultimate choice for quieter homes. Yes, laminate glass would raise the cost of our windows by about $700 each, but it wasn’t a deal breaker.

We had looked at some double-hung windows by Pella on an earlier trip to Lowe’s and fell in love with them. It was exactly what Roni wanted for the living room, mainly because she could open the top of the window for ventilation without worry about cats clawing at the screen material as is currently the situation. Justin came inside the house — (“Oh, just so you know, I had COVID like three months ago…”) — to measure the window in question, then delivered the bad news: the living room window space is unusually large, making it a poor candidate for a double-hung replacement; the new window would be too heavy. We could replace our single window with two double-hungs, but they would be awkwardly narrow. What about ditching the sliding window entirely and replacing it with a fixed pane that doesn’t open, Roni wondered? Well, it was at least possible, but it would eliminate any chance of using the window for ventilation.

Now we were starting to get budget conscious, as well as running long on our consultation appointment. Justin threw out some ballpark numbers based on the sizes of our remaining windows, Roni got him to quote prices on cheaper alternatives, he talked us out of going with Pella and recommended Milgard (because he really likes the customer support and product workmanship, plus they are located on the West Coast), and then we were done. But where were we? More confused than ever.

So the upshot of all this is we got a good basic education about doors and windows and a more realistic idea of what short of budget we would need to assemble if we plan to pursue this project. We haven’t ruled it out, but much like any major purchase, we now realize we are only at the beginning of what will be a long process. Even if we were to order doors and windows today, they likely wouldn’t be installed until July or later. A lot can happen in three months. We’ll cross our fingers that one of those things is a quieter neighborhood, although we certainly don’t expect it.

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W

HEN IT RAINS it pours, at least where budgeting is concerned. For the past year it seemed our biggest expense was food, either from the grocery store or when dishing it out to some restaurant or delivery service to provide our next take-out order. But now that folks are getting vaccinated and the world is reawakening, appointments like with our window consultant are being made and kept. Deals are getting done. Money is changing hands, electronically if not via good old-fashioned cash or check.

Glenn had tried unsuccessfully to delay a dental visit until the end of the pandemic, but as we wrote last month, pain and necessity eventually won out and he underwent a root canal procedure near the end of March. Costly as that was, the job was only half done. When a tooth is traumatized by a root canal treatment, it usually must be crowned to prevent the tooth from breaking in the future. Crowns tend to be less expensive than the root canal, but even with insurance we were looking at another $300 to add to the $600 he’d already shelled out.

So it was back to Western Dental in Antioch on April 5 for what was supposed to be a “crown prep” appointment in which the existing gold crown would be removed and an impression made for creating its replacement. But the gods or perhaps the Tooth Fairy were watching over Glenn that day because the dentist took a look at the tooth in question and determined that the existing crown was in fair enough shape to save. The endodontist had drilled neatly through the center to do his work, so all that was needed was an amalgam filling to close up the hole. Three-hundred dollars versus thirty dollars. Yep, sounds like a win!

The weird part of the experience was that the filling required no numbing whatsoever. The dentist simply plucked out the temporary filling, blew in a little compressed air to clean up the tooth — there was no longer a nerve inside to feel pain — and plugged up the hole like a regular cavity filling. Mission accomplished in about 15 minutes, after which Glenn received the cleaning he’d originally gone in for more than a month earlier, something he’d thought he’d have to go back for at a later date.

Lest you become too excited for our dental windfall, consider that the savings was almost immediately sucked up by the inevitable appliance failure. It sucks when machines suck… or in this case don’t suck, as what happened with our vacuum cleaner. We’d bought a little Eureka upright more than 12 years ago when we had our living room carpet installed, and although it was never more than a light-duty vacuum, it was adequate for the task. Adequate, that is, until we became a three-cat household.

Now our living room carpet — as well as all the other soft surfaces in our home — has become a magnet for cat hair. We probably could manufacture ugly Christmas sweaters for every member of our family and still have fur left over, that’s how much cat hair lingers in our home. And it was that hair that eventually overwhelmed our little Eureka and rendered it inoperable. Glenn had disassembled it once before and repaired it with some success, so he thought he might do so again. But for whatever reason, he couldn’t figure out how to take apart the plastic housing, lost pieces of it inside the machine, and eventually gave up with the vacuum scattered about the living room floor. Sorry, doctor, but the patient has succumbed.

