Another rainy day with gray skies and, though I know we need the rain, this current state of being housebound requires some occasional sun. And we’re not getting that, nor will get that for the rest of the week.
Sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh.
But, we have these little gems on the kitchen island:
And that helps.
I read a lot yesterday, washed the sheets, cleaned a bit, that sort of thing. Don read a lot, as well. We thawed some frozen soup and had a nice lunch together at the kitchen table, where we chatted about all sorts of things. It’s a good thing we like being together so much – I imagine it’s a bit harder for those who are used to spending great chunks of the day apart. Suddenly being together 24 hours a day must take some getting used to.
I finished Derek Jarman’s Garden and am now reading We Made a Garden by Margery Fish. It’s less than 100 pages, so I should finish it today. Saturday ended up being book mail day; Don’s copy of Eric Larson’s newest book, The Splendid and the Vile (all about Churchill during the Blitz) came from Oblong Books, my order from the Book Depository also arrived. In that order – all three books were shipped on separate days but arrived at the same time – two more by Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate and Don’t Tell Alfred, and The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts. I have another order on the way from John Sandoe Books – my small contribution to independent bookshops, though Book Depository is not that. Goodness knows my TBR pile will grow, but at least I will have contributed to the coffers of shops that are struggling during this crisis. And since I’m hearing this may go on, at the very least, until the end of April, every little bit helps. But that’s all I can afford and now I have to stop.
Every day I wake up and remember what is happening and it seems unreal. Or surreal. Then I hear – as I did last night – of Don’s absolute favorite singer-composer, John Prine, being in critical condition with symptoms of COVID-19 and the enormity of all of this hits me once again.
Trying to be upbeat today and failing miserably. Some sun and a chance to work in the garden would help. Instead, I’ll give myself chores; vacuuming, dusting, cleaning, maybe some work on the dollhouse (which I have been ignoring for the past 5 days.)
The winner of a copy of Everywhere Holy is Deanna. I will send an email your way, Deanna, but if you read this first, drop me an email at the address (the envelope icon) at the top of the sidebar with your mailing address. Congratulations!
Happy Monday.
Good morning Claudia,
I so envy your getting to read The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate for the first time! They are both so wonderful. I just heard back from my friend in Florence who introduced me to them when I was 21; she is also Claudia (but with the Italian pronunciation). I was relieved to hear she’s alright.
I apologize for repeating this, but I’m curious as to whether Don’s checked out The Revenge of Analog. I’m convinced he would enjoy it. Also, if he’s interested in Churchill and the war years, Troublesome Young Men is so engrossing, and an eye-opener!
I envy your rain!
I told him about it, but we have a moratorium on book buying at the moment. We’ll eventually buy it, Cara. Thank you and stay safe1
Oh dear, I wasn’t urging spending; when this Wuhan thing is over, I bet your library has it. I think I read it with an Inter Library Loan. I often do that as a test to see if I want to buy a book.
A friend gave me Troublesome Young Men for Christmas last year and everyone I’ve lent it to has been glad.
It’s actually very inexpensive. We’ll either order it from a bookshop or check the library…
John Prine is my brothers and my husbands favorite too. My brother told me yesterday that the first album he bought was Prines first album back around 1971. He still has it and will be playing it today. I too wake up every morning and think (Hope) this is all a dream. Take care…stay safe…stay home.
Debbie (California)
The same to you, Debbie. We’ll get through this.
I will check out The Splendid and the VILE when our library opens again
Sounds very interesting
It has rave reviews, Linda. Stay safe!
John Prine has been my family’s go to since my girls were little. We’ve had the pleasure of seeing him in concert several times. This really makes it all the more real. So sad.
I know. It’s heartbreaking. Praying for him and for everyone. Stay safe!
Bonjour Claudia,
Sure, sun helps to up our spirits. Here it is sunny but with a very cold north-east wind preventing us from being in the garden too long. We do not complain, we have nature around us, The days follow each other and look alike but time flies quickly because we are busy with our usual occupations. We appreciate the silence and the quality of air. No pollution by now.
