The More Things Change, The More...WTF

The Schloss-Blog has been thinking about life in general.

How much has yours changed since the pandemic hit, since Trump let it run wild? Because what I'm heard come out of the Republican National Convention was not even close to the reality of life in the age of COVID.

Me, though, for the most part, I'm pretty much doing the same things I've done all along, just with a mask on and staying 6-feet apart from anyone else.

I still go to the grocery store once a week. I go through the Starbucks drive-thru a few times a week. I play socially-distanced golf once a week with the same group I've been playing with for years.

But everything else has changed.

Dinner on Saturday night, always a night out for me and my wife or sometimes with another couple, is gone. We bring dinner in now from our favorite restaurants.

Shopping? I can't remember the last time I went to a mall. Any mall. Banana Republic, Gap, Nordstrom, Macy's and all other places where I was a semi-regular, they haven't seen me since February, if then.

Vacations? We were supposed to be celebrating our 30th anniversary in Paris (France, not Texas). Had the trip booked. Not this year. Who knows when? Well, everyone knows '31' is the biggie, right?

Gatherings? We've been to three, all to celebrate someone's important occasion, birth of a baby, farewell to someone moving out of state or something like that. All small, all socially distanced, painstakingly, I might add, with no handshakes, hugs or any other physical exchanges of affection beyond elbow bumps. With a mask on.

Thanks to Trump's mishandling of COVID, who knows what's next and WTF?

My daughter, I'm so happy to say, is getting married next weekend in a small field in Wisconsin, in front of 25 people, instead of in a big hotel ballroom with a ceremony under the stars in front of some 200 people. I'm sorry we can't do more, sweetie, because I'd love to. So would our whole fam, who reside coast to coast - they all adore you.

Life in the age of COVID.

My fraternity brothers, a dwindling group at our ages, are trying to plan a reunion next year, in Albany, New York, where we attended college and because a close-knit group of New York State resident teenage blowhards, us guys, banded together somehow back in the day, originating everywhere from Buffalo to Brooklyn, to form a group of jocks, academics and drunks who somehow all got along famously.

Now, thanks to Trump's mishandling of COVID, who knows when we'll meet up again and WTF?

Travel, that doesn't exist anymore. We would go to New Jersey, Texas and Missouri to visit our respective families a total of six or seven trips a year. Now, I can't remember the last time we were in New Jersey nor think of the next time we'll be to any of the aforementioned. Couldn't even attend my beloved cousin's funeral.

As to planning events, no one knows when COVID will be conquered, even though Larry Kudlow talked about it Tuesday night during the Republican National Convention like it was a thing of the past. Uh, Larry, it has killed more than 180,000 of your fellow Americans and will have killed 250,000 by Election Day. It is not, Larry, a thing of the past.

Either is Trump's golf game, at which he's spent a third of his time as president. WTF?

Sports, my love, I miss. Those of you who know me also know how much I love covering prep sports.  I still cover high school football and basketball on a freelance basis. But not now. It's all been postponed, canceled or rescheduled until sometime next year.

Maybe.

In the age of Trump and COVID, WTF?

Much more on this next week and on my rock 'n' roll show on Sunday on Radio Free Phoenix.

Until then, goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, and here's to you Mrs. Robinson.

WTF?