Day 156: Pandemic Days

Posted on 08/16/2020 by chick

When I first started counting our days of self-isolation on my blog, it was supposed to be just for lockdown. That is to say, temporary. Lockdown was supposed to solve the problem.

But then the government threw away our chance to get the pandemic under control, so I and my family kept self-isolating, and I kept counting the days. And counting. And counting.

At first the posts were numbered but uncategorized unless they happened to fit into preexisting categories, because I didn’t want to give a category name to a temporary situation. Now we are at Day 156, which is a number more than high enough to dispel any lingering ideas about temporariness. So recently I created a category, called “Pandemic Days,” for my numbered posts, and I’ve been slowly updating the older posts to include it.

We know now that the virus is here to stay. There’s unlikely to ever come a day when the country can declare victory over it. So when will I be able to stop my count?

I started the count on the day after schools closed, so it would make sense to end the count on the day when the kids finally go back to school in person. That would be a sure sign that our lives had returned to normal. I wish I had some idea of when that would be, because it would be our light at the end of the tunnel. I just have to keep believing that it will happen, and soon, because I am so tired of these Pandemic Days.

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Day 155: New & Blue

Posted on 08/15/2020 by chick

Let me introduce you to a mystery flower I discovered in July.

I found this flower growing in the yard near the driveway.
It’s a leggy plant, not overall very attractive. The flowers are a lovely shade of purplish blue, but small and limited in number, so they don’t call much attention to themselves. Had I not spent so much time walking in the same area, I probably would have overlooked the plant.
Here’s a closer look at an individual flower.

This plant goes by the name Venus’s looking glass. I bet you could never guess how this unprepossessing plant got such an evocative name. There’s nothing mirrorlike about it. The individual flowers, though they are pretty little five-pointed stars, are hardly the swoonworthy blossoms you’d expect to see on a plant whose name references the Roman goddess of love. The plant also has cleistogamous (small, closed, self-pollinating) flowers on the lower part of the stem. They are neither noticeable nor sexy.

So how did the plant get its name? It’s sort of a case of mistaken identity. This plant is similar in appearance to an Old World plant that goes by the same common name. That plant (Legousia speculum) either has seeds so shiny that they look like mirrors, or it has a long calyx that resembles a mirror handle, or both. The first origin story is what I found on several wildflower websites, and the second one is from Britannica.com. In any event, the name doesn’t fit this New World plant very well, which is disappointing. But, looking on the bright side, at least the name is memorable, so we are unlikely to forget it.

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Day 154: Cheese Touch

Posted on 08/14/2020 by chick

If you thought the coronavirus was bad, watch out for the Cheese Touch*! If you catch it, it will turn you into a social outcast, and the only way to get rid of it is to give it to someone else. The kids gave it to me, and I keep trying to give it back, but they have their fingers crossed, which protects them. So I’m stuck with it. For now. But they can’t keep their fingers crossed forever….

*From Diary of a Wimpy Kid

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Day 153: Sunset Series

Posted on 08/13/2020 by chick

The kids and I often walk at sunset. It’s become sort of a ritual for us. All I have to do is say “Sunset Walk!” and the kids drop whatever they’re doing and put their shoes on to go outside. There are many benefits to walking at that time of the evening, but the obvious one is, of course, the sunset itself. We can’t see it from the house. The trees block it. But every time we get to the end of the driveway, we get to see a slice of it. It’s a little different each time, with colors appearing and disappearing, brightening and dimming, sometimes in unexpected ways, until finally the light fades.

Tonight’s sunset was a real beauty. I took a picture of it on every lap. Here are the best shots.

