Blue-Footed Musings

I hate to say it, but I may need to bring back the Daily Minimum. The Daily Minimum was a short list of tasks that I forced myself do every day during the early stages of the Pandemic. It helped me stay on a more even keel emotionally, to get more exercise, and to better keep up with certain ongoing chores, such as laundry. Right now I could definitely use some help in those departments.

The problem with the Daily Minimum was that it was too, well, minimal. That was actually both its greatest strength (because it wasn’t hard to accomplish) and its greatest flaw (because it didn’t lead to any great accomplishment). I could have added more tasks to the daily list, but resisted, fearing that I might accidentally make it onerous and hard to keep track of.

If I decide to bring the Daily Minimum back, I’ll have to add some tasks to it. But they’ll have to be things that are eminently doable and low-stress and that also provide a lot of bang for the buck. And maybe I should create two different lists: one for workdays and one for weekends. I’m not sure what would be best. I’ll be thinking about this more during the coming week.

• Today I got an e-mail saying that my jury duty has been canceled. Excellent news! I’ve managed to avoid jury duty my entire life so far. Do you think Fate will punish me someday by putting me on the jury of one of those awful weeks-long trials? Seems likely, but until then, hooray!
• What I resent most right now is how everyone’s acting as if what’s happening in America is perfectly normal. We veered past normal years ago and have been driving deep into a bizarro version of reality, but you’d hardly know it sometimes from reading the news. (Speaking of the news, I’m now a reader of The Boston Globe. They offered me digital access for 26 months at $1. How could I say no to that?)
• I’ve been listening to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on YouTube. The video is great. So are the comments on it. I recommend both.

Am I going to cry today? I’ve got tears in my eyes, and they’re getting kind of pushy. To hold them in would be a small personal victory, and I sure would love a win, however inconsequential. But I fear, even if I hold them in today, they’ll be back again tomorrow and for all the tomorrows in the foreseeable future.

• I had a good birthday. When I walked into my office in the morning, I found a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a bag of biscoitos. Later I got to spend some time with my husband, whom I haven’t seen much of these last few weeks, because he’s been so busy with work. Then he and the kids and I went to dinner at the nearby Mexican restaurant that we’ve been meaning to try. The food was good, but a bit salty (however, reheated and served with plain rice, it made a yummy lunch the next day). I also spoke to my bestie on the phone. What more could I hope for?
• Planes sometimes fly over our house, but usually just the very small ones or the very big ones flying so high that they don’t draw that much attention to themselves. Today, we heard such a ruckus above that we went outside to see what it was. It was a pair of fighter jets. Wow. They’re so cool, but so noisy!
• We lost power suddenly and for no apparent reason this afternoon. I said to my husband, “I hope it’s not WWIII!” As I walked around outside later, because there was little to do inside that didn’t require electricity, I thought about how weird it would be to be relaxing outside and enjoying the late-summer weather as the world at large was, unbeknownst to me, falling into chaos. I realized that if it had indeed been the beginning of the Apocalypse, my joke about WWIII would have made feel bad afterward, as if suggesting the possibility of war could have somehow made me responsible for it. Weird. Perhaps I need to do what my old friend Tony use to always say I should do, and resign my position as General Manager of the Universe
• While the power continued to be out, I kept thinking about things to do. Every single one needed power. So I sat down with a pen and paper and started a list called “Can Do Sans Elect.” I was just one item into the list (“cut nails”), when the power came back on. Thank God!