social distancing

Day Thirty-Eight

April 20, 2020 at 9:35 am by Claudia

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.

Day Thirty-Seven

April 19, 2020 at 9:30 am by Claudia

The snow is gone and the temps will be in the low sixties today. What a crazy April it’s been! I’m happy to see the sun shining and I just might take the opportunity to do some porch cleaning, as well as wash the sheets, read, and FaceTime with Rick and Doug.

And this:

I finally started this puzzle yesterday, although late in the day. This was a gift from reader Vicki a year or so ago. She sent us two puzzles; one with Nancy Drew book covers, and one with The Hardy Boys book covers. They’re 1000 piece puzzles so they should take a while to complete which is just perfect for me. A project! I tend to get obsessed by jigsaw puzzles, but thankfully, I have other chores to take care of, so it will be something I do a little work on throughout the day. In fact, I added more pieces while waiting for the coffee to brew this morning.

Don has no interest a puzzle right now, though that may change (he was playing his guitar while I worked on it) so this will be my baby. Vicki, thank you again. You are saving my sanity!

Don made the drive to the grocery store yesterday to pick up our order. He said it worked beautifully. You pull into a special parking space for pickups, send a text indicating what spot number you are in, and your groceries are brought out to you. Don put them in the trunk and off he went. On the way home, since we had no more fresh produce, he stopped at our Farm Market. He had called ahead and was told there was hardly anyone there, so he figured it was a good time to go. While he was inside, a man and his teenage daughter were walking around without masks (remember, Governor Cuomo has issued an executive order saying we must have masks on when we’re out in public). While Don was at the checkout, the girl started to walk close to him. Don turned to her and told her to back off.

He was unnerved by the whole thing. What are these idiots thinking? Don had his mask and gloves on. He was observing all the rules, so were others in the store. Just as in the insane protests going on, I am reminded that we have a segment of our population that is self-absorbed to the exclusion of the greater good. Thankfully, the good far outweighs the bad, but it does make my blood boil. These people were clueless, deliberately so. So are the nitwits out there protesting with their rifles and guns and shouting with their mouths wide open and no social distancing being practiced. How many of them will come down with Covid-19 because of this stunt? How many others, including the police, are they endangering? Someone said it in the comments yesterday, “There’s no cure for stupid.”

End of rant.

Today is the first day in a long time that I feel Spring returning. That leaves me feeling hopeful. Whatever it takes to flatten the curve, we will do it. I’ll be very happy when I can expand our shelter-in-place to include the gardens and porch. That should be soon.

Still reading Modern Nature and watching Cheers, though we both fell asleep at 9 and missed two episodes. We were tuckered out last night.

Stay safe. Stay home.

Happy Sunday.

Day Thirty-Six

April 18, 2020 at 9:30 am by Claudia

In the “What the ???” department: April 18th. Snow.

I’ve seen snow in early April before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this late. When I got up this morning, Don was saying “Isn’t it beautiful?” My response: “No.”

I can’t see any beauty in this heavy wet snow. But my consolation is the temperature reaching 49 today, so it will melt. But right now? It’s still snowing.

The lights have flickered twice, which seems ominous, so I’m going to try to get this published before I lose the draft.

We’re still watching Cheers on Netflix, tracking the story from the very beginning. Yesterday, we reached the end of the season, where the actor playing Coach, Nicholas Colasanto, died. We knew it was coming but it was if it was happening in real time. He was such a wonderful actor; no one but Colasanto could have played that character as real and without artifice as he did. He never commented – by that, I mean the actor never gave any indication that he was acting or that he was smarter than Coach in real life, and I’ve seen many actors fall prey to that. Actors and directors call that ‘commenting.’ No, it was from the heart, honest and beautiful and funny. Colasanto died 35 years ago, it hardly seems possible, and to us it was as if it had just happened. He was so gifted, so wonderful. Both of us were huge fans of Cheers, but we figured out that the reason we don’t always remember the earlier episodes was because we were very busy then. Don was constantly acting in plays and performing every night. I was in graduate school, attending classes during the day, rehearsing every night. Neither of us had a VCR in those days.

I’m reading Modern Nature by Derek Jarman. And I’m determined to start a jigsaw puzzle today.

Doing our best to stay focused, happy, and to deal with all of this in a positive way.

Stay safe. Stay home.

Happy Saturday.

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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