Here in the region of Paris, since the online sales sites are saturated and we cannot have a delivery I do my shopping as usual in a small supermarket near our home. There are many health precautions that are taken in this store and I take great care and desinfect everything when i get home.
Voilà ce qui se passe ici.
Bon courage Claudia et bonjour du jardin du Luxembourg, déserté maintenant.
It’s hard to imagine the Jardin du Luxembourg deserted, Helene! But you’re right. There’s no air pollution. Stay safe, my friend.
John Prine’s illness also upset my husband and me as we are big fans. It somehow brings all of this closer to us – makes it more real.
I am glad that Howard and I have managed to figure out this being around each other all the time. It helps that we each have a good sense of humor.
Same here. We laugh a lot and boy, is it needed right about now!
One of the elementary schools in our district is a Charter school and is where my husband does most of his teaching these past few years. It is a smaller school, and is a K-5 building. The teachers all team-teach a lot and one of the biggest activities is the planting of their big school garden in the spring. They are learning about planting seeds, how they germinate, how to start plants and then transplant them into the ground. With the K-2 kids he was teaching them The Garden Song that John Denver sang: “Inch by inch, row by row, going to make this garden grow” for their spring concert. One of their lessons has been to sing along with JD and the Muppets to continue to learn the song. Now that Spring Break is over, this morning he has received several videos from parents of their littles singing alone w/ the recording. It certainly has lifted our weary souls!!!!
We have some sun today which is wonderful after the past many days of rain and wind. I think we have chances of rain almost every day, but also some partly sunny skies in there, too. The grass has greened up quite beautifully. We were able to spend 35 mins or so with our sweet little GD yesterday, via FB Messenger which was a delight. She was awake the entire time. Our daughter joined us, via technology, too. They only live about 6-8 blocks apart in Madison, but it might as well be hundreds of miles during this crazy time. If ONLY smarter heads had prevailed months ago…. if only. Everyone, stay safe and stay home.
Oh, that brought a smile to my face! What a lovely story, Chris. Stay safe.
Oh…those videos sound so precious…and so needed right about now. Glad to hear you got to visit with your new granddaughter. Bet you had a smile a mile wide! Technology is our salvation right about now.
And you’re totally right about smarter heads! If only!!
Yes, Donnamae. In these days of crazy, a “virtual” visit is the best it can be, but at least we have that. She is beautiful even through technology. An actual hug would be wondrous. I have to just keep thinking that some day that will be a reality whenever we want to do so!!!! And those kiddos singing ~ well, just precious!!
to chris k in wisconsin …
reading that you could see her (albeit via technology) made me smile … so i can imagine how big your smile was to see your granddaughter! praying for the time when you can sit in a rocking chair with her, tell her stories, count her toes …
kathy in iowa
YES, kathy,,,, and all the things. So many songs to sing. Cannot wait!!
Thx, so much for the thoughts!!! ♡
Hi Claudia. I too have some bad times and I’ve found myself getting up thinking this is just a bad dream, then it registers and I have had a few cries. I can’t “see” my children and grandchildren, but thank goodness for Facetime. We’ve even played UNO and some other games, and I will pay I Spy with the grands. I want to hold them so bad, but Don and I are late 60s and just don’t want to take any chances now. Our beautiful daughter had to cancel her early April wedding which has was a difficult decision she made, although our Governor issued the stay at home the following day and everything was shut down.. Doesn’t make it any easier. We do small hikes in area parks (we’re in the country so grateful for all the rural areas). We saw Eastern Bluebirds last week, and by going off trail yesterday, found evidence of beaver activity with lots of wood chips around perfectly chewed little triangles of trees!
I look for garden emergings and once I get out in terra firma I will be much more comforted.
Nature is my therapy. Take care you two.
