I've come to realize that bailing out of the stock market at the first whiff of a recession and a lockdown for a pandemic are identical twins with genetic roots in the chicken. It's easy to drop out of the market or recede into a lockdown. It is incredibly hard to know when to get back in.
Has the market bottomed out? How far has the curve dropped?
Can we trust the quarterly earnings? Who is an asymptomatic carrier?
The disclaimers on financial instruments make you sweat. People without masks approaching you cause palpitations.
The common thread is the chicken.
As we ease back into life, there are many things we need to catch up on. First on our list was getting the cars inspected. One of ours "expired" a few months back, the other one was on life support. With trepidation I brought the dead one to the inspection station and was pleasantly surprised at the measures they have put into place. Before the pandemic, I'd hand them my key and hang out until they returned the key. Now, I stayed in the car, drove into the bay, followed their instructions, they reached in with a long stick to scrape the old sticker and put the new one, and then I backed out. The only human contact was with the cashier behind the plexiglass shield. With a mask and hand sanitizer, I was good on that. The chicken was relieved.
Next up is the dentist. I know she's going to come at my gums with an ice pick, shovel, and a menacing grin. NOT looking forward to this. Plus, I can't muster enough courage to expose my respiratory channels. Last time I checked, coronavirus loves our lungs. I gotta go but I don't wanna. I love the chicken.
Haircuts have not been a problem because we both know how to snip. Besides, this is a great time to let my hair grow out. It turns out that my hair cells are in their own lockdown and growth has stalled. The chicken gets a rest.
And about the annual checkups with our doc, no thank you. Let the lipids build and the A1C rise. We will rectify those later. I am definitely not ready to hang out in his waiting room unless there is an emergency and then coronavirus will be damned. As the mother of a doc and one in the making, I should be ultra-supportive of the medical profession, but deep down, I am a chicken.
There, I admitted it. In the pandemic the bird has become huge. The chicken is the root cause why we don't make gobs of money in the stock market either!
It will be a while before I jump back with gusto into our regularly scheduled lives but for now the cars are good to go nowhere and chicken is boss.
