Like most people, I’ve never gotten everything I wanted, and life would be exceedingly dull if I did. I think many Americans have forgotten that in life and politics, you never get everything you want.

But in recent years, I’ve experimented more and more with the idea of imagining what I want rather than complaining about what I didn’t get and don’t have.

It sounds like a simple thing, but it can be a huge thing related to human consciousness. I don’t quite understand how energy works, but I am surprised at how often I do get what I want when I imagine it over time.

Dog training taught me this.  Dogs communicate with one another in images, so that’s how I often communicate with them.

I imagine what I want to happen, rather than shout at the dogs, and my dogs became what I imagined them to be.

This was a lesson I am applying throughout the rest of my life. When I want something, I find some solitude and picture it.

When the vaccines were first announced (it seems like a century ago), I had this image in my head right away about how I wanted to get the shot and then later,  how I wanted to get both shots.

I pictured driving to my local Walgreens,  parking in the lot, going into the back of the store where the pharmacy is, checking in with my paperwork, then being asked to sit down for a few minutes.

I’d joke with the staff about all the work and pressure and the healthcare system’s trials.

Then, I would be invited into the small the “patient room” where I get my flu shots, and Larry or Ashlynne or Bridgit or one of the others I talk to all the time on the phone or see in person when I pick up my medications would give it to me.

They would explain everything, and I would take their photograph. They always say yes.

My attachment to this image surprised me; I wasn’t happy when our little family pharmacy closed.

O’Hearn’s Pharmacy closed several years ago; I never thought of Walgreen as homey and personal., as part of our community. Yet, curiously,  it is personal for me; it is where I always wanted to get my vaccine shots.

It isn’t O’Hearn’s.

But it is better than okay. Humans are adaptable people, and however corporatized something gets, it still takes local human beings to run a pharmacy, they have to interact with humans, and I can still get to know them and joke with them.

When it comes to people’s medications, you can’t do all of it on a computer.

In a sense, they are my friends. Maybe this is what friendship means to me.

Today I got the first vaccine, precisely as I imagined it in Walgreens in my town and in the Patient Health Care room where I get my flu and shingles vaccines.

I’ve been bobbing and weaving around all the big sites for weeks now, waiting for my pharmacy to get the vaccine. I had faith they would.

It happened just as I hoped. I didn’t want to drive hours and hours to some strange place. I know I need to get this vaccine, and I know Covid is something Maria has been especially fearful about regarding me.

I didn’t realize for a while just how worried she was. I never saw myself getting the disease, but then that is about privileged people; they never think bad luck is for them.

In my town, social distancing is a way of life; I’ve never seen a crowd here.

My town has always felt safe for me, even though I am forever marked as an outsider.

Several years ago,  much loved small pharmacy was gobbled up, first by Rite-Aid, then by Walgreen’s, which gobbled up Rite-Aid.

We all mourned the loss of Bridget, a very loving and attentive pharmacist who knew all of us by name and helped us to navigate the morass of American health care.

I often overheard Bridget working on getting low-income families and old people their medications; she was always happy to drive it over if they were especially sick.

I never saw anybody leave the store without some or all of the medications they needed.

When I had my Open Heart Surgery, I called Bridget at O’Hearn’s Pharmacy and said I had just come out of surgery and needed many medications. Stop by the house, she said, and drop them off. I’ll have them all ready first thing in the morning, or if you need them, I’ll drive them over to you.

That doesn’t happen at Walgreens, but I get all my medications when I ask for them; the people there know me now and are always happy to help me when there’s a problem or miscommunication.

I still miss Bridget, and I remember that I expected the worse from the giant corporate pharmacy chain my health care partner was now.

It didn’t get much worse; another caution about pre-judging things. It’s worked out fine.

There are many frustrations involved in dealing with corporate chains – computer snafus, voice recognition software, staff turnover, a sense at first of dealing with strangers who didn’t care about me as much as Bridget did.

I can’t imagine them bringing medications out to my house.

I do feel cared for. They have taken good care of me all year, right through all my medical dramas and medications.

I really have nothing to complain about.  I even like their phone call-in system for renewing medicines and subscriptions.

We sort out the confusion and paperwork, and bureaucracy of the health care system; they never lose patience with me, and I never lose patience with them.

When I went online and got a vaccine appointment for tomorrow, I was thrilled. The thing I imagined was going to happen.

When Bridgit (from Walgreen’s) called me tonight to say there was an opening tonight, I rushed over.

I had the feeling they were happy to schedule me; they knew all too well that I was on the red lists for vaccines on several different levels.

The pharmacists there have always been helpful to me, responsive, and thoughtful. I asked about the second shot: “don’t worry,” said the pharmacist, we’ll take care of you.”

And I’ve gotten to know the mostly young women who work so hard there and endure so much. They are country girls mostly, some farmer’s daughters.

They work hard and don’t rattle.

They appreciate courtesy but are tough enough to handle trouble.

I don’t know what they make, but you can be sure it’s not much, and they work long hours and deal with a lot of tense, frightened, and frustrated people.

I knew that today, the first day that my pharmacy in town was giving out vaccines, would be a chaotic nightmare for the staff, and it was. When I got there at 6 p.m., the techs all looked as if they had been put through a washing machine and dryer.

The government rejected my Medicare ID card, and it took the staff a half-hour to figure out my last name had to be typed into the computer first. Bugs in the system, they are working them out.

There are a lot bigger bureaucracies than Walgreen’s.

I stopped at a food co-op today and put together a box of caffeinated dark chocolate balls and some chocolate chip cookies from the Round House Bakery.

Ashlynne came in said she had just learned to give vaccinations. If that bothered me, she said, I could ask for someone else. Well, I said, I’m horrified, but go ahead. She looked at me for a second, startled, then laughed.

She was perfect. I hardly felt a thing.

I gave it to them when I arrived, with a note saying “thanks for taking care of me.” They were shocked but grateful. “We’ll need the caffeine,” one told me.

Community, like dandelions, is stubborn and enduring.  You can’t ever completely kill it. It just keeps springing up, despite the desperate efforts of the Corporate Nation to sniff it.

I was pleased to experience what I had imagined; it was oddly satisfying and energizing. I am now 65 percent safe from the virus; my second shot will be during the last week of March.

Maria is very visibly relieved about it. I am told to prepare for some side effects tomorrow; they sometimes occur, they sometimes don’t.

At the Post Office, I sometimes run into an irate man who lives a few miles up the road. He hates government, doesn’t trust vaccines, insists Joe Biden is senile and a thief, and doesn’t believe the virus is real.

He overheard me telling a clerk there were vaccines in our town now.

He told me I was making a big mistake trusting the doctors. He didn’t trust them one bit. I guess he was waiting for an argument, but I never argue my beliefs, especially with strangers.

“Good luck to you,” I said, “as angry as you are, you are a good candidate for Open Heart Surgery.

Talk to me about doctors after they have taken your heart out of your body, stop your blood and breathing, patch it up, and put it back inside of your chest. It gave me a new way of looking at the world.”

He looked at me as if I fell out of the back of a horse but said nothing.

I don’t feel mistrust; I feel a lot of gratitude. Think of all the people who worked hard to get that medicine into my arm.

Thanks to all you researchers, scientists, and doctors for making my vaccine. Thanks to Walgreen’s for agreeing to distribute it.

Thanks to hordes of people who are getting them into people’s arms and who try as hard as they can to take care of us.

Beyond that, I am becoming a big believer in the power of dreams and intentions. I see with my own eyes that what I put out into the world comes back to me, good or bad.