Category Archives: daily life

Bored

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I’m bored.

I know that’s a luxury most of the world can’t afford.  I’m working very part time.  I rent so I have no house projects, indoors or out.  I got super organized before I left to live in the UK in January so all my finances, paperwork, etc. is in order.  There’s no travel in my near future.  Socializing is limited.  It’s so hot that my cooking creativity is limited to salads, and there are only so many salads I can eat fast enough before they go off.  I no long shop for recreation, and I limit grocery shopping to every 10 days.

There’s always TV, reading, and online courses.  But for today I am just not into anything.  It will pass.  Everything does.  Tomorrow something will grab me.

—

Yesterday I went for a bike ride without checking the weather first.  It was another hot and humid but beautiful day.  I rode three miles to Lake Phalen, an average sized Minnesota lake— about 200 acres.

There was a lush bee garden planted beside the lake.

Even the green slime on the water plays a role in creating loveliness, contrasting with the dark green trees and blue sky.

A mural on the bikeway.

La la la la la!  I was enjoying myself, dreamily tootling around the maze of paths, bridges, underpasses, and small lakes and streams adjoining Phalen.

Then the rain started, a few gentle drops.  “It’s only water,” I told myself.  I saw people running from the beach to their cars and wondered why they wouldn’t just wait it out.  Surely it wouldn’t last long, right?

I have an infinite ability to believe that, since it hasn’t rained for a week, it will never rain again.

The wind picked up and dark grey clouds swept in.  I biked away from the lake into a neighborhood and sheltered under a Maple.  The wind began to roar and small branches fell around me.  I was still fairly dry with my back up against the northwest side of the tree.  But then I wasn’t, and then the hail started.  Good thing I was wearing a bike helmet!

But my phone …. A year ago, as you may recall if you’ve been reading for a while, I dropped my phone in a toilet in Koyasan, Japan and it died.  An expensive lesson.  Lynn gave me a waterproof phone bag for my birthday.  Was I using it?  No.  I started to panic and whimper.  Why am I always so stupid?!  These are the kind of thoughts I revert to under duress, even though logically, I know that I am only stupid once in a while.

Next will be the lightening strike, I thought.  Just like me, to get struck by lightning during a global pandemic.  Another drama-infused go-to thought that I half believed and half laughed at through the water pouring down my face and washing sunscreen into my eyes.

I heard someone calling.  A resident across the street had spotted me and she invited me to wait out the storm on her screen porch.  Very kind.  She even gave me a baggie for my phone.  I feel bad today because I wasn’t wearing a mask and I told her during our distanced conversation I had “just” returned from the UK.  I wonder if, after I left, she realized that the UK has the second highest death toll in the world.  I should have mentioned I’d quarantined.  Oh well!

I headed home once the rain tapered off, but it burst back into a raging downpour when I was about a mile from home.  The wind was ferocious.  Branches were scattered all over the sidewalk and there were sections that were flooded.  It made for quite an obstacle course.

A car sped by and—purposely?—sent up a tidal wave of water that would have soaked me through if I hadn’t been already.  I laughed maniacally.  Nice try, bastard!

I got home.  My phone is fine.  I wasn’t struck by lightening.

Maybe it’s natural and okay to feel bored for one day.

Some other photos from my week, starting with a deer encounter.

Independence Day with the granddaughters.

Squirt gun bandito, aka my six-year-old nephew, on our weekly day out.

Bad Focus, Good Focus

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Last week’s post was a real downer. This week I’m feeling much lighter.  Why?  See below.  I know I will have down days; most of us do, but they will pass.

—

I’ve been back from the UK for a month now.  In the last few days, I have started having flashbacks of my time there.  Well, “flashbacks” is too dramatic a word.  An example: I was sitting in my living room reading yesterday and suddenly I had the strongest image and sensations of being in the living room of “my” house in Oxford.  I could see the blue curtains, feel the breeze coming through the window, and noted the objects on the shelf above the telly.  This has happened a few times.

Then, yesterday in my yoga class, I had the feeling of floating above my own body during the ending meditation.  The instructor wasn’t doing anything different than she has in the last three or four years since I started taking classes with her.

Am I just really focused on the moment these days?  Maybe that’s why I feel less anxious and am having fewer catastrophic thoughts.

