pameladean

Yesterday and today I made myself go out for a walk. Yesterday, though sunnier, was much brisker than today, with a searching breeze that made me glad I'd put a fleece jacket over my hoodie, though I was too warm by the time I got within a few blocks of home.

People are being very good, very locally, about distancing. I've seen a slight increase in the number of people wearing masks. I don't have one yet and simply stay well away from everybody.

The scilla is in full bloom, both in our yard and in the neighborhood generally. I used to covet those sheets of pure blue in other people's yards, and now I have one. It began with about three volunteers from the yard next door and a bag of 25 bulbs that I planted mostly in the shadiest part of the back yard, leaving a handful to carefully put in a chicken-wire cage with a handful of winter aconite and plant in the front instead. Both front and back yards are now dotted with individual plants pushing their territory outwards. All the purple crocuses are up and blooming. The yellow and white ones haven't put in an appearance yet.

Unlike most of my neighbors, I have not raked any leaves out of the lawn or flowerbeds. The Xerces Society, champion of pollinators, asks that one wait until the soil temperature is reliably fifty degrees at all times before raking up the shelter of many overwintering beneficial pollinators. But Minnesotans are out there way too early, raking away, as if bare ground were lovelier than a patchwork of leaves, as if a brown lawn were nicer than that patchwork as well. It looks tidy, I guess, but lovely it is not.

I do admit to having lifted by hand about six maple leaves that were preventing the opening of crocus buds, but that is all.

Quite aside from the question of pollinators, I am now vindicated because there will be a winter storm tomorrow, followed by several quite cold days and nights below freezing.

Yesterday had bright sun and cloud shadows dappling the new daffodils along my route and picking out the red shoots of peony and hosta. Today there was a kind of ghost sun, showing me a faint outline of my shadow, sometimes a human figure, sometimes a walking tree or pillar, sometimes vanished.

I'm having trouble reading fiction, even books I've read before. Basic hygiene, cooking dinner, and walking have been my accomplishments, along with a call to the Member Services Line of my health insurance company to inquire why my medication list had disappeared from their new website. (It hadn't, they'd just put it under a weird tab. Next time I'll just go through all tabs no matter how apparently irrelevant.)

We are all well here so far. I will get to wave to my local brother from a safe distance on Monday when he comes to collect groceries from our porch -- there were no delivery dates available in the suburb he and my mom live in, but Minneapolis still had a few. It has none now, though pickup dates are still copious.
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Saffron is having some issues with her food. She is prone to gum inflammation. For some time this has been kept in check by a prescription food called TD, which comes in large unwieldy chunks and must be crunched up rather than just bolted by the feline consumer. But she stalled out on eating a portion a few days ago and then refused to even try the next one. There's nothing wrong with her appetite; she agitated ceaselessly for actual food until I opened a can of wet food, which she ate with abandon. We tried her on the TD again after, we hoped, giving any minor soreness of jaw a chance to heal, and she did eat most of a serving but left several pieces, and left more the next time. So we are trying the soft food again, and hoping we aren't actually training her or allowing her to train us to just give her the damn wet food already.

After the first few indignities at the veterinarian's office, she has refused to let the vet look insider her mouth at all; and he said that if we ever did need to see what was going on in there, she'd have to be sedated. I hope it doesn't come to that.

How are you all?

Pamela

Among the pleasures I listed as temporarily suspended are things like having tea with my excellent ex Elise, having lunch with my sharer of theatrical interests Cindy, and a number of "we should really get coffee sometime" meetings that haven't happened yet but that I was sure would. My long-running tea group scheduled our next meeting for May, now located in another century in subjective time.

I've lost track of how many entities have emailed me to say they were stalwartly staying open and then (quite reasonably) reversed course and closed after all. My yearly diabetes appointment, originally scheduled for the 26th, has been moved to the end of April. My dentist's office is open for emergencies but not for routine visits. I have a hygiene appointment on April 22nd, but right now both that and the new doctor's appointment might as well be in 2030. Our bank has closed its offices, leaving ATMs and drive-throughs going for the nonce. Bachman's stayed open somewhat defiantly and then suddenly decided they wouldn't.