Sunset 7:41
Sunset 7:50
Sunset 8:13
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Day 152: Better Than Boxes

Posted on 08/12/2020 by chick
Sharing Shelf

While cleaning the house last weekend, I put a bookshelf in the hallway. On it are books from various series, including Fablehaven, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Harry Potter, The Lightning Thief and other Rick Riordan series, Artemis Fowl, and the The City of Ember. This is only a temporary setup, but it’s helpful right now in a number of ways. First, it frees up some room on the bookshelves in my office. It also frees up space in Marshall’s closet, where the shelf used to sit, sad and mostly forgotten, holding old children’s books that no one reads anymore. Keeping books in the hallway makes them accessible to everyone, and I hope it will encourage the kids to read all of them. Lastly, the shelf blocks the door behind it, which may seem odd, but it is intentional. We are thinking about eliminating the door, and we need to make sure we can live without it before we get rid of it. Previously we had the door blocked by some boxes, and though this shelf doesn’t look that great, at least it looks better than boxes.

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Day 151: School Update

Posted on 08/11/2020 by chick

The first day of school has been postponed until September 14 to give the government and school systems more time for planning. We still don’t know if they’ll be offering in-person or distance learning. They’re not going to announce that until August 31. I would like to know sooner, but the delay isn’t a problem for us, so I’m not going to complain about it.

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Day 150: That Didn’t Last Long

Posted on 08/10/2020 by chick

Remember how I said I was done buying books? I was, I swear! But then the kids needed a book to complete one of their favorite series, and my hubby wanted a book, too. So I had to order the books. I HAD to!

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Day 149: Odds and Ends

Posted on 08/09/2020 by chick
  • I am reading The Last Magician by Lisa Maxwell. I’m about a fifth of the way through, and so far it’s good, but it’s not suiting my mood. Consequently I’m not sure what to do with it. If I stop reading now, there’s a good chance I’ll never pick it up again. If I keep reading it, I might get bogged down.
  • I seem to have finally reached the end of my book spree. That is, there are no books en route or on hold at the library. Each of the kids has enough books to keep them busy for a while. I have enough to keep myself busy indefinitely.
  • Of the books I acquired during the spree, I have read nine. When I told my husband that, he said, “That’s pretty good, but how many did you buy?” “Only ten,” I joked. I don’t actually know how many I bought, but it had to have been at least 50. It will be interesting to see how many of them I can read by the end of the year, but that’s not what really matters to me. What matters is that, during a difficult time, I supported book stores, gave my kids and me things to look forward to, and to the extent that I could, also supported my library. I have no regrets.
  • Last night was another family movie night. We watched Captain Marvel. We all gave it a thumb’s-up.
  • Two movie nights in a row meant two nights of popcorn. We don’t have popcorn bowls, so we used a collection of mixing bowls and dutch ovens, most of which were larger than needed and which didn’t want to fit into the dishwasher together. I’ve always thought that popcorn bowls were a silly extravagance. Now that I have two kids who won’t share and who insist that they get equal amounts of everything, maybe popcorn bowls would be a good idea, and I haven’t used up all the silly extravagances that I’ve earned in life. But I’m done with clutter, so I’m not buying anything until I’ve figured out exactly what I do and do not need in my kitchen.
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Day 148: Movie Night

Posted on 08/08/2020 by chick

Last night we watched Star Wars: Episode IV–A New Hope on our home theater screen. Seeing it on a big screen was great, almost like seeing it in the theater again. The movie has held up well, except some of the special edition edits (the clean-ups are good, but the CGI additions are awful, and as everyone knows, Han shot first!). I would have preferred to watch the original theatrical version, but Lucas has made that very difficult to do, and that’s just the way it is. Anyway, I enjoyed watching the movie again. I’ve got the next five episodes lined up and ready go to, and I’m really looking forward to rewatching Star Wars: Episode V–The Empire Strikes Back, which is my absolute favorite of all the Star Wars films I’ve seen.

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Day 147: Can’t Help Myself

Posted on 08/07/2020 by chick
Bug

This bug was hanging on the side of a flowerpot on my front walk. I’d never seen anything like it before. I checked my insect identification book, but I didn’t find a match. After spending waayyyyyyyy too much time looking at pictures of bugs on the Internet, I guessed that this mystery bug was a leaf-footed bug nymph.

Was that identification worth the price in time and aggravation that I paid for it? Doubtful. I’m not good at bug identification, so I probably shouldn’t bother trying. But when the bugs are cute, like this one, I can’t seem to help myself.

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