Category Archives: Pandemic

Early December

Interior with the Artist’s Daughter, by Vanessa Bell, 1935-36

Hello, dear friends,

We are well into the holiday season now. and I wanted to check in and wish you all a very happy season. I hope you are well and enjoying life and family and good books. And as for the stresses and strains that also seem to be part of the holidays, I wish for you some quiet and some time to just enjoy the present moment.

I feel like I’ve been away forever, and I am hoping to get back to some consistent blogging again. I am getting back to my reading, choosing kind and gentle reads for now. Poetry is a balm for me. Books about grief (some of them), are helpful and appreciated. And when I found a book of poetry about grief that really spoke to my own experience, I was thrilled. Living Without the One You Cannot Live Without, by Natasha Josefowitz, sits beside me right now as my solace and one of my guides through this journey.

Recent fiction reads, such as Farewell to Fairacre, by Miss Read, and The Bookstore Sisters, a short story by Alice Hoffman, have been my bedtime reads. My non-fiction afternoon reading included Michelle Obama’s new book, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times, which I felt was an enriching audiobook to listen to. She is, as always, full of wisdom and compassion, and hope. I really enjoyed it. I also read a library find: A Glorious Freedom: Older Women Leading Extraordinary Lives, by Lisa Congdon. It was inspiring and I enjoyed each short biography of many different women who found their passions and careers later in life.

After two-and-a-half years of pandemic lockdown and the extra precautions we had to take due to my husband’s cancer, I am beginning to get back to some of my used-to-be normal activities. I have started going back to my exercise class at the gym, although I know that Covid is still here. But I need my exercise friends, the three-day-a-week routine, and the exercise! It’s so nice to be back. I’m also getting back to my morning walks, although the weather always seems to play havoc with that routine at this time of year. And I’m also getting back to my reading. It all feels so good!

A Busy Week

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It’s been a busy week even though we are spending most of our time at home these days. We are trying to avoid exposure to Omicron because of Byron’s impaired immune system, and earlier in the week I found myself feeling quite blue about being so housebound. But then I started looking at how we are spending our at-home time and decided that we are actually spending our time very well and I have nothing to complain about! The photos above are of this busy week:

First of all, I read three books this week. Love in an English Garden, by Victoria Connelly, was a gentle read, a light romance with garden at the heart. Then, The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson, was a powerful and beautifully written and illustrated story about the first slaves brought to America in 1619. I highly recommend it! And then, I listened to an audiobook of the first book in a new-to-me mystery series, Murder is Binding (a Booktown Mystery), by Lorna Barrett. It was fun.

We watched Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. It was an awesome production, and I thought it was very much like a film by Ingmar Bergman. That’s a high compliment!

I have been working each morning on my Spanish, using the app/program, Duolingo. I’m really enjoying the challenge, and am hoping to regain some of the Spanish I have lost over the years by not speaking it often enough.

And one last activity…Byron and I trapped and relocated a pesky squirrel that moved into our attic recently. This seems to happen almost every winter so we’ve become quite skilled at using our trap and taking these squirrels to a decent relocation spot.

Overall, a pretty interesting week. Feeling blue can definitely be part of this ongoing pandemic, but I am trying to make positive choices about how to spend my time and emotional energy.

Back to the Library

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Illustration by David Small. Cover of The Library, by Sarah Stewart.

Long closed due to the pandemic, our library has finally reopened! Hallelujah! On Friday, I visited it for the first time in I can’t remember how long, and it was a delightful 20 minutes I spent there. They have excellent virus protection precautions in place, and as a result, we are restricted to a 30 minute time period. There were only two of us there, besides the librarians, so it was incredibly quiet. Oh, how I’ve missed being able to walk there and spend time exploring the stacks!