When I logged into the Instacart website, Cub division, earlier today, it said that the next available delivery slot was next Tuesday. I put together an order and closed it out to secure the delivery slot, but when I actually got to the point where you choose your delivery time, it offered me Today, Within 2 Hours. I took it. I wonder if I will get one more package of toilet paper or any pasta or rice. I think I might get the whole-wheat spaghetti, which seems unpopular. We'll see. The toothpaste both Raphael and I use was on sale, so maybe we can get a couple of extra tubes of that.

At least this means the menu planning for next week is done, though it has a lot of "some kind of veg" and similar temporizing spots in it.

I've talked to my mother on the phone. She is maintaining a cheerful demeanor, and had her "completely unconcerned" cat in her lap. My brother, who lives with her, emailed me about streamlining her garden to be lower-maintenance but still pleasing, so we are brainstormng that. It's much too soon to do any gardening in Minnesota right now, but it's an engaging thought exercise.

David and I had our usual date yesterday, staying in and ordering from Pizza Luce, which has at least apparently demonstrated good practices during this crisis. We wiped down the outsides of the pizza boxes and discarded them afterwards, though I would usually store the leftover pizza in its original box. Then we watched several episodes of the Great British Bakeoff, petting such cats as stopped by.

I'm trying to read more fiction and stop scrolling through Twitter so much. I've been just starting a reread of Nevada Barr's Hunting Season for more than a week. Maybe this evening. I have an essentially infinite number of books to read, especially if I can get my brain to stop erasing the existence of e-books. I don't mean in general; I mean that anything I acquire in e-book form, even if I eagerly anticipated it, falls out of my memory instantly. Several kind friends have patiently explained how they keep track of their e-books, but my failure happens well before any system of any kind can be invoked. I think I need to make myself a note in Evernote as soon as I finish a download and set some kind of alarm to poke me. It is a weird thing for my brain to be doing, forgetting all my delicious e-books, and it well predates any breath of coronavirus.

My doctor has been reminding me periodically to fill out what she calls an End-of-Life Directive, though apparently it's a subset of a living will generally, in Minnesota, called a Health Directive. Having misplaced the one she gave me, I downloaded a new form. It requires two witnesses and a notary to be complete, but putting the information and preferences in is better than nothing. I am still pondering the details, but it's a start. I should have done this when I was thirty and updated it from time to time.

This afternoon I found myself sitting at the computer glowering at my book, suddenly feeling quite hungry, and deciding that I should have lunch, but not getting up because I would have to wash my hands first. Eventually I did get up and did wash my hands, and then ate the leftover pizza. It's definitely better to put off eating than to skip the hand-washing, but I need to be more efficient about the order in which I do things. I come in from taking out the trash or upstairs from doing laundry, immediately wash my hands, and then realize that I need to pee, so after that I have to wash them again. Then, invariably, though I might sneeze once or twice a day at most, within five minutes of these operations I'll sneeze and have to blow my nose; and there I am, back at the sink scrubbing away. There's also the bit where I take a shower and then put on some skin cream for a minor medical condition and then have to wash my hands again as per the directions on the tube. I was using a glove to apply the cream and then discarding it, but disposable gloves are in short supply, so I quit doing that; I had felt guilty about it anyway. I am grateful for the existence of so many moisturizers and for David's habit of giving me strange new ones for my birthday.

I'm sure my hand are not actually going to fall off. I'm not sure of much, but that's probably a safe bet.

And since that is the case, it's time for me to work on my book before making dinner.

Stay safe and well, all of you.

Pamela

P.S. Another thing I forget is to tag my entries; apparently being sure that I tag my Patreon posts has taken up all the brain space allocated for such functions. I did kind of tag this post.

P.P.S. The spell checker used by Dreamwidth has taken to telling me serenely "No spelling errors found," when there are totally spelling errors to BE found. Perhaps it's stressed about groceries too.