Fandango’s back with his weekly provocative question: What is the one thing in life that you are most excited about right now? Why?

I could answer this is one sentence, but decided to do a little more with it. I’m assuming that the question implies something that I anticipate happening soon that makes me excited, not something that already happened. The first thing that came into my head was I’m excited for the pandemic to be over and I can travel again. Because I live for travel. So I am hoping that we will be able to take the cruise I’ve already booked and paid for, in November 2020, to the Amazon. I have always wanted to cruise the Amazon although when I was younger I probably would have pooh-poohed a nice cruise ship with all the amenities. But now I don’t think I would go there any other way!

Then I heard Dr. Fauci saying that we likely will have a “second wave” of the coronavirus along with the regular flu season near the end of the year. The cruise leaves on Nov. 29! So then I furiously got to work paging through the catalogs of my favorite travel companies to find something we could squeeze in between the first and second waves: Yes! Possibly a trip to Central America where we would likely be seeing mostly ruins and nature in September. Also in September, a couple of choices of African safaris. So once again, we wouldn’t be often among lots of people – we’d just be looking at animals! If there is to be a second wave, avoiding cruise ships might be wise right now. Even so, getting on an airplane in the next few months?! We could go to New Zealand where they’ve already gotten the virus under control: because they acted early to take mitigating measures, they only had about 1,500 cases and last I heard, no deaths! Great – if we could get there without exposing ourselves to the virus in tight places with people occupying every seat on the plane…

Anyway, so my first answer is I am looking forward to the pandemic being over, at least for the most part, so we could travel again.

Then I thought, well, there is another very important thing that I would be extremely excited about and that is getting Trump out of office!! (The two things are actually connected because in 2016 we got on a plane for Brazil on Nov. 8, not knowing the results of the election and expecting Hillary Clinton to be elected. When we woke up from dozing during the night, we were about to arrive in Sao* Paulo, and as we were all standing in the aisle with one hand on our carry on bags, someone checked his phone and announced Trump had won! It kind of put a damper on the trip and I seriously considered overstaying our visas in Brazil. But this time, if we can take the cruise, we’ll be able to go with the satisfaction of knowing the election results.) I feel pretty confident Biden will win because most people are so disgusted with how Trump has handled (or not handled) the Covid-19 crisis – a non-leader when we need leadership more than ever. Then this last week, he added insult to severe injury by threatening to call the military to stop the protests around the country due to the unnecessary killing of George Floyd. And just two days ago, he had police disperse protesters in front of a church with tear gas in Washington D.C. for a PHOTO OPP!! A photo of him holding a Bible with a sour look on his face. The incongruency of the image of Trump, his facial expression, and holding a Bible made it even worse – if you’re going to chase people away to have a photo opp, at least make it a decent one! But there is no decency with Trump. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word decency and he certainly has no idea what Christianity is all about.

But once again, I feel confident about a Democratic victory, as I did in 2016. Although terrible things can happen, this time we’ve lived with four years of this maniac and any thinking person has to realize by now that he is an existential threat to our country if he stays in office for a second term. (He may not calmly walk away from the presidency if he loses, but we’ll deal with that when and if it happens.) I wish the Democratic nominee were someone other than Joe Biden – I’ve nothing against him per se, but he’s sorta old and sometimes says some weird things (although nothing as insane as the Orange Moron). He is a kind person, which is good, and he has experience, also good, but after having a youngish black president for eight years, why are we taking a step backwards to elect another old white guy? (Two steps forward, one step back perhaps – Trump was the step backward – so change is slow but at least it happens and our country is saved from tyranny.) Biden has promised to nominate a woman as his running mate so I reserve final judgment until we find out who that is. (And even if he nominated Minnie Mouse, I’d still vote for him, obviously).

So, to conclude, considering the first part of the question “one thing IN LIFE” I would be very excited to see the United States join the rest of the “first world” in becoming a better democracy and with sane leadership to tackle serious problems such as health care for all and climate change. That is something I would like to see before my life is over, so I can die knowing my descendants will have a decent, safe world to live in but still have lots more to do.

And considering the EXCITEMENT part – or as I interpret it, anticipation – my desire for my own life is to see as much of the world as I possibly can and still have a few years to write about it!

*Dammit – why did WordPress take out the ability to put in special characters that other languages use???