Minda Goes West

Writer Man and I both turned 49 this week. I made him an apricot and mascarpone tart. Youngest Kid made me a chocolate cake with white butter frosting. (I prefer white frosting to chocolate frosting.) In current events, it was a rough week. The US exceeded 100,000 deaths from COVID-19. George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. San Francisco tightened the rules about wearing masks and delivered a depressingly drawn-out reopening plan.  My heart grieves.  The protests in San Francisco over the murder of George Floyd turned into looting yesterday evening, mostly around Union Square and Market Street downtown. I haven't spent much time in Union Square, but Youngest Kid and I shop at the Old Navy and the Westfield Mall that were looted, and I used to walk past the CVS and Walgreens on my way to work, back when we lived at the first apartment. Writer Man walked down that way this afternoon and saw some of the damage first-hand. I did some reading on Campaign Zero's Police ...

I heard a podcaster (Gretchen Rubin, I think) suggest making a list of things you miss in the quarantine, so here goes. Public transportation Some buses are still running, but I think we're still supposed to be saving them for essential trips. Since I can accomplish all my essential activities within walking distance of my apartment, I haven't been on a bus since February 27. I miss being able to jump on a bus and visit another part of San Francisco, and I miss being able to walk until my energy is drained, and then take a bus home.  Movie theaters Yes, we can watch movies at home, but I miss being part of a crowd that's reacting to the same story unfolding. Sipping a cappuccino in a real cup while reading and people watching in a cafe SF has so many great cafes and coffee shops. Or should I say, had? Libraries I am grateful for my library's ebook lending program, which is keeping me nicely stocked in reading material, but there are some books I want to read that...

So here we are, almost 60 days into quarantine. A word, WriterMan reminds me, that literally means 40 days. Although other parts of California are starting to open, the Bay Area remains firmly closed through May. Our own behavior is even more restrictive than what is allowed. We mostly eat food from our storage, supplemented every 2-3 weeks with a delivery from InstaCart and once a week or so with milk and eggs (and ice cream and wine) from the small store across the street. I've had one masked, unsuccessful trip the hardware store looking for bird seed, and one weekend we bought ice cream cones from a food truck parked at the marina. It was excellent ice cream. Other than that, we've stayed out of commercial establishments, not even taking advantage of takeout or food delivery services from those restaurants that are staying open. Well, except for the afternoon Youngest Kid and I spent in the pediatric ER a few days after my last blog post. He started complaining o...

There are a few pieces of good news, for which I am grateful. The Inspector Gamache novel revived my interest in reading, although I'm definitely happiest staying on the lighter side of my usual reading range. Mystery novels, witches and vampires, and fairy-tale-esque fantasy novels? Yes, please. Novels about suffering in the real world? Rain check, please. I spent the first week or so of quarantine bingeing TV shows, and reading feels much better. While we're on the topic of reading, thank heavens for Kindles and the ability to borrow ebooks from the library. We noticed hearts, peace symbols, and greetings on the windows of the buildings facing us half a block away, so Youngest Kid and I used pink sticky notes to post "HI" in the window facing them. Hopefully it brought a smile to someone's face. (Photo of the view through a window, showing sticky notes forming I and H.)  Due to my manager urging me to take Friday off, and church streaming the ser...

What a week. It felt like at least three. I know I'm not alone in this, and yet it seems odd. After all, we are all healthy. We have a comfortable place in which to shelter, with expansive views and some outdoor space. WriterMan and I can both work from home easily, and although our investments have taken a serious hit, we are not in any immediate financial difficulty. Our older kids are safe and secure where they are, as are our parents, siblings, and other family members, and we have many ways to connect with them. On the surface, our week was normal, or possibly more relaxed than usual. After all, there was no commute, no Boy Scouts, no errands. (We were already living like this, and the city of San Francisco joined us, by order of the Mayor who declared "shelter in place" effective 12:01 AM on Tuesday. On Thursday, that extended to all of California.) And yet, I'm exhausted, and have been pretty much all week, despite getting plenty of sleep on paper. So...

Fortunately, Friday was emotionally smoother than Thursday, although I still struggled to focus at work. Note to self: In the future, try to avoid putting a work trip with a fair bit of post-trip effort, a significant change in responsibilities (hello, learning curve!, hello, new team members!), and a global pandemic in the same two weeks. Thursday, the cascade of cancellations marked a clear Before and After. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, or 9/11. Or, I wonder, the London Blitz? Except instead of coming together as a community, we have to stay 6 feet away from each other. Friday, things had settled down a bit, perhaps because, with school officially cancelled, WriterMan home, and me working from home until further notice, I was not obsessively checking the news every 5 minutes. We are slowly figuring out the rules of this new life. For example, Youngest Kid needs to be up and dressed by 8:30 each weekday morning. An hour of reading a day is mandatory. And as long as the ...

Hi. It's me. Yes, I'm still here, although I haven't blogged in so long that I literally forgot how to create a new post and bumbled around for an embarrassingly long time before I figured it out. It's been a little over a month since the coronavirus started appearing in the news here. WriterMan was quick to understand that this could be a Big Thing and placed our first apocalypse order with Amazon the first week of February, when I was away on a work trip. Over the past month, we have slowly built up about a month's worth of food and basic supplies. Since we don't have a car and I have to transport all the groceries back in my little shopping cart, we were not at Costco, piling carts high. But I did buy a little more at the grocery store each visit, and there was a definite uptick in the Amazon deliveries. We've watched the cruise liner in quarantine in Japan, and the outbreak in Washington, and the first cases around Sacramento. We've seen the su...