It was confusing enough before.  Then there was a holiday in the middle of it all.  And they gave us half a day on Friday.  I was glad they sent out an e-mail to inform us of their largess, because otherwise I wouldn't have had a clue.  I don't know about you, but these days I don't know if it's Tuesday or Christmas.

We were just informed that our working at home will continue until at least the 6th of July and quite possibly throughout the summer.  After that, we're not really sure.  I never thought I'd miss structure.  I'm liking getting up two hours later than I usually do, but outside of that it's just getting weird.  While I actually am busy from 8:30 to 5:30 most days, the rest of the day seems to evaporate.  All those things I thought I would get to when I had the time remain undone.  I guess time wasn't the problem.  I just don't want to do them.

Cooking is not a real challenge.  We go shopping roughly once every three weeks, trying to keep away from the virus as much as possible.  We don't even get take-out.  Not so much as a pizza. Luckily, Himself likes to cook and he's wonderful at it, and although it will never be listed as a "hobby" in my resume, I'm getting better at it than I used to be (faint praise at best).  There would be things to do if I made myself do them.  I have a piano, and trust me, I really should practice because I am horrible at it.  I like to read, but I am astounded at how little I have read in the last three months.  After two pages my head nods and that's the end of that.  I spend too much time on Facebook, but even that is getting boring.  I feel like an envelope without an address and I don't know what to do with myself.

After last week's entry on the wonderfulness of the written word I opened my mailbox today and found a Christmas card from a dear friend.  It said "Merry May Christmas".  She knows I light the tree every night just to solidify my reputation as the neighborhood "character."  My pep talks are getting less and less believable, even the ones I give myself.  

Well, confusion or not, here we are.  COVID-19 is not done with us by a long shot.  Many people are dropping their guard because the weather is good or the boredom is intolerable, or I don't know why.  We're not ready to do that.  We can't afford to take off the masks and run to the beach, and I know that.  So I won't, because I am a person who cares about other people, and I'm also not quite through doing what I have planned here on the Blue Marble.  No, I don't know what it is, but I know I'm not done.  So out of my concern for myself and for you I will stop whining and continue to exercise caution, wash my hands, stop touching my face, wear my mask, light a candle in front of a picture of Tony Fauci and hang on.  It's a fascinating time to be alive.  The books after this will be interesting.  I just hope I can stay awake long enough to read one.

I was planning on a discussion of the upcoming holiday weekend (What's a "holiday"?) but when I tried to sign in everything had changed since Saturday.  The sign in is different.  The "interface" is different.  I don't like different.  I never have. For the last 45 minutes I have been doing a "live chat" with about six different people, located God only knows where, who have been trying to help me get onto this page. My blood pressure, never good, is getting worse by the minute.

It occurs to me how completely dependent I (we?) have become on technology.  I still write a letter once in a great while and stick a stamp in the corner. I did that the other day when I came across a friend's name in my prayers and realized I didn't have a phone number for him.  Yesterday I got a return card with a little note inside.  My first thought was "I know that handwriting!" and it was a nice, intimate feeling.  My second thought was how many people I care about whose handwriting I have never seen.  It made me sad.

My older son loves to cook and also loves his grandfather (as do we all).  For his Christmas present a few years ago I had my father-in-law write out the recipe for pancakes my kids had been helping him with since they had to stand on a chair to stir the batter.  I put it in a frame and it is hanging in his room to this day.  This year it was a hand-written copy for Papa's squash pie which is a family staple.  That one is in a frame and on top of the piano, but pictures have been taken and are frequently consulted when he needs to throw something together for a party in San Francisco.  The actual framed copies are treasures for him.  I found a recipe one of my teachers gave me when I got my first apartment.  Everyone seems to be digging deeply through piles of memories as we spend the pandemic tidying up.  The sight of Rosemary's handwriting warmed my heart and made me both feel her presence and intensely miss her at the same time.  No one has ever put a blue ribbon around a pile of e-mails.

So although I seem to have temporarily stumbled into the section of the site where I needed to be in order to put this thought together, I have also stumbled onto the urge to write more letters and send more cards.  As we need to touch one another to feel connected, part of the reason this social distancing is so horribly difficult, we need tangible evidence during the dark hours which we can read and touch and commune with.  There is a special kind of magic in the token of love which is still there when the power fails.

