I began the National Quarantine with military-like
precision. I had a plan, a rhythm of
each day that I was going to follow and that was going to tide me through the
Thing… which I anticipated would be about two weeks. I would simultaneously remain joyful, lose
weight, and develop a perfectly monastic prayer life. I would turn the lemons into lemonade, and do
it with triumph.
When I hit week five I noticed my regimen had deteriorated
at week 3. So much for my apostolic
zeal. But thinking about the bigger
picture, I do not think my experience is atypical. Like dieting, the moment you realize you haven’t
been faithful to the original diet plan, there is a strong temptation to
just throw the whole thing out the window as useless. You begin telling yourself that you are okay
as you are, you don’t have to lose the weight this year, you’re not as fat as
Haystacks Calhoun on Hee-Haw so you should go easy on yourself. All of those are true but they are wrongly
colored fish: red herrings, to be
precise.
Red herrings make me really angry. I mean it.
When I am hearing a discussion with two people and one of them throws a
diverting red herring into the conversation, I can feel my pulse get fast and
wild. That’s because I hate manipulation
in all its forms. So rather than make
glorious excuses for why I failed at my daily schedule, I started to look at
things I actually did accomplish.
That gave me the “power” to realize I can cooperate with grace and put
myself back on track with the schedule thing to a certain degree.
I am hard on myself for reasons known only to me. But maybe that is one thing I can begin to
change now. So I thought I would share
some of the home-bound accomplishments with you and encourage you to make your
own list to get some traction beneath your feet too.
Ø
I began to be able to have fixed meal
times. At the point at which I left work-at-work,
to become a worker-at-home, I had fallen into to three bad habits: 1)
breakfast on the run; 2) lunch at 2pm (with accompanying headache and
crankiness); and 3) dinner at 7:30 because by the time I got home and got into
the mood to eat, I had no good meal plan in place.
Ø
I started to put more thought into what I was
going to eat. Tonight, I have homemade
beef stroganoff on jasmine rice. Don’t
be too impressed, there are still TV dinners in the freezer, and mini cannoli’s
in the refrigerator, but this is improvement.
Ø
I am able to leave a glass of water on the
counter or table in plain view as a reminder that I need to stay hydrated to
stay healthy in so many ways.
Ø
The Instapot that my dearest friend from high
school days gave me two years ago for Christmas has finally gotten some use. Yes, the beef stroganoff. But did I mention the bundt cake pan? No?
Well … let me tell you: one cup
of water in bottom of Instapot. Put
trivet down. Mix ½ of orange cake mix,
1/6 cup oil, ½ cup orange juice, 1 egg.
Fold in semi-sweet chips because life is short. Put it in the bundt pan with a piece of foil
draped over the top gently. Cook high
pressure 22 minutes, 10 minutes natural steam release. Try it.
You will thank me.
Ø
I tore out a raised bed that had dry-rotted wood
and burned it. In its place I put WTA
(White Trash Art) – a truck tire painted blue (I want EVERY color rustoleum for
my birthday this year!). I put it in
place as a planter and threw some echinacea tubers in there. It will look fabulous when they bloom.
Ø
I have visited the farm next door more times in
the past six weeks than in the past six years almost. The horse and I have had some nice social
time together – neither of us wearing masks, daredevils that we are. The ducks and I have a game we play when I
tend my fire pit. It’s called “Silly
Ducks!” a version of Silly Goose? They toddle under the fence and start
wandering around the backside of the barn and I call to them: “You Sillies!
Go back to the pasture!” And then
they scoot back under the fence. We have
done this numerous times because none of us has anything better to do. My social life is on the par of a clutch of
ducks.
Ø
I have finished a bunch of craft-painting
projects: two bird houses, a cranberry
scoop, and three decoupage boxes. That
was accomplished weeks 4 and 5 when I thought I was going to snap from being
inside and the rainy overcast weather that kept coming through this area.
Ø
I actually spoke with someone about getting a
wife for Valor… and then they promptly sold the dog to someone else – which is
because I couldn’t bring myself to place a deposit on a dog in OHIO. I told her, “I don’t know when the borders
will be open between the states; I would have to find an open hotel as well for
the six-hour travel.” That was two weeks
ago and there still is a lot of ambivalence about travel and “opening” the
country at large.
Ø
There were two nights last week where I skipped
watching television. At first television
was a diversion. Then it became what it
always promised to be: mind
numbing. I felt like the lives of Blue
Bloods and the cast of Young Sheldon were more “real” than I was because at
least they were eating dinner together.
Ø
I would like to, at this point, give a shout out
to my Mother who talks to me every two or three days. She makes me think I am checking on her. We all know, she is really checking on
me. Although she did worry when I indicated
the dogs were talking to me. Hey, when
Rex Harrison did it in the movie as Dr. Doolittle, he made everybody happy and
grossed well at the box office. When I
do it, my family wants to take me into the mental health clinic. I can’t catch a break, can I?
Ø
I am grateful for the young women next door who
go on walks with me and the dogs periodically.
They say the average woman uses 30,000 words a day. I am so far behind on my allotted usage, I
feel like I have all these words crashing around in my head screaming: “Let me out!
Let me out!” Our walk & talks
have been great.
Ø
I have washed my floor a few times in six
weeks. That is an accomplishment. I have vacuumed one drawer, and cleaned up the
bathroom closet. More to come …
Ø
My mission relative to my people who have to go
into work is to be of Good Cheer. This
is not necessarily my natural disposition, which is more like Maxine the
cartoon character, I think. So I send in
food, or bring them candy, and put happy or funny things online when we chat
throughout the day.
Ø
I had a snag yesterday when my laptop ate my
thumb drive contents and therein used to be some chapters for my Family
Legacy book I am compiling. Let’s just
say the wallpaper in the dining room curled slightly at the edges because I
kept repeating the same word that sounded almost like “ship.” I just walked away from that in a purple haze
of fury. Then as I tried to fall asleep,
I remembered, there is one more place I can look on another computer …. Ah yes. There they were, the little buggers. My little chapters waiting to be thumb-drived
again.
Ø
My deck is partially ready for summertime
lounging. Last year that would have
sounded awesome to be in the month of May and have the deck ready for flowers
and lawn chairs, etc. This year, it
sounds just like an OUTSIDE version of what I am already doing INSIDE the house: waiting for nothing that I know of.
So those are my updates.
I have more to do. The list is
longer than I care to admit. And it
appears we will have “more time” to do those things…. SIGH. But as a parting suggestion I would say if
you haven’t bought yourself a little bouquet of carnations or flowers of some
sort lately: DO IT. The perk-up when you see bright cheerful
colors on the countertop is so worth it!
Until the next rambling – Respectfully yours – Me writing
from Dog Central.
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