A Call from a Pig and an Extended School Break in Chicago
Late Night Phone Call
It rang. The other night, late at night, my phone rang.
Actually it shimmied.
Several weeks ago in a meeting I silenced it and found the resultant absence of chittering such a balm to my soul that I have maintained the silence.
So two nights back when the call came the phone vibrated. And then it vibrated again, a battering ram of sorts against my shepherding of the initial call to voice mail. Thinking that perhaps there was an emergency, I picked up the second call and had poured into my ear from the other end a rough-edged voice that snorted, “We are so screwed.”
Half asleep I pieced together the words from the other end of the line but they made no sense to me until the voice on the other end continued,”And they’re blaming the pigs… they’re blaming the pigs…”
“Little Pig?” I offered, taking a stab at who I thought was calling.
Oblivious to me and anything I might say my sleep-interrupting caller kept up the monologue as I shifted to another part of the house where I wouldn’t wake my wife or kids. With every step I took away from my warm bed my ears were weighed down by his complaints about life being unfair.
Finally able to speak with a bit more volume I tried to stop his self-absorbed cascade, succeeding in getting a word in edge-wise only after several times brusquely raising my voice and saying, “Stop.”
“Little Pig,” I said, gaining one his little pink ears, “I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with this now.”
From the other end of the phone came a plaintive “snort.”
Too Much Information
Having captured his attention and waking up just a little bit, I went on, “I’ve been scouring websites trying to make sense of this. And I can’t. All I know is that what’s going on is crazy, like a bad sci-fi movie that would be on channel 32 when I was a kid. The other thing that I know is that Jackson was supposed to go to school Monday but we have kept him out for three straight days.”
Which is true. Because the school for the previous two weeks had been on holiday and there was a good likelihood that kids and their families had been south of the border we just didn’t want to chance cross-pollination of this nefarious spreader.
Some might say we are treading in the area of overkill. But the way we look at it is “what if?”
Because the strain is particularly insidious with kids and older people and because it takes a few days to manifest and even after symptoms appear we as a culture tend to “tough it out,” making our way even when bleeding, limping, coughing or on the verge of debilitation.
Bear in mind, I am not advocating paranoia. But think of all the incubators you/we occupy… crowded elevators, planes, buses, classrooms… even uncrowded places like door handles. After wending my way through various websites for explanation and explication I feel as if I have been exhorted to extricate myself from the wind-blown path of the virus.
Duck and cover. And stay covered!
A School Holiday Extends
And while the White House has urged that there be no panic, it becomes a bit more difficult to do just that when it looks as there’s Swine Flu in a second school in New York a half-mile from St. Francis Preparatory School where the first cases were detected several days ago.
And the European Union is urging travelers to postpone all but essential travel to the States and Mexico. This as the first report of Swine Flu has been indicated in Spain.
So through today and likely through the end of the week we are acting cautious, keeping Jackson at home, extending his two-week holiday into a third.
The Chicago Real Estate Market Picks Up Steam
And all of this takes place amid the swiftest pick up in the Chicago real estate market in well more than a year.
Two listings have gone under contract for clients of The Real Estate Lounge Chicago, including a Wicker Park condo and a Lakeview condo. And showings have significantly upticked, including a Lakeview condo, a West Loop loft, an Andersonville condo, a Lincoln Square sfh, a River West condo and a Roscoe Village condo. And buying clients are taking good, long looks with the intention of making home purchases.
You can sense in the air a wind of change, a sense of greater optimism and a feeling of hope for the future. But amid this cultural sea change is a deep hope that what is not also in the air is a perpetuation of the Swine Flu.
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