Claudia — Page 604

Day 10

March 23, 2020 at 9:33 am by Claudia

Hello, all! Before I get into my post I want to say how glad I am that the comments section has become a gathering place for all of us during this surreal time. I read your comments to me and to other commenters and I think how lucky we are that we can do this.

So, thank you.

Yesterday was cold but beautifully sunny all day. Right now? It’s snowing. More of the surreal.

When we were chatting during our second cup of coffee yesterday, Don got an idea about the Folk Art dollhouse. If you remember, we had it on our kitchen table. He wondered if we could find another place for it in the kitchen. The sunlight was hitting it and it looked beautiful and he thought it might be even more so if we could put it closer to the windows. Easier said than done. This house is small and every bit of space is taken up with something or other. But I must admit, I have been missing the available surface of the kitchen table – for eating, for writing, for puzzles – especially during this time. (Don has good ideas, even though I sometimes think they won’t work. They usually do.)

So we did our usual “What about here? No, that won’t work…how about there?” You get the picture. This went on for quite a while. The only available surface that wasn’t already being used was the French Bistro table which was currently propped against a wall in the upstairs hallway. So, Don brought it downstairs. The only place we could think for it to go was to the right of Stella, where the old advertising stand was that held our paper towels. We’ve had that on display since shortly after we moved here, so we decided it might be time to retire it for a while. Long story short: we moved it out of the way, opened up the bistro table, placed it perpendicular to the wall, and here you go:

It looks great there, we get to see the bistro table once more, along with the French words on the side. We have the table back and we promptly ate lunch there. I tried to take other pictures, but the perspective was way off; the house looked smaller than it is. I’ll keep experimenting.

Speaking of dollhouses, I did a lot of ‘stonework’ on the facade yesterday:

I made it all the way up to the peak. I’m really pleased with it. Today, I’ll try to finish the facade. Then I’ll have to do the left and right exterior walls. Eventually, I’ll grout between the stones – something tells me that will be a pain in the tush. This stone work is done using egg cartons and it’s tedious. (Don has been saving egg cartons for me for well over a year.) I have to cut the strips, paint them with two coats of the main color, then another coat of the contrast color, and wait for them to dry. Then I have to take my scissors and cut the stones, gluing them individually. I try to vary the widths. The hardest part is cutting them to fit around the windows and against the sharp angle of the roof.

I might as well have something to show for all this self-isolating, right?

When all of this is done, I’ll start on the inside.

We’re hanging in there. We had a good day yesterday. Our feel-good choice of the evening was episodes of Cheers, starting from the beginning. Heavens, that show was excellent, right from the get-go. The pilot was so well done.

Happy Monday.

Day Nine

March 22, 2020 at 11:01 am by Claudia

I happened upon Don staring down into his studio this morning.

This may be the best gift I’ve ever given anyone. He truly loves it and talks about it a lot, much more now that we have it downstairs in the living room. He even took photos of it the other day to send to our friend in San Diego. He considers it his most valuable possession. That warms my heart.

This sparked a conversation about moving the Folk Art house to a slightly different place in the kitchen, which, after a lot of back-and-forth, turned out very well. I’d take a picture now – I tried – but there’s too much sun pouring in those windows at the moment. Not a bad problem to have, of course. Hopefully, I’ll get a photo later today and share it with you tomorrow.

As I said, it’s sunny, but it’s cold. And guess what? We’re getting snow tomorrow. Thankfully, it will turn into rain eventually and it will disappear in a day or so. We’re not going anywhere anyway, so bring it on.

We took a short drive yesterday, just to get out and see the world around us. We didn’t leave the car, but we drove around our little town and into the neighboring (and bigger) town. There were far fewer people out on the streets, though we were dumbfounded by the sight of the seasonal ice cream stand being open for business with a gaggle of young people clustered together at the window. Are you kidding me? The more we thought about it over the course of the day, the angrier we got. These are the people who are dangerous at this point – to themselves and others. What the heck are they thinking? Answer: They’re not thinking.

I finished The Sisters this morning. It was absolutely wonderful and endlessly fascinating. I’m still in a non-fiction mood, so I’ll look at my TBR pile and find something new to read. I worked on the dollhouse the day before yesterday, adding more stones to the exterior. I didn’t do it yesterday because I was so tired, but I’ll be back at it today. Maybe I have a finished exterior to show for this Self-Isolating-Stay-In-Place-Social-Distancing time in my life.

Our feel-good movie last night was Hoosiers. Heavens, I love that movie. It’s pitch-perfect on every level. We rented it on Amazon Prime even though we own it because our DVD player isn’t working. Anyway, we hadn’t seen it together in a long, long time and we loved it.

We’re hanging in there on Day Nine. How are you doing?

Happy Sunday.

Day Eight

March 21, 2020 at 10:13 am by Claudia

This is the best I can do for you today – taken as I sit in my chair after a nearly sleepless night. I had a not so good night of sleep on Thursday night as well, so the combination of two such nights in a row has resulted in my stationary position. I have noticed that when my usual bedtime is changed for some reason, it sometimes results in sleep difficulties. And that happened both nights, simply because we were watching a movie that was longer than usual. Ah well.

The movie we watched last night was The Shape of Water, a movie that is on my top ten list. We haven’t seen it in a couple of years and Don suggested it for last night. I’m so glad he did. It is exquisite.

What else? Still reading The Sisters and I read a good chunk of it this morning. The book I ordered from Oblong Books (which has, like everything else around here, had to close temporarily) arrived. Don ordered a book from them yesterday. We want to help our local bookstores during this time. As the Governor has issued an executive order, New York State on Pause, essentially closing all non-essential services, I’ve received emails from all my favorite bookshops indicating they are closing. (A side note: in some European countries, bookshops are considered essential services. How enlightened!) Of course, this encompasses far more than bookshops, but since they hold a special place in my heart, I worry for them. Oh heck, I worry for all small business owners. Another book that Don ordered from a local bookshop arrived, but it was closing down, so Don paid now so that they have the money and will pick it up some day in the future. By the way, Governor Cuomo is my hero right now. His daily briefings are a beacon of sanity. They’re so well done. I feel fortunate to live here.

Don and I talk all the time about how surreal this is. I’m reading about the Mitford sisters and the section I am currently in is all about wartime London, when huge sacrifices were being made. If they could do it, we can do it. We’ve never really had to sacrifice in our lifetime, not like that. So it’s time to step up and do what is right. We citizens of New York State are being told to stay in our homes unless we have vital reasons to go out, just as California is doing. Frankly, that’s what we should all be doing anyway. No one is exempt.

STAY HOME

Look, it sometimes drives us crazy. And as of Sunday, restrictions are going to be even more stringent. But we’ll do it for our health and the health of everyone else on the planet. Don is getting quite creative with the food supplies we have on hand. Heck, we could live on beans and rice if we had to and we may have to do that at some point. Plenty of people currently living on this planet do just that. I’m reminded of the sacrifices my grandparents and parents made during the depression and WWII. We can do it as well. After reloading when we heard this was going to last longer than two weeks, we are doing our best right now to stay the course and, if at all possible, not go out to a grocery store for the foreseeable future. If we do, it will only be for something absolutely vital.

Happy Saturday.

Lambs Like to Party

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