Blue-Footed Musings

At work we have a monthly contest. It usually involves punning with a combination of work-related words and pop culture references. I rarely take part. I felt unusually punny the other day, though, so I submitted several entries. And won! It was good to be clever for a moment. I’ve been feeling so slow-witted lately. Secretly I hope it’s just an aspect of the Dunning-Kruger effect and that the very fact that I feel stupid proves that I’m not.

We are now on our 32nd day of self-isolation. That’s more than a month of staying home. Over 25,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. It’s horrific. And our president is a lunatic who thinks he has total authority but takes no responsibility for any failures (and there have been SO MANY FAILURES). I can’t stand to watch his nightly propaganda show. I can hardly bear watching clips of him on Twitter. Just the image of his face and the sound of his voice are enough to make me want to vomit.

After work, all I want to do is escape from the news of the day. But when I sit down for some mindless TV, all the advertisers are trying to convince me how much they care about me during these “uncertain times” (what a crappy euphemism, BTW). I don’t want to think about the times or the uncertainties. I want to be distracted and forget that life isn’t normal anymore.

But, in the very local news, there were some good numbers. The violets seem to have enjoyed the rain. There were several dozen of them blooming today.

The violets are starting to bloom. I can’t tell you when the first bud opened, because the weather was rainy and windy for several days, and I didn’t go out. But I can tell you that at least seven of them had bloomed by Easter, when the sun peeped out for a little while. The first one I took a picture of will have to take the role of First Violet of 2020.

• As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I miss fresh fruit. Today I opened a can of peaches, hoping it would satisfy my craving. Livia refused to eat any (“Gross!”), but I thought the peaches were pretty good. Anyway, better canned than nothing. I put the leftovers in the fridge. If they’re still there in the morning, I will throw them into my oatmeal. Or, if feeling adventurous, I might try making a single-serving microwave crisp. Apparently such things can be done, and there’s only one way to find out.
• I also found a can of tart cherries (score!). I left it on the counter next to a recipe, and when I returned downstairs, there was cherry cobbler cooling on the stove. Absolute magic! Livia didn’t turn her nose up at that.
• Not only did my husband make the cobbler, but he also made pepperoni pizza for dinner. He has cooked for us every day, and I am so very grateful (and full). He’s the best!

It is Day 28 (four weeks!) since we last went shopping for groceries, and we miss fresh fruits and vegetables. All we have left are a few of sad looking apples, a questionable orange or two, and some carrots. We are considering our options for getting fresh food. We could go to the store to get it, pay a premium have it delivered, or attempt to grow it. Or we could try to find out how long we can live without it. We are fortunate to have so many options. Not everyone does.

• Without the kids’ school schedule to anchor us, my husband and I are drifting back to our normal night-owl hours, late to bed and late to rise. I like staying up late. I do not like that my workday is being shifted into the evening. But, having heard stories about unusual numbers of New Yorkers dying in their sleep, a phenomenon perhaps attributable to COVID-19, I have to look at our late waking time as “better late than never.” Whatever time I wake, I will be grateful to be alive.
• I’m way ahead of schedule on my work project. It’s 95% done, and I’ve run out of work to do on it (some pieces come from other departments, and I am still waiting for those). Assuming I remain healthy, tomorrow will be the beginning of my 3-4 weeks of working on anything I please. I am looking forward to it.
• Now that the kids are home all day every day, they make an awful lot of dishes. We keep running out of clean bowls. But they make less laundry. That evens things out somewhat.
• There was a thunderstorm here today. Just when we thought it was over, a house-jolting crack of thunder directly overhead scared the bejesus out of all of us. I was looking at a picture of fireworks at that very moment, which was sort of funny. It was a picture from the Cuteness Store, which is the art store that Livia and Marshall run when they’re in the mood to make some cash. Our household economy is still going strong, and I bought two pictures for a total of $2.25. Rumor has it that some rich guy downstairs bought over $7 worth of art!

• I wish I hadn’t gone out yesterday. It has created far too much anxiety for me. I cannot accurately judge risk under normal circumstances. In this pandemic, everything seems life-threatening. I keep thinking about every little thing I did yesterday and where I might have gone wrong. I know the odds are in my favor, and once upon a time, when I always seemed to be on the right side of the percentages, I would have been comforted by that. The odds have failed me several times in recent years, though, and I no longer trust them. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to stay home.
• In more positive news, though my sister-in-law had convinced me that it’s a fisher cat that makes the screaming sound I sometimes hear outside, I can now state with a good degree of certainty that it’s a fox. Tonight I heard the sound, opened the door, and saw a fox running down the driveway. To be perfectly honest, it was dark outside and I only saw the animal’s tail as it rounded the corner of our driveway, but it looked like a fox tail.
• In even more positive news, telecommuting is getting easier by the day. With everyone working at home now, my employers have finally taken the effort to computerize more tasks. Today they released a digitized version of a form that we telecommuters have been asking for for years. It’s a small thing, but a very good thing.
• In yet more positive news, I’m well ahead of schedule, having finished 86% of my current issue with 50% of my editing time remaining. If I can continue at this pace, I will be done by the end of the week, and then I will have the freedom to work on anything I please for three whole weeks (knock on wood) .

Today I broke quarantine. A phone consultation with my doctor had failed to resolve a health issue I’ve been having. She couldn’t do anything more for me without seeing me in person, so I went to her office today. It was a miserable, anxiety-filled ordeal. I don’t know if it was the right decision. That will depend on how it all turns out. But I do at least have a diagnosis and a prescription.

Today the children and I turned my entire office into a blanket fort. We used sheets rather than blankets, though, because I have an abundance of them and the lighter weight makes them easier to anchor. We layered blankets and pillows on the floor of the fort for comfort. Then we propped the sheets up with crutches and a tower that Marshall made with one of his building toys. The fort wasn’t tall enough for us to stand inside, but it was spacious, and it looked impressive.

The kids turned the endeavor into a competition, which they called the “Last to Leave the Fort Challenge.” Whichever of them stayed in the fort longest would be the winner. So neither of them wanted to leave, because the first to leave would be the loser. My husband joked that they were “quarantining within a quarantine.” We finally talked them into coming out at the same time for a movie (Aquaman). Though no one officially won, neither did they lose, and they both got popcorn.

Someone on Twitter recently asked, “What has the pandemic taught you that you can live without?” For me the answer is paper towels. Back on Day 7 I mentioned that our kitchen paper towel roll had run out and I hadn’t replaced it. I still haven’t, and my husband is adamant that we shouldn’t (excessive paper towel usage has become a pet peeve of his). We have a lot of dish towels, and those work for most paper towel purposes, the only downside being that they have to be laundered.

We’re not quite living without, mind you. There is a roll of paper towels that my husband uses for occasional messy cooking tasks, such as draining greasy foods. He left it in the cabinet where we store replacement rolls, so that it wouldn’t be the first thing that anyone reached for. I also have a separate roll that I use for cleaning. But we have cut down drastically. Had I replaced that kitchen roll, we would have gone through all the towels on it by now, and probably a few more rolls as well.