I haven’t been trying, but I hell, it’s summer.  I am fortunate to have the time, so I’ve been getting out for long bike rides and walks.  Here’s a view of Pig’s Eye Lake with a train in the foreground and the St Paul skyline way off in the distance.  I stood there for the longest time, waiting as the train slowly crawled toward the coupling yard.  I can hear the smashing sounds of the coupling at night in my house, two miles away.  I wanted to get the red Canadian Pacific Railroad car in the frame.  It’s not that exciting, after all, but the point is that I stood and did nothing but observe for a good 10 minutes—an eternity in our times.

Children help me stay in the moment.  Add nature and bubbles helps break the focus on generating worst case scenarios.

Being around children usually involves laughing.  I took my nephews for a bike ride.  The nine-year-old tried to do a trick and fell sideways.  It could have been disastrous, but he sprang up, and there was this message spray painted on the wall over his head.  “I guess lord Jesus saved me!” he joked.

Finding amusement, and time with friends, helps.  I found this cache of classic BBC sets that can be used for Zoom backgrounds and played around with them during the weekly Friday happy hour I join with UK friends.  Thanks to the time difference, they are drinking G&Ts while I drink herbal tea.

(That’s the interior of the Tardis from Dr. Who, in case you don’t know.)

Speaking of things that feel silly but are really good therapy, I do a couple of no-weight arm workouts every other day.  I don’t know if they are actually “toning” my arms, but something about waving my arms furiously for even five minutes makes me snap out of any funk I am in.

I’m brushing up on my Spanish using Duolingo, taking an Introduction to Classical Music course from Yale, and looking to add a birding course. And it’s all free!

All this leaves little space for worrying.

—

So I totally forgot that last week, I ended my depressing post with the promise to research why people think in terms of catastrophes.  The article that came up most frequently, oddly, was from Business Insider: What Catastrophizing Means and How to Stop It.

I was relieved to read, “Nobody is born a catastrophizer … Babies are not born catastrophizing… it’s a protective mechanism, because we think ‘if I think the worst, then when the worst doesn’t happen I’ll feel relieved.”

Whew, I had worried I was wired to worry.

Catastrophizing can become a habit, especially if you’ve had a bad experience that you didn’t see coming.  That makes sense.  Every person on earth has had that happen of late.

Catastrophic thoughts need to be deconstructed with logic.  If you can’t do it on your own, call a clear-thinking friend who can help you to untwist them—preferably a friend who will also laugh at you.

Catastrophes, Real and Imagined

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I just got a new laptop after procrastinating for over a year.  My old one was 11 years old.  They say that’s like driving a 1958 Buick.  I would have kept the old device forever except that my internet goes down about once a week and when it came back on, the old laptop couldn’t reconnect to wifi unless the router was rebooted.  The router in the apartment above me.  It’s kind of embarrassing, having to text my neighbors and ask them to reboot the router.  I felt like a loser.

Technical stuff does not come naturally to me.  I spent hours researching which laptop I should buy, then just asked one of the tech guys at one of my client organizations for a recommendation, then just bought it.  It is not the cheapest but it’s far from a high-end model.

I kept expecting something to go terribly wrong as I set it up.  How would I ever get support?  I bought it on Amazon and it was shipped by Sunflower Tech Store, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

But nothing has gone wrong.  I gave myself two weeks to make the transition, but my old laptop lost the wifi signal again today so I plunged in and dealt with everything—buying Office, transferring files and bookmarks, re-entering user names and passwords into every single website  I use regularly, etc.  Much of it looks slightly different.  The keyboard has a number pad so I have to get used to not typing on the right.  And I have.

So after almost a year of angst-ing and procrastinating, I’m basically good to go after a couple hours.

But I still expect something to go terribly wrong.

—

Here’s something I’ve noticed about my thinking since the pandemic began and was then layered over with civil unrest, financial uncertainty, and living in a crime-ridden neighborhood where sirens and gun shots and fireworks and hot rods and loud music are blasting day and night.

I have always been good at imagining worst-case scenarios, but now the tendency is magnified.

