Cow meat! I hadn't had any since early March. My proteins have all come from egg sandwiches. Tuna sandwiches. And that ever-popular favorite, peanut butter sandwiches.
That's what happens when you don't care enough to cook, and Covid-19 keeps you cowering (no pun intended) in your house rather than dining out.
But today I had a hankering for a burger -- with tomatoes, lettuce, onions, pickles. Yeah!
Actually, I was equally motivated by a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago with my Thailand-residing nephew. If you like that burger joint (I'll call it "Burger Heaven") so much, he suggested, you should support it during these trying times. Buy some take-out meals. Ensure that they'll still be around when you feel brave enough to walk in and sit down.
Ok, I decided this morning. I'll do it. About 11:30 a.m., I opened Burger Heaven's webpage, ordered a burger and fries, and paid for it on a credit card. I grabbed a virgin face mask, and drove to Burger Heaven. I was expecting a few braves souls to be lurking about, waiting for their order.
Yikes! The parking lot was packed. More packed than it usually was for lunch before the Time of the Virus arrived. I positioned my mask, and entered. The joint was full of construction workers waiting in line to order, and waiting for take-out orders. Like Trump, they apparently agreed that wearing a face mask was unmanly. They were laughing and talking, breathing on each other and on anyone else who came in the door.
And as of last Friday, restaurants in King County have been allowed to serve seated guests at 25 percent capacity; there they were, brave and/or foolish souls actually sitting inside, eating.
On a summer evening, you know how sometimes you're walking along, and all of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of a swarm of tiny gnats? You have to close your mouth to avoid sucking them inside with each breath you take? That's was how I envisioned the interior of Burger Heaven. A giant cloud of gnat-like viruses, too small to be visible, filling the entire room and every corner. Being blown hither and yon within the room by the fans. And some idiots were sitting there, lazily eating and chatting, while they were sucking those little "gnats" into their lungs. Madness!
Nothing indicated where on-line orders were to be picked up, and the person behind the counter seemed puzzled by my inquiry. Maybe she couldn't make out what I was mewling about behind my mask. Finally, she located my order. I grabbed it and fled, chased out the door by hordes of gnat-like viruses.
Back home, after thoroughly washing my hands and gingerly disposing of the bag in which my food was served, I sat down at the table and ate my burger and fries. What an anticlimax! It's not the same as eating it in the restaurant, or even in a car outside the restaurant. The food was fine, if lukewarm, but the ambience was lousy. And it cost over eleven bucks.
But I've had my cow meat. Salted liberally with suspected viruses. I'm convinced that I can do without the mental stress. I'll be eating sandwiches for at least another three months before a craving for meat drives me back to Burger Heaven, again braving illness and death in my quest for cow.
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