Mine too. Once I can get outside again, I know I will feel more grounded. Stay safe, Penny.
Hey we have some sunshine in Seattle, so I would think it would be everywhere. Everybody has more sunshine than we do. Enjoy the rain, the sun will be back soon enough.
Not today, they don’t! Or for the rest of the week. Stay safe, Jan!
Love the picture with the forsythia. It’s a natural bright spot in your already bright home. And we need all the bright spots we can get these days. Take care! ;)
I will. You too!
A friend in California just found out one of her long-time friends has Covid. So far he’s at home. Please tell Don that I’m thinking of him. Even if we don’t know these people personally, when their writings or music or design touches our lives, they become a part of us. I’m wishing I could send you a beautiful photo as you for us. I hope someone with better skills sends you some flower photos!
Thank you, Nora. Take care!
You nailed it for me with this one: “Trying to be upbeat today and failing miserably.” Oh, that’s me today.
But you have good books coming (I know you’ll love Love in a Cold Climate.)
John Prine — how very sad. Yes, this is so unreal. So very unreal.
So unreal, Jeanie. Take care of yourself.
I still can’t listen to Bonnie Raitt sing Angel from Montgomery without crying my eyes out. Joan Baez Hello in There…ugh breaks my heart every time too. Praying for John Prine and everyone with this god awful virus.
Me too, Deb. Take care!
I’ve not been on comments regularly for months, but I’m still here and appreciating your almost every day post, Claudia. And I’m reading the comments most of the time and hi to all of you out there. Hope you are keeping your spirits up and keeping busy and keeping SAFE during this time of home isolation.
I’ve been reading Mudlark, by Lara Maiklem, and decided also to reread the Harry Potter series. Actually, I only made it through Book 4 the first time around. I’ve also started knitting an Aran cardigan from yarn I bought over 45 years ago. I had knit an Aran cardigan then but it was too big…I kept ignoring my inner voice telling me it was going to be too big… :( My Mom finally ripped it when she was tired of my whining about having to rip it. I’m determined to knit an Aran that fits. So far, so good…I just completed the back last night.
We’ve been getting used to an additional person in the household, as my daughter is among the thousands of college students who had to move off campus and are taking their courses online.
Good to hear from you, Wendy! Take care of yourself!
Bonnie Raitt’s version of Angel from Montgomery is my favorite John Prine song. Sheltering in place in Southern California. Stay safe and clean.
That’s Don’s favorite, though I think he loves Prine’s version (also Bonnie’s.) Take care, Mary.
I miss the spring blossoms of the north. Thanks for posting. So sad about John Prine. I hope he has a quick recovery. It is getting more real when there are people attached to the number.
I am so very very lucky to be hunkered done in a nice cozy house. The refugees sleeping in tents on the border are going to be hit hard.
I think about them all the time, Kay. Take care!
Glad you and Don received your books. You are doing such a great job in supporting these bookstores. I ordered some Marigold seeds today. Will hopefully get out and plant the seeds I already have. The weather is not cooperating. Enjoy your new books. Stay well and safe.
Marilyn
I’m going to have to order some seeds, I guess. So many things to think of, things I normally run out and buy! Take care, Marilyn.
Yes, the getting busy (we just vacuumed the house; have all the windows open for a couple of hours, just ‘airing’ out; on the colder days, we couldn’t do that because of all the fireplaces going in the neighborhood with so many folks homebound; just too much smoke for my asthma).
Claudia, I do SO understand the ‘failing miserably’ part. I spoke with my cousin in Pittsburgh earlier today and she talked of the weight of this Covid crisis being oppressive. (Just the sound of the word ‘oppressive’ feels heavy, doesn’t it.) Even TV news anchors and hosts are breaking down on-air with all that they’re hearing and having to report about; they’re not immune from the stress. Most people with a brain are scared. With good reason.