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

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One of the positive things about our extended time of quarantine for the Covid-19 virus, is that there have been so many excellent online events and experiences to lift our spirits and remind us of the beautiful and special things in life. I found one of those online events and enjoyed an amazing performance serial of the classic poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I read it once long ago (in high school), and probably wouldn’t have read it again until I found this link. It’s a MUST experience, because each section is read by a different performing artist, and the artwork that accompanies it is phenomenal. It’s a completely immersive art experience, and is incredibly powerful. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the experience!

After The Original Drawing By Gustave Dore

Summertime 2020

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This year, 2020, is the strangest year! I posted this 2020 version of the calendar on my Instagram account, and we’re all just hoping (but not holding our breath) that December will be like that…nice and normal! But the quarantine days in the middle there are exactly what it has felt like to me. One big jumble of days!

But I’m checking in here to say HI to everyone, and report that we are all well here, although the summer has not been without stresses and anxieties. I am so grateful, though, for our wellness, our resilience, and all the love and support of family and friends!

Some time in April, my oldest brother tested positive for Covid-19. It was such a shock to hear that news. But he was without symptoms, and couldn’t believe that he had tested positive. He was in isolation (at home) for 10 days, then in quarantine for 24 days beyond that. He never developed any symptoms that he could discern, and at the end of the quarantine time, he and his wife were tested again and both results were negative. Also, he requested an antibody test, and that returned negative, as well. We will never know if he was simply one of those asymptomatic cases, or whether his test was one of the 5% false positives. We are all just deeply grateful for his good health.

Our summer projects are moving along slowly. I ended up not planting a vegetable garden this spring/summer, but the butterfly garden is doing really well and looking quite pretty. I’m getting ready to plant some autumn veggie crops in the raised beds, and look forward to planting lots of bulbs for the spring. Byron has been working on the patio cover next to the new shed in backyard. Our pace on these usual projects seems to have really slowed down. I think it’s due to what I call “quarantine fatigue.”

My reading, however, has NOT slowed down, but sped up. I finished Deborah Crombie’s mystery series, and read a number of books for my anti-racist self-education. And then, at a friend’s suggestion, I tried out the first book in a “romance” series. I hardly ever read books from that genre, but I thought I’d give it a try for some lightweight summer reading, and now I’m already on book #9. I got completely captured by Robyn Carr’s Virgin River series, which takes place in a very small town in the mountains of northern California. Once I met the people of the town, I was hooked. Robyn Carr does relationships (and sex) very well, the men are all decent and kind, the women (almost all get pregnant) are strong and independent, and everyone cares about and helps each other. So Virgin River has not been a bad place to spend this crazy summer!

I hope that you and yours are all healthy and safe this summer, and I hope you are enjoying your summer reading.

Stay safe, my friends.

Currently Reading: A Gentleman in Moscow

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I am currently reading A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles, and loving it! I think this might be the perfect book to read while sheltering-in-place.

Keeping Busy

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It’s a quiet Saturday afternoon during this continued period of shelter-in-place.. I know that community life out there is beginning to reopen, but not for us. We are all pretty much in the high risk category — Byron and I due to our advanced age, and our son due to his asthma. So we will continue to hunker down for the time being. Perhaps for a long time!

Life continues to be busy, despite being home all the time. I am grateful that we are retired and don’t have to worry about WORK. Our son is very fortunate to be able to work from home. I am grateful that all our family is well and safe at this point. And for the most part, we are happy to stay busy at home.

Here are a few things that are keeping me (us) busy during this time…

READING! So many books, so little time! I’ve read 22 books so far during this quarantine.

HANGING OUT WITH MY FAMILY: (we call ourselves the FamNet!) on Zoom every Wednesday afternoon! So much fun!

WALKING, although I’m still not getting as much exercise as I was before this quarantine!

ATTENDING ONLINE MEETINGS (a couple each week!) for volunteers with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

LEARNING: I signed up for a year’s worth of Masterclass! Why not? I love to learn and I have lots of time! First class was Jane Goodall on Conservation. A wonderful class!

GARDENING: I take lots of photos of my flowers, mostly close-ups. I rarely show a whole yard view because then you’d see how many weeds are winning the battle out there!