dual personalities

Did you have a beautiful spring weekend where you live? Saturday was absolutely perfect in our neck of the woods. We sat outside on our balcony reading and drinking coffee in the morning, and later we took a long walk around the neighborhood, wearing shorts. I am ready to get some sun on my pale winter skin. All that sun took it out of me, though, so after the walk I took an afternoon nap and then it was practically dinnertime. Gone are the days of my chore-filled quarantine Saturdays…

We continue to monitor our backyard bird life. DN has been very enamored with this woodpecker, whose interesting calls and cries he can hear but I cannot. But aren’t you impressed by how he’s gone to town on this tree? The bugs don’t stand a chance!

On Sunday, we focused on preparing for the arrival of baby — this month! We installed the car seat, and inventoried the gifts and hand-me-downs we have received. I did a wee bit of laundry and vacuumed.

Besides that, I kvetched about how much the baby moves around and how literally no sleeping positions are comfortable anymore. The countdown is on!

*Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Due to extended social isolation, many of us have experienced some confusion over time and it seems to be getting worse. On Thursday, I missed one Zoom meeting and apologized for missing another only to discover that the apology was a week early. Will I have to apologize again next week? Anyway, these events got me thinking about time and reminded me of the famous statement, “time is what keeps everything from happening at once.” Often falsely attributed to Albert Einstein, the adage first appeared in 1921, in a story by Ray Cummings.**

A brief Google search revealed that Mr. Cummings (1887-1957) was a prolific author who wrote over 700 stories for pulp science fiction and other genre magazines. Here’s the cover of one such periodical:

This discovery reminded me that during the same era, our own grandfather, ANC JR, wrote a couple of short stories for pulp detective magazines. I have found the cover of one, but have not yet been able to track down his story, “The Man who Cheated the Hot Seat,” published in it.

Despite the lurid cover art, the stories are generally well written. Certainly, they offer much better entertainment than the equivalent today.

If you can’t settle on anything to read and need something more stimulating to occupy your mind than  dusting your books or arranging them in alphabetical order, you might try sending a message via book titles:

Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I found this!

Clever as that is, we need not focus all our creative efforts on Covid-19. Why not write a story via email chain? When our children were younger, we used to play story ‘telephone’. That is, one of us would write a paragraph and then pass it along to the next person in the circle, and so on. Today, we are adapting that activity to email. Here’s what I recommend:

1. One person, the editor, starts the story and sends it along to the first person in the chain, who then adds to it and sends it back to the editor.
2. The editor takes the last sentence or two from the new installment and sends only that much to the third person, who adds to it and sends it back to the editor.
3. The editor takes the last sentence or two from the third installment and sends it to person four, and so on.

This method guarantees hilarity, if not literary merit. If you are after the latter, then skip the return to the editor step and just pass the story along.

Finally, I recommend online scrabble, which is addictive and will keep your brain occupied, albeit mostly with three-letter words.

Hang in there and have a great weekend!

* Dr. Seuss

**I found this information here.

The rollercoaster continues! This week I have had middle-of-the-night tears as well as big sunshine-y smiles. Yikes. But here’s the big news from our corner of quarantine…

The other evening, this owl visited a tree behind our balcony. We became fully invested in tracking its every move — lots of shuffling, crouching, and finally, dive-bombing what we can only assume was backyard prey. I subjected my family to a series of live updates via text. Quelle excitement!

I planted some tiny succulents (party favors from the weekend’s baby shower). They finally got some sun on Wednesday, so DN tried out the new-photographer’s-classic: a super macro shot! (Or is it a micro shot? A close up.) Will they survive? I don’t have a great track record with succulents.

Finally, I posted a very candid photo of myself wearing a dress my mother sent me — her favorite maternity-wear from 1990! — and Instagram went nuts for it. It is a genuinely great dress! Here’s hoping the temperature cooperates and I can keep it in constant wardrobe rotation.

Well, here we are. I forgot I had to blog tonight and was reminded at 9:30. Insert the eyeroll emoji. Or better yet:

In my defense, I think we all exist in a state of being confused about which day it is. My tip off should have been the rage-inducing day I had. It was truly another Tuesday that felt like it should be the end of the week. Co-workers that make simple things way more complicated than necessary. Emails that go ignored. And to top it off, a Zoom call with eight friends that required half an hour of audio tinkering only for everyone to decide I was the problem. Yeah, no thanks.