(This is one of my second cousins; she’s a professor and is of course now teaching online which she says is quite time-consuming … although what else does she have BUT time when we’re all on ‘pause’ [as she so acknowledges]. Two sons home from college, and they’re all three getting a bit tired of one another. Like, they really can’t play one more board game together. At least it’s not snowing [their weather is cloudy but in the 40s/low 50s] and they each [or one or two of them] HAVE taken turns going to the store for needed groceries/supplies [very responsible and conscientious boys] but anybody in the house who does that, then immediately peels off their clothes, the clothes go into the washing machine, and they take a shower; of course wiping down any item brought into the home [she says it’s a team effort and they’ve got a whole routine down … this, after much research on the subject; they’re all three darn-smart people, and it’s just what they’ve decided to do in terms of handling potential virus exposure].)
It’s 75 degrees here in SoCalif and I’ve already done my rear-yard staircase climb but it didn’t help as much as I wanted it to, despite the beautiful blue (cloudless) sky and sun/bright light. I’m really tired of my waking thoughts being dominated with the idea of getting in more food and supplies to prep for the long haul of weeks ahead. On the one hand, I feel silly; what was it like for my pioneer ancestors when they couldn’t find a deer to shoot for venison on the table (that’s an ugly image but it’s what they had to do back then as a food source, especially if the garden was over and the larder was bare). What was it like for my grandparents in the 1930s Great Depression years when they barely had any money to feed their kids and were doing everything not to lose their home? When they had the scarcity of food and supplies in World War II? What was it like for my parents when Dad was suddenly out of work and they had a mortgage, a sick child (me), a sick older parent (my grandfather) and no real prospects for a job except to take a leap and start their own business, with basically nothing but grit and determination and desperation? I try to remind myself of this all the time now.
We said we’d make do here at my house … it’s not like we didn’t make a lot of preparations; as most people, we did! … but once the idea gets in the head about needing something, it’s hard to dispel. We’d set a time limit, my husband and I, that if we didn’t get out ONE MORE TIME (if even that) by tomorrow/March 31, we wouldn’t be out for unknown weeks after (as SoCalif draws closer to the surge and apex of this epidemic). Right now, we’ve been self-isolated enough that, according to stats, we don’t feel we’re virus carriers; maybe…but probably not (I personally haven’t been in a store or around people for four weeks, except for a breeze-in/breeze-out pick up of new eyeglasses three weeks ago when I didn’t even wait around to have the glasses/frames fit to my face).
Staying home is best. We’re trying and trying and TRYING to get home delivery of groceries so that we can continue to ‘stay in’. Have spent a lot of time on the shopping list/online carts. Hours! (I also did this with Walmart for shelf-stable stuff, only to be ready for ‘checkout’ and then be notified that before I could ‘place order’ about ten things I’d painstakingly shopped for were already out of stock THAT quickly. This gets tedious.)
I know the stores are overwhelmed. I get it. But, unbeknownst to me, my husband has been trying for days on end to get that coveted ‘slot’ at the online ordering of the ONE grocery store in our locale who will deliver to our house (but I assume it’s not them per se; it’s coming from some regional distribution center of course). It’s so bad that, from about 11pm last night until 11am this morning, my husband set the clock alarm every two hours to wake himself up and check the site; and, in just that amount of time, they dumped about one-fourth of our cart as out-of-stock and now aren’t even giving delivery dates as I type this just after 4:30pm PST; whereas yesterday at this time, they were already booked to about April 8. (Some of my non-perishable Walmart stuff isn’t coming til as late as Apr 24.)