So we headed over to Target in search of something more robust than our old Eureka, and $130 later came home with a Bissell CleanView Swivel Rewind Pet Vacuum Cleaner. Well, at least it had all the right buzzwords on the box. We surmised that anything with “pet” in the name and a picture of a dog on the packaging could easily conquer three cats’ worth of pet dander. And so far we haven’t been disappointed.

Right out of the box, the new vacuum proved to us that we should have retired the old model years ago. Roni filled its canister not once, not twice, but yessir, yessir, three bags full of cat hair. The carpet almost looked clean for once, which was just a side benefit as far as we were concerned; our allergies have all been raging this spring and we can’t help but believe that cat hair is a large part of the problem.

Next up for the money pit that is our home lately, a dump run. Roni has been hard at work cleaning up debris in the backyard, and she’s assembled quite a pile of… er, crap… in the back of our pickup truck. Tree limbs, rotting wood and a couple of old toilets make up most of the payload so far, but we’ve got a lot more to go and it’s probably going to be several trips before we (or she) are satisfied with the result. So thank you, Mr. President, for those stimulus checks you deposited into our bank account recently, because it looks like we’ll be spending them in short order.

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A

ND SPEAKING OF spending stimulus money, Ben certainly has done his part to contribute to the Great Recovery. For months he has been searching for the new Sony PlayStation 5, which may go down in history as the greatest video gaming console no one ever used. The reasons for this are many, ranging from strong pent-up demand among avid gamers to supply chain shortages brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. But it is no joking matter to those who have been searching in vain since well before Christmas for this must-have system.

Like many others, Ben prowled the internet blogs and chat rooms each day on the lookout for tips about when and where to acquire one of the coveted PS5s. GameStop is going to have some at 11 a.m. tomorrow… Walmart is getting a new shipment at midnight… I heard Best Buy might have some… And so it was for months, with Ben logging in at the appointed time only to receive the disappointing message that “this product is no longer available.” Gone in seconds, faster than a COVID vaccine appointment.

Of course there were ways to acquire a PS5 that didn’t involve the lottery-style scramble. You can find them in abundance on eBay, if you don’t mind the 100 percent markup charged by scalpers. But Ben didn’t want to go that route, and so he tried his best to remain patient until the inevitable day when supply would eventually catch up with demand.

He might still be waiting, except that his friend Aaron somehow managed to get his hands on a PS5 near the end of April, which immediately left Ben with a bad case of console envy that was unconsolable. (Yes, pun intended.) And whether through renewed determination or by coincidence, Ben learned that the target of his obsession would be going on sale, appropriately, at Target. At 4:40 a.m. on April 28.

Wow, really? He didn’t like the idea of having to wake up so early, but after Mom reminded him that it was only an hour before he normally gets up to go to work, the apprehension quickly faded. Expecting the usual out-of-stock reply, Ben logged in on the Target website and was pleasantly surprised when his reservation was confirmed. But he kept his secret from us, and when Roni declined his request to drive him over to Target that morning (he was off of work after getting his COVID vaccine and still sore), it was Aaron who gave him the ride to the store.

Roni was surprised when he and Aaron came home later with the huge PS5 box in hand. “Happy birthday to me!” Ben proclaimed, saying he knew we wouldn’t have been getting the gaming system for him even if we had been able to find one. (Well, he’s probably right about that!)

So as we write this, Ben is happily gaming away on his new PlayStation 5 as he continues to recuperate from his final COVID shot, his 27th birthday just a couple of days away. It may not make the pain of the needle go away, but it sure has cured his console craving as he sets his sights on whatever games he might choose with the birthday cash that is burning its hole in his bank account.

So thank you again, Uncle Sam. If our household is any indication, your economy will be firing on all cylinders again very soon.

 

Glenn, Roni and Ben