Today was a lovely day and we have been cooped up for so long we decided to make a break for it.  Himself decided we needed to see the Herring Run.  It's only the next town over, and we arrived, wearing our very sensible, not to mention fashionable, masks.  No one was there when we arrived, but after about ten minutes a man (without a mask) rode up on the sidewalk on his bicycle.  As he walked towards me I gave him the straight arm and he walked around me.  Still, I wasn't happy to see him.  A few other people drifted in (with masks) about ten minutes after that, and although I'm sure they were lovely I was not in the mood to play "Social Distance Enforcer" so I suggested we leave.  And how long CAN you watch fish swim upstream on their way to their romantic encounters anyway?  Not that I don't admire their commitment, because they really had to work at making those jumps up the stairs.

I felt slightly wicked for being outside in the middle of the day (Saturdays feeling just like workdays now), and even though we followed all the rules suggested by Dr. Fauci, I was a bit nervous.  For my next adventure I decided it was time to brave a liquor store and get some very nice blue gin and a bit of tonic to keep it company.  I put the bottles in the trunk of the car and slathered my hands with antiseptic goo when I climbed  back inside.  Mission accomplished!  I have become such a daredevil.  Except when I was walking around a car in the parking lot a woman (unmasked) had her driver's window rolled down and made quite a production of coughing at me out the window.  I think this was her way of expressing her disapproval of my submitting to the authoritarian regime who won't let her go out with her friends to get her hair done or eat pizza at an inside table.  I didn't say what I was thinking, although I did mutter it under my breath inside my calico mask.  She was not nice, not considerate, and not very smart.

I don't like what's going on "out there".  People are getting bored with COVID-19, but COVID-19, unfortunately, is not getting bored with us.  The fact that we want it to end will not make it end.  It stinks, but there you are.  Not wearing a mask in public has become a dare and a confrontation.  It's the "I'll show YOU who's boss!" mentality and the nicer the weather gets, the worse the attitudes.  I won't be going to the beaches, or the park.  I won't be playing tennis (OK, I never really could, so that's not much of an example), or even sitting six feet away from friends in a circle to chat.  I'm not sure when I'll feel comfortable eating in a restaurant again.  It will be a while before I will even get take out, and we all know how I miss my Chinese food. We are entering the most dangerous period of the virus; the part where the novelty of living in a historic time is wearing thin but the danger is as big as ever.  Until there is a vaccine we will just have to show consideration and courtesy and caring for one another.  And quite frankly, that's not looking very likely.

So today, no talk of masks or gloves or curves or social distancing.  Today we talk of romance.

Twenty-nine years ago today, in a chapel overflowing with lilacs and friends, I married this guy.  He is calm, tall and diplomatic (all the things I'm not). I was in the third grade when he was born, and I was convinced he was "not my type".  He chased me for several years before the light went on in my head and I realized who I had here.  The Real Deal.  A certifiable gem.

We exchanged our vows, having absolutely no idea what we were in for.  We had never discussed how many children we wanted, or whether we would be strict or lenient parents.  We had no clue that we would face the deaths of both our mothers, my father, my younger brother, and several dear friends.  Or that the clergy would figure so largely in our lives.  My "priest collection" was part of the dowry.  When our two fabulous sons came along we would spend two weeks in Wales every summer in the rectory (or "presbytery") of a brilliant and absolutely delightfully wacky priest whom I met through my eighth grade history teacher. Our boys grew up comparing castles and discussing which one most resembled the one from Fisher Price.  (It was Conwy.) "Uncle Jim" would visit us in the fall sometimes.  Our younger son was named after him and also after the priest who married us.  They knew both priests as "Uncle __" and loved them like family.  Neither clergy nor Wales was in our initial life plan. Many wonderful things never get into the first draft.

Our kids turned out to be the kind of men I would want to have as friends if they weren't already stuck with me as their mother.  They are funny and smart and athletic, like their Dad, the "Marathon Man".  They are theatrical and poetic and irreverent, like me. The years in between then and now went by too quickly, the way they always do, and I miss Little League, music lessons, and high school productions that were beyond amazing.  I certainly miss having them around now, but it's their turn to fly.  We're the bow; they are the arrows.

