Friday, May 29th, 2020
Woke up to a typical DC summer day – humid. Luckily our home has windows to open on all sides of the house making for a nice breeze, especially later in the afternoon when the wind picked up.
With all the windows open my home office is almost like a patio, especially when I sit on my chaise lounge, laptop just there, on the lap, as it is placed right underneath a large window overlooking the front lawn. It also enables me to see who comes and goes, which at times is rather entertaining.
Spend some of the afternoon working from the garden as I needed a change of scenery. All we ever do is move from bed to couch to chair to couch, unless of course we do the one hour walk. Something that due to conflicting meeting schedules we missed yet again today.
This inactivity is killing me. I am so hoping pools will open so I can get 30-60 minutes of swimming in every day – assuming crowd control will allow it. Pools opening at 25% capacity probably means no more than 50 – 100 people on the premises at any given time. For everyone to get a chance I believe they will need to limit the amount of time people will be allowed to spend there or the average lap swimmer will have no chance! I advocate for a booking system! And only MoCo residents in MoCo pools. I know it is a bit selfish. Otherwise I will need to arrange my day so as to be there before opening, take a quick swim and then focus on work. We shall see, first they need to open.
For a minute it looked as if it would rain today, so of course I dragged the tarp out to cover everything, just for the rain to change its mind and me having to undercover the furniture again. The small annoyances of life during COVID-19. Overall, I cannot help but think every day that we are lucky. EM has her school and is planning to finish her extended essay due in December in the next three weeks. I have work, get paid every two weeks. We have a beautiful outside space to enjoy and a lovely home and a caring cat. As things are easing up are carefully venturing out – sail, farmers market, walks and now maybe even swims. Many people are so much less fortunate and it is good to remind ourselves so as not to lose perspective as we think of the lifestyle lost; hopefully not forever. And lifestyle to me in this context is the ability to travel and connect with friends and family as is the loss of Aikido. Amazing to how little one’s desires can be reduced. These were things I took for granted. If they come back, I will remind myself that there was a time when I thought that was all I wished for.
Our entertainment now varies between movie nights, reading, game nights and mostly virtual gatherings. As a most recent distraction we have taken to entertaining ourselves with shadow play on some nights. Never knew it could be so much fun. We virtually curl up laughing. It feels like we laugh too little in this day and age.
When this all started, I thought a few weeks. Now it is almost three months and I am hoping one more year at the most; but who knows. It is teaching patience, something that does not come naturally to me. And how the passage of time changes, the meaning of time itself.
In times of limited choices the French have started a new tradition “Aperue”. Gathering on the streets of Paris for a pre-dinner drink as bars remain closed. You got to give it to the French.
The world today reports 5.9 million infected, 1.78 million of which in the USA, and a death toll of 364k. Cases in Maryland have increased by 1.200 as the State reopens breaking the 50.000 mark. At least hospitalizations are going down with more people discharged than admitted.
On the funny side of things: Monkeys in India seem to want to engage in Corona research. Or why else would they be stealing blood samples?