Anyway, my poor husband is exhausted and just ‘done’ with it, and I have to understand. A younger neighbor had recently offered his help (errands) but he seems to have disappeared now that he’s off work; he may have decided he wants to be near his kids who are in another city. We’re not the kind of people who like to impose on others anyway. We’re at the point that it’s looking like Husband will venture out tomorrow at 6:30 am to go to a grocery store in another town we’d tried before (and had good luck with; very clean, very organized; well-supplied/good inventory; not as busy as our bigger-box store; they check i.d. at the door; at least this was the way it was two weeks ago [was it three weeks…?…I don’t know which day is which anymore…] when, again after much head-scratching and soul-searching, my husband did sprint out ‘for a few things’ while I did a lot of nail-biting back at the house); the senior shopping at 7am; he knows he has to be SO careful, wear gloves, etc. We’re all allowed to do this of course, ‘the essentials’ shopping, even during ‘lockdown’-ish orders; but it isn’t without risk.
Not completely sure yet, we waffle back & forth; but this is how it’s going around here today … and I’m feeling uneasy about all of it … the tension gets me in the neck and shoulders, even the jaw, which then shoots straight to my head with a daily headache. So, having a hard time shaking off the blues, but that’s today and, as movie-version Scarlett O’Hara said, “After all, tomorrow is another day!”
Just pretend your cheery-yellow kitchen island flowers are lit from sunshine within … they’re so pretty!
I asked myself in the past minutes about when are things enough, although I know I’m more fortunate than a lot of others, in general. (They had that piece on the TV last night of the ER physician who was so busy treating Covid patients at the hospital … while his own home was decimated in that Arkansas tornado; I mean, enough already. Enough.) But we just were alerted by our identity theft protection company (we pay for the protection-service monthly, in both my husband’s name and mine) that someone is trying to take out a credit card or loan in one of our names (we think it’s my husband’s), so we immediately had to put a freeze on our credit, and I’m about to now read up on exactly what a credit freeze involves although my eyes are a mess from already too much screen time at this time of night (a lot of emails from acquaintances today as everyone tries to keep in touch; I just finished the last reply on one); but, you know, just another bad thing to have to think about and worry about, probably like when Don had his phone stolen in Paris; you feel violated and so unsure about things. How dare someone use our name and pretend to be us. What a world. It’s always been in the back of my mind, from what I’d read about identity thieves being very patient, often not striking for years after they’ve obtained some of your private info (thinking back to the Equifax breach; but my medical lab also had a breach and informed us, like Equifax, that our personal info was probably exposed), so I guess it was just a matter of time for us. But I’m already scared about everything else right now. I feel like I have very real things to be worried and fearful of, but only I can try to tamp down the anxiety because I know, if I don’t, that it will make everything worse. A friend of mine relaxes with wine in the evening; I’m sort of envying that right now.
I’m so sorry that happened to you! It’s so unsettling. I’m sure it will get resolved, but my goodness, you don’t need this right now.
I’ve been trying to sign up for a second slot to no avail. You can’t amend the original order and everything we forgot is now on a new ‘list.’ Oy. Take care, Vicki.
Hi Claudia. It IS hard to be upbeat every day. I have the same feelings on waking up and then having it all come crashing back into my brain, the unreality of it all. No sun here either for days. And so windy and cold! Clinging to the possibility of fifties and sun next week but it seems a long way away right now.
I hadn’t heard about John Prine. Years and years ago I used to play Joan Baez’s version of his “Hello In There” over and over again. So beautiful and so hauntingly sad. I hope for the best for him and his family.
Take care. K.
Baez has an IG account and she posted yesterday; she played Hello in There on her guitar. Thank you, Kay.
Thanks, I looked it up. Her voice is as perfect as ever. So strange though to listen again to that song all these decades later, at the age of the people he was writing about.
K.
The quality of her voice at her age is amazing. Love her. Thanks, Kay.
hej, claudia …
you didn’t fail. you’re human and this is a very scary situation! until things get better (and they will), i hope the books, the pretty forsythia, the chores all help(ed) your days and that you get sunshine and time to garden soon.
be safe and well.
kathy in iowa
Thank you, Kathy. Stay safe!
That’s terrible news about the great John Prine :( Love his work with Iris Diment.
Don tells me he is now in stable condition. Praying for him.