But getting back to Himself, in no crystal ball I can remember was there any intimation of what we're going through now.  We've been alone together for 24/7 for the last two months and somehow we haven't had the tiniest spat.  He really is the best of company, for Pandemics and for life.  I cannot believe how incredibly lucky we have been for all these years.  We are "chalk and cheese" in many ways, i.e. as different as two humans can be, but somehow it still works.  And it works better all the time.

We now return you to our previously scheduled Pandemic.  Himself and I are going to open a bottle of wine, light some candles, and enjoy a lovely dinner for two while we block out the rest of the world.  Because in the midst of all this fear and sorrow, it is necessary for all of us to stop and feel good about something.  

As much as I try to sing the optimistic songs, and support my friends, and allay their fears, the truth of the matter is that I am as worried about all this as anyone else.  I've kept myself very busy with work and keeping in touch with people who live alone, with writing, reading, and playing WAY too many word games on my phone. I thought I was doing pretty well and being the good soldier until I took my blood pressure a couple of days ago. The top number was larger than my highest weight by at least thirty (and I'm talking about when I was  42 years old and nine months pregnant).  The lower number was a score I would have been proud to get on any high school test.  In short, the stress was announcing its sneaky presence in my body, even if my head was not giving it any room.  A change in medication will help the blood pressure. Now I need to learn to let all this into my conscious mind where I can see it and deal with it.

There are things to do.  I have given up walking because of people without masks, and horror stories on television, and, oh yeah, my own laziness.  That has to change and it can change.  I'll start with a 30 minute walk, rain, shine, or snow once a day.  I can build on it from there.  I can spend more time praying or meditating, or whatever calms me down.  I can get more sleep and eat healthier food.  None of this, of course, will make COVID-19 go away.  Some of it will protect me.  None of it will hurt me.  And if I plan to continue to bring any comfort and strength to my friends and family (and I do) I can't enter the battle unarmed.  

My silly Christmas tree is still lit every night and is still the talk of the neighborhood.  I have shared my brilliant idea of sewing buttons on my baseball hats (just above each ear) to make my masks hurt less.  And if I'm a little slower than usual getting back to those of you who reach out to me, don't worry.  I'm just following my own advice and spending some time taking better care of myself.  My mother was right. You can't pour from an empty kettle.  

So far it's been a very long, often scary, and usually (luckily) boring pandemic for us.  Himself lost his job, but he's had nibbles.  I work from home and keep quite busy.  To fill in the time Himself has created a sour dough starter.  Apparently this is a "thing" people do.  Personally, I would go to the bakery, but here it is in all its glory (well...that's not him, that's a stock photo, but the resemblance is uncanny and I suspect it must be a relative). 

People who get into this spend a lot of time feeding it, adding flour, and taking out big liquidy clumps to make room for further developed liquidy clumps.  The pint glass filled with pale bubbly gloop looks deceitfully like a milkshake.  While I haven't fallen for this ploy, it does make me miss milkshakes, and that makes me cranky.  People also give their starters names.  I'm not making this up.  I have better things to lie about, like my age and my weight and where both bars of Lindt Dark Chocolate went.  Our little friend is "Tim".  

I get several reports every day on how Tim is doing.  "He looks perky."  "He has more bubbles since I put the sous-vide in the water with him."  "He looks better today than yesterday.  Yesterday I thought I'd killed him."  We have such fun with our COVID roommate!   Happily, Himself has also become even more interested than usual in cooking truly amazing meals, all more adventurous than the boring "same old/same old" I am prone to cooking.  There is even a rumor that within the next couple of days we will have an actual loaf of sour dough bread.  I'll let you know how it turns out.

Meanwhile "Tim" continues to upstage me, and if you know anyone who has ever done theater (even dinky community theater) we do not enjoy being upstaged.  So watch it, Tim.  But I have to be nice to him.  Because somewhere in the back of my head is a gloopy mixture in a science fiction movie.  And it didn't turn out well.....not at all.