Friday, September 11, 2020

six months ago

 180 days/26 weeks/6 months/half a year since the first covid-19 case in our city. Who would’a thunk… that we’d be isolated except for a few laneway visits and our small 10 person circle... that we’d be wearing masks and keeping 6’ away from everyone else… that we would avoid going into shops… that a trip to Costco would be rife with anxiety. 


Dr. Fauci is predicting that life won’t be back to ‘normal’ until late next year, IF we get a vaccine by the end of this year. It’s not a surprising prediction, but I’d rather live in denial day by day.


My way of coping with all of this is spending time in the kitchen. Every week I cook at least one new recipe, so we’ve gained a bit of covid weight, but not much considering the circumstances.


Instead of cookies, today I baked 2 kinds of oatmeal ‘cupcakes’. Cupcake is a rather inappropriate name for them as they are basically oatmeal, nuts, spices, fruit, and almond milk. No added fat or flour. They aren’t awesome but are tasty enough. According to the recipe they freeze well so will be a perfectly healthy grab’n’go breakfast.


A vision of the beautiful blue tube of the Dyson tickled my brain till I got up and got to work with a bit more vacuuming. That little devil is a darn fine tool! I even used it to get a pesky cobweb that was floating down from the highest part of the ceiling - it was unreachable before the blue tube without getting out a ladder (which wasn’t going to happen any time soon).


We can’t let the 19th anniversary of 9/11 pass without a moment of silence. So many people. People who had gotten up that beautiful morning as if it were a regular day. What might they have done differently if they knew it was to be their last? What petty bicker or complaint would be taken back or a forgotten ‘I love you’ spoken.


That morning I sat at my desk at work and listened to the radio on the other side of the partition. Hearing the chilling events unfold will never leave my memory. Carm was out of town so I drove home by myself, in shock, letting myself into a house that seemed more empty than it had ever seemed. The sky was a crisp blue with not a cloud in sight. Not one airliner passed overhead.



“The wind makes you ache in some place that is deeper than your bones. It may be that it touches something old in the human soul, a chord of race memory that says Migrate or die - migrate or die.”

~Stephen King

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