The good news is that tomorrow is a new day. And I ordered a mason jar of to-go margarita from a restaurant up the street and I’ve got leftovers.

*Matthew 6:34

Aside from the sheer relief of not working, the big news from my weekend was that one of my friends hosted a virtual baby shower for me on Zoom. It was intended to be in person, but the coronavirus took off just before invitations went out, so we adjusted. All of my friends still “attended” and sent gifts, and it was really quite a lovely afternoon, if truly surreal.

Here you can see that I put a lot of thought into arranging the laptop to set our own scene on-screen. I thought hooking up to the TV was a brilliant idea, but it turns out it is still very hard to focus on 11 separate squares of faces. There was a lot of adjusting throughout. And I was probably not using my inside voice.

DN and the host collaborated on party favors for the socially distant guests, so of course DN made a “mix-your-own-cocktail” box. We delivered a number of them on Friday, which was a welcome excuse to drive around town. I think my Subaru passenger seat might be the most comfortable chair we own, so there were no complaints from me.

As bizarre as it was to try to socialize from all of our separate couches, it was a nice opportunity for people to see each other. And actually, the Zoom setting allowed me to invite a few of my out-of-state friends, so that was nice. And in addition to sending registry gifts, a couple of friends also packed up large bins of hand-me-down equipment, clothes, and toys. I am beginning to feel — dare I say it — a lot closer to prepared!

April has entered its 350th day and the powers that be here in my state are enjoying lock-down too much to countenance any relaxation of restrictions, even in remote areas that have had a whopping eight hospitalizations (down from 9 at the peak).

We are the largest, least populated county in the state and one of the poorest, but the Governor doesn’t seem aware of that. Well, whatever.  I just stay home and try to figure out what day it is. I’m not the only one that’s confused. My Christmas cactus thinks it is time to bloom,

and someone forgot to inform the weather gods that it’s spring.

Yes, that’s snow on my poor green growing things. It didn’t last long but we have had lows in the 20s for several days. No wonder the cactus is blooming!

Still, I’ve been putting my quarantine to good use. I made naan bread to go with the DH’s yummy beef curry. Naan is actually very easy to make and it turned out well.

When we ran out of ice-cream, I made brownies — one can’t survive on naan bread alone. Otherwise, I have left most of the cooking to the DH, who likes his hot, meaty meals. It’s a good thing for both of us that he’s willing to cook, otherwise we’d eat bagels and cereal all the time.

While not working hard on classes, I’ve been playing word games (try this one. I’m terrible at it but it’s addictive) and reading Alistair MacLean’s  The Last Frontier on Kindle.  First published in 1959, this classic Cold War thriller reminds us of a time when everyone knew who the bad guys were and it was legit to depict them as evil. Sometimes it’s a real pleasure to read something unambiguous. I’m now deep into season three of The Mentalist. All is well.

Over the course of the week I came across a few things on the Internet to share. I think we can all relate to this story:

And I bet we all know someone like this…

This one is clever, although I must say that lock-down has had absolutely no effect on how much or what type of clothing I wear!

And finally, one I’d really like to implement…

Hang in there and have a great weekend — whatever that means.

Late breaking news! Just in case you are confused by the Coronavirus rules, here’s a great clarification:

I very much agree with daughter #1.

I, too, am over this. Here’s how I felt about the week by Tuesday:

And there’s always this classic:

Looking up that gif reminded me of another highly relevant Liz Lemon moment:
Or, what fresh university decree will force us to recalibrate our entire jobs with a day’s notice?

Well anyway. We’re still hanging in there. I have Reese’s eggs and fizzing bath bombs and the joy of stretch pants to keep me going. And this week I tried out coloring to see if it soothed the old nerves…

You would think some KJV verses would do the trick, but really I’m feeling too much pressure to stay in the lines and pattern my colors consistently. I haven’t made it very far yet.

In other news, we started watching the show Broadchurch, which lends some anticipation to our evenings. Broadchurch is a British crime series from about five years ago that centers on the murder of an 11-year-old boy in a small town in Dorset. It is pretty engrossing (at least 3 episodes in) without being gory or creepy. I feel like crime is just about the best genre for me right now — I need something that isn’t too challenging, but that has at least a little gravitas.

So far, so good.