Just Do The Next Thing

Wednesday afternoon:

I was up most of the night then slept in for awhile this morning. I woke up to Dave trying to unsnarl a telephone healthcare provider visit gone sideways. (Shades of things to come.)

I read for awhile, a new trashy book about a young woman who had a successful career in Hollywood but walked away from acting in her early 20s. Then I had a shower and prepared for my telephone healthcare provider visit.

While I was waiting for a call, I started on a wrap-around skirt. It's based on pattern for a bias cut skirt that I have had for awhile. I've made one skirt from it and I like it, but I had it in my head to modify the pattern to make it wrap-around with a tie and not an elasticized waistband.

Thursday morning:

I completed my wraparound skirt and threw it in the wash yesterday afternoon. I have a plan to make some pants but can't find my pattern. (I found the directions for the pattern, but the actual pattern itself remains at large.)

I also washed some fat quarters I had laying around. (I bought them on sale awhile back, and they were cheap (around $1.50 each versus $3-$4, which is a more usual price), but the catch was you couldn't choose the colors. They sent you random colors, all solids, so patterns. I think I ordered ten of them and used a couple, but the colors were so muted that I just set them aside and forgot about them until recently.

We also did a couple other loads of laundry. (Dave did, mostly, but I hung out the first load and set up and cleaned off the drying rack for the second load.)

For dinner, Dave made dal and we also paired up to make aloo gobi. While we ate, we watched part of an episode from season one of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's my go-to calming binge-watch show right now and Dave is a Star Trek fan from way back, so it's a good show to watch together. (I'm also listening obsessively to the 1980 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. I've listened to the 5-episode series perhaps five or six times so far.)

After dinner we had errands to run, so we donned masks and went out into the world.

We stopped by my brother's apartment and checked his mail and cleaned out his refrigerator a bit. The last time we were there we had taken out his garbage, so that was done. I had texted him earlier in the day: He may be discharged from the hospital on Friday.

We ran up to the studio to pick up a box of nitrile gloves we had up there. We also picked up a box of alcohol wipes and some shop towels to use to make bleach wipes. (The paper towels I tried to use to make bleach wipes just dissolved into the bleach solution. Hopefully the blue shop towels will not.) We dropped off some coffee and dog biscuits that we had ordered for Judi and chatted briefly. She seemed lonely, but she would never admit it if she was.

Dave pet Buzz.

We came home via the post office, where I mailed seven more letters to the strangers--lonely also from sheltering in place--I'm writing to. I need to make envelopes. I am down to business envelopes and I would rather save some of those for sending business-y stuff.

By the time we returned home, we were exhausted. It's exhausting going out into the world with masks and gloves and being careful and avoiding contact with others, many of whom couldn't care less about being safe or making sure that others are safe. The selfishness is pathological. You try to get away from it for awhile, to steer your thoughts away from what is going on in the world right now and it's hard. Everything cycles back to the virus and social distancing and people's idiocy and selfishness and people getting sick and people dying and trump's stupid orange face on the news lying and lying and lying and it's exhausting.

We go out as little as possible and we wear masks and gloves when we do. When we come home, we wash our hands and we change our clothes. Last night we did all this and then we put away the by then cooled leftovers from dinner and we split dish washing duties.

Dave talked to his mother and got off the phone and said that she seemed lonely. She told him she's looking for a way to volunteer from home to call seniors who might need social contact. (She is a senior herself, obviously.) It's getting bad for seniors now with social distancing and sheltering in place. Loneliness is a risk factor for poor health and dementia. The inability to access technology can compound the problem. We reach out via the internet and our smart phones all the time. Many seniors don't have that ability or knowledge on how to do that. Dave said he'd look up some resources for her.

I went to bed.

I woke up shortly after midnight. I don't remember if I got back to sleep. I think I may have, but it wasn't for long if I did. When I got up, I sewed some stove handle tea towels. (We don't use them over our stove handle, but rather hang them from drawer pulls in the kitchen and from a hook in the bathroom where we use it to dry our hands. I just realized I should try making one with a hand towel to use in the bathroom. Hm. A new project.)

It's morning again and I had leftovers from dinner for breakfast at around five this morning. (I also just had part of a banana with sunflower butter for a mid-morning snack.) While I ate, I looked at the internet, at the Instagram of a woman who is drawing a daily diary of the meals she makes for her family. It inspired me to look up recipes for crackers and that led me to a long-time favorite youtube channel, Food Wishes. Food Wishes led me, via a recipe for cheese crackers, to a blog called Joy the Baker.

Joy lives in Louisiana--New Orleans--which has been particularly hard hit by Covid-19. She linked to an article in The Atlantic, complete with photos of communities hit by Covid-19: mass graves, refrigerator trucks pressed into service as makeshift morgues, grave diggers in PPE, coffins abandoned in the streets by families afraid to catch the virus, funerals limited to three people.

Ah, suddenly I'm tired. We're all so, so tired.