Blue-Footed Musings

I made a list of things to do this weekend. I did about half of the tasks today, which is pretty good. If I do at least half of what’s left on the list tomorrow, I’ll consider that to be very good (I never expect to do everything on my list. That would be way too much pressure).

But I think I also ought to make myself a new, special list of things to do when the pandemic is over. If there’s anything this pandemic has shown me, it’s that I ought to do a better job of staying on top of things. You just never know when something will come along and keep you from doing the things you already ought to have done. I was already in desperate need of a haircut when the pandemic started, and now I have the world’s most unruly tangle of hair to manage (and I look a tumbleweed!). Plus, nearly every day I think of something I’d like to do, and then remember that I can’t. It’s frustrating.

When the pandemic is finally over, and if I survive it, I want to go out into the world and do all of the things I ought to have done and all of the things I would have liked to have done. It will be my reward for staying home like a good girl. So I will make a list, and I will call it my Post-Apocalyptic List, which sounds scary, but being “post-apocalypse” is going to be a good thing, and all of the things on my list will be good.

And then I will live happily ever after, right?

A girl can dream.

Today, to get some exercise, I walked up and down my driveway until I’d done 1,000 steps. It was an arbitrary number, and not any great distance, but it felt good to reach it. Then I wandered around the yard, picking up fallen branches and sticks and flinging them into the woods. There were a lot of them, so it was a decent amount of exercise.

A long time ago, back when I lived in Connecticut, I once visited the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport. It was the saddest zoo I’d ever been to, and the saddest thing I saw there was a tiger pacing the perimeter of its habitat. It looked so miserable, trapped. I wonder if anyone were to see me walking around my yard, would they think the same thing about me? Am I an animal pacing the perimeter of my habitat?

Our stream was running strong today from all the rain we’ve gotten lately. I stopped to listen to it for a few minutes, because burbling water is such a calming sound. (I don’t know if it’s fair to call it a “stream,” since it’s really just water flowing from a drainage pipe, but the water doesn’t know that. The water thinks it’s a stream, so Imma call it a stream). Fiddleheads are starting to sprout along the sides of the driveway. There aren’t many sweet white violets blooming yet, but there were enough in the back yard that I could smell them every time I reached down to pick up a stick.

I paused a couple of times today to think positive thoughts and to be grateful, but I wasn’t really feeling it. I wonder, though, does it still count for something? Does the intent carry any weight with the Powers That Be?

You know you’re running really low on patience when one of the kids yells, “Mommy, So-And-So hit me!” and you’re tempted to reply, “Yeah, well you probably had it coming!” Forty-seven days at home is forty-seven days of nonstop parenting, and it’s tiring. The weather, though, was gorgeous, just about worth the price of all the rainy days that came before. It was warm, sunny for most of the day, and the violets were blooming like mad.

I’m bored, but I don’t have much mental energy, so I’ve been watching a lot of TV. My current go-to show is “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” I didn’t get to see the show often when it originally aired, and I’m glad to have a second chance at it. The episodes are short, clever, and kid-friendly, just what the doctor would order if the doctor’s office weren’t closed due to the pandemic.

Hey, guess what kind of weather we had today!

If you guessed rain, you guessed correctly. If you also guessed cold, then ding ding, you were doubly correct. It was another rainy and cold day. Blech.

What else can I say about today? I gave Livia a piano lesson. I helped both children with their art projects (recreating famous works of art). My husband baked a pumpkin pie. Otherwise, Day 45 was very much like the 44 days that preceded it. Self-isolation wasn’t exactly exciting to begin with, and it hasn’t improved with time.

It rained again today. Ugh. This spring has been the rainiest ever. I miss the sun. When I was a kid, I saw a short film on HBO that was about a girl in a school on a planet where it rained all the time, except once in a decade (or so–I don’t remember the exact time frame), when the sun would come out. I am that girl now.

Or I am Johnny Cash, stuck in Folsom Prison and feeling blue, because “I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when.”

OK, it was yesterday. That’s when I last saw the sun. But it FEELS like at least a decade ago.

BTW, thanks to the Internet, I was able to look up the name of that film. The title was All Summer in a Day, and it was based on a short story by Ray Bradbury. I am not the only person who remembers it, as you can see from these nostalgia-filled reviews.

Livia accidentally dropped a paper into the piano a couple of days ago. It seemed prudent not to play the piano until it was removed, but removal presented a challenge. There was no easy way to reach the paper. With a flashlight, holding the keyboard lid halfway open, I could see the paper but my hands were just too big to fit into the space. Livia’s, too. The job required a tool, but it had to be something flexible that couldn’t possibly harm the piano.

Behold!

I triumphantly showed the fishing tool and retrieved piece of paper to my husband and he said, “You should blog about that. It’s the first time a woman ever invented a tool!” (Ha-ha. He’s not actually a sexist jerk. He just pretends to be for the sake of a joke.)

Anyway, I was quite proud of my solution until my friend sent me a link to a page that explained the professional way to remove things from inside the piano. Most modern grand pianos have keyboard lids (officially termed “fallboards”) that can be easily removed simply by opening them and lifting them off. I took mine off today just to see if it could be done, and it was indeed very easy. Had I known about it, that would have been the best way to retrieve the paper. Live and learn. But, had my piano been an older model, my solution would have been the best one (the other options being to go under the piano and actually unscrew things, or to call a piano tuner). So hooray for ingenuity!

We are nearly out of crackers. We are nearly out of a lot of things, but this impending shortage is especially upsetting. Cheese and crackers is one of my go-to snacks. I don’t know if I can manage the apocalypse without it.

Today’s big news is that Rhode Island schools will be closed for the remainder of the school year. Ugh. I also recently learned that our town has a funding shortfall for the 2020-2021 school year. As is always the case in such situations, art programs are first on the chopping block. That infuriates me. I was watching a TV show the other day, and in one scene there was a biology teacher explaining how mitosis works, and I thought to myself, “I remember learning that, but has it ever been of any practical use?” And the answer to that is, of course, no. Your average person has little use for information about cell division. I’m not saying that science isn’t important. It is important. But some aspects of science are less important than some aspects of art and music, and it’s foolish the way school boards always assume that anything labeled “science” or “math” is inherently worthier than anything labeled “art.” Art is important!