We’re getting close to 40 days in self-isolation. The mind boggles.

We had a great FaceTime call with Rick and Doug yesterday. It was so good to talk to them. Rick has been baking a lot; it’s one of his favorite things to do. Don wondered, kiddingly, why Rick wasn’t delivering sweets to us while we are in quarantine. About 30 minutes after the call, Don’s phone rang and Rick said he was going to drop off a piece of cake. They left it on the funky patio in a piece of Tupperware. Don stood in the doorway and he and Rick actually got to see each other in person. About ten minutes later, the phone rang again. They were going to drop off two masks (they had several) for us. This time, I stood in the doorway and thanked him. I can’t tell you, first of all, how sweet it was of them, but secondly and most importantly, how lovely it was to see them in the flesh – if only briefly. Looking forward to the time when we can actually hug each other.

I worked rather obsessively on the puzzle, of course – at the end of the day my back hurt from bending over the table so much. This is a puzzle that doesn’t have large blocks of one color; since it consists of book covers – and a lot of them – the colors change all of the time. So I started with the top edge of the puzzle and also the bottom edge. I have all of the corners in place. The design has a few larger versions of the book jackets/covers and I’m trying to piece them together to help anchor the whole thing. I also sorted through all the pieces and put all the pieces with text in one bowl, and all the pieces with faces in another.

The top edge.

The bottom edge – not quite together yet.

By the way, Rick has been to our local nursery and says it’s not at all crowded. So I’m going to go mid-week, I think.

I stopped reading Modern Nature mostly because it’s too hard to deal with. While he writes about his garden, he also writes about growing up as a young gay boy in the boarding school era in England, when boys were punished for exhibiting any homosexual behavior, and, of course, it’s depressing. He’s also dealing in the present with his diagnosis of HIV, watching his friends die from AIDS, and becoming more ill over time. It’s a curious combination of beauty and pain and loss, and I think I just can’t go there right now. I lost so many friends to AIDS, good friends, people who were here one day and gone the next. It’s just too hard to read during this pandemic. I’ll keep it on hand, and read a passage every once in a while, but it can’t be my only  read. What am I going to read next? I’m going to reread A Gentleman in Moscow, my favorite book of the last several years. It’s beautiful, life-affirming, and in fact, timely, as it deals with a Count who is sentenced by the Bolsheviks to house arrest within the walls of the Hotel Metropol in Moscow. For the rest of his life. I’ve written about this book many times on this blog. I think it’s the perfect read for this moment in time.

We fell asleep again while watching Cheers  last night. How exciting we are!

Stay safe. Stay Home. If you go out, wear a mask.

Happy Monday.