start of madness

If you let your imagination go a little wild you could almost imagine the droplets of sunshine being whipped around by the wind. Imagine a Van Gogh style sky with thrashing trees and you’d have it right. 

Birds hang on for dear life, but sing the song of Spring, a chorus of geese honking in the background. Or perhaps the geese are the excited groupies chattering amongst themselves about the concert.

And us? We are enjoying the day, mostly through the glass although we have ventured out with the crazy dog a few times. She’s bored and has too much energy. I’ve done some training practice with her, but I’m a bit lazy today and not really in the mood.

We ventured out Thursday to the vet (blood work for heartworm), and then to meet up with Kirsten and the girls for DQ. Oh yes. First DQ of the year… too bad it’s a hole in the wall sort of place with nowhere to sit down :-(

Are you practicing social-distancing? We didn’t yesterday with a trip into Costco. I needed to pick up my prescription so we added a few other things to the cart… but what a zoo! It was impossible to drive the cart anywhere and the lineup for the cash was over 20 minutes. I wished that I had brought hand-sanitizer with me as I gripped the filthy cart handle… I didn’t think of it at the time, but we should have been shopping for other people too.

Trudie & Leo came over for supper - we all kept our distance from each other… or did we? I made supper and had washed my hands, but maybe touched my face; Trudie supplied dessert which was impossible not to touch. The cook in the house is the weak link.

The government is now asking for people arriving from outside the country to self-isolate for 14 days, schools are closed for 3 weeks, the library is closed for a few weeks, sports is shut down, an increasing number of businesses are asking staff to work from home, and so it goes, more shutdowns every hour. They don’t have enough test kits. It’s crazy. 

But we have nowhere near the restrictions they have in Italy: the whole country is shut down and still the medical system is being overwhelmed with doctors having to choose who gets a respirator and who doesn’t… life and death decisions. It’s hard to believe that we were there less than 4 months ago. We could never have foreseen empty streets and shuttered shops.

The dog is going crazy with day after day of inactivity. There’s not much she can do outside so she races around the house like a maniac. Carpets and dog beds go flying in every direction as she ricochets around. 

“Barack Obama's aunt once told him, 'If everyone is family, no one is family.' It is blood that makes a tribe, a border that makes a nation. The same is true of gatherings. So here is a corollary to his aunt's saying: If everyone is invited, no one is invited—in the sense of being truly held by the group. By closing the door, you create the room.”

~Priya Parker