I have a portable fire pit that I never use so I’m going to give it to my brother.  Every time I think about it, I immediately see my six-year-old nephew tripping into a bonfire and being burned over 85% of his body.  I try to think happy thoughts, like about taking my granddaughters to northern Wisconsin in September for a cabin weekend.  Immediately, my mind goes to  a vision of the nine-year-old being abducted by some  creep-o who lives in a shack in the woods. I imagine head-on collisions when I’m driving, coming home to find my house burglarized and ransacked, or falling down the basement stairs when I’m doing laundry and having to lie there with a broken hip for days.

There must be a psychological explanation for this catastrophizing.  Is it an (irrational) way of feeling in control, of “knowing” what is going to happen in such uncertain times?

—

There have been coronavirus spikes around the US lately, so far not in Minnesota.  The Wall Street Journal editorialized that headlines trumpeting a resurgence “are overblown.”  Many new infections are connected to prisons and meat packing plants, and hospitals are not overwhelmed, they say.  I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.  I want to believe they are not saying it’s okay to sacrifice prisoners and slaughterhouse employees to keep the economy going.

—

I have always perused the obituaries on Sundays.  The “Irishman’s sports page,” they are sometimes called.  These are a few I caught that were Covid-19 related deaths.

This one was particularly poignant.

Some have said it’s “just old people” dying; they were going to die anyway.  Some have “joked” about how much money we’ll save on Social Security if all our seniors die.

But I wouldn’t wish a Covid-19 death on anyone—alone, in a medical coma, with a tube down your throat, catheterized, on IVs, flipped head down. Tended by people who look like aliens in their masks.

I know, I should look away.  No wonder my brain is generating intrusive disaster scenarios.  I will research the phenomenon this week and let you know what I learn.

Surreal, Unreal, for Real

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When I began blogging in 2014, it was because my son, Vince, had been sent to prison on a 50-month sentence for drug possession. He admitted he was a drug dealer and that the police had found drugs in his motel room. He also claimed they had moved his wallet from his pocket to near the drugs, so they could more easily seize his money.

I believed him, and the recent murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and subsequent protests has me thinking how much worse it could have been if Vince had been black, or if his arrest had taken place in Minneapolis instead of Rochester.

But it’s more complicated.  Since 2000, 109 white people have died in “fatal encounters” with Minnesota police.  That’s twice the number of black victims.

I get it—numbers are one thing and percentages are another.  Fifty-six percent of the victims were white, whereas white people comprise 83% of Minnesota’s population. Twenty-seven percent of the victims were black, whereas blacks make up only 6% of Minnesotans.

Still, 109 dead people is a lot of humans.

And 68% of the killings occurred outside of Minneapolis or St. Paul. Here’s the data if you want to play around with it.

As the mother of a white son who had his share of run ins with the law, I don’t know how I could have worried any more than I did before he turned his life around. I cannot imagine how mothers of black and native sons, in particular, live with their worry on a daily basis.

(Credit: https://www.mother.ly/news/george-floyd-called-for-mothers-everywhere)

But I worry when the problem is reduced to only a racism problem. Racism is a big part of it, but it’s also a police problem. It’s a male problem (96% of the victims in MN were men and the vast majority of cops are male).  It’s a poverty, drug addiction, mental health, and cultural problem.

I’m not saying it’s so complex, so let’s not make drastic changes.  I’m saying, let’s make drastic changes on multiple fronts.

—

People followed along as Vince’s and my stories unfolded in the blog.  But what I got thanked for was transparently expressing my grief, rage, and shame.

I felt then, and I still do, that since race was not a factor in Vince’s arrest, people believed he deserved what he got, and maybe it was my fault.

—

I am reliving a lot of the same feelings these days, plus anxiety and ennui and a sense of unreality.

Today is the last of 14 days of quarantine after returning from the UK.  I have become “institutionalized,” a term normally used for prisoners and others who are released after many years locked up.  I went inside a grocery store last week; I had to buy food.  I shambled, blinking, through the store wearing my mask, startled when people got too close,  overwhelmed by something I have done a thousand times.

—

In my work I come across some surreal stuff.

There was the story about Merritt Corrigan, USAID’s new deputy White House liaison.  She wrote an article last year in The Conservative Woman, where she said, “It’s time for women to return to the home, where we rightfully belong and where real joy and fulfilment await.” Corrigan’s role at USAID includes working with the White House to place political appointees at the agency. Also of note: USAID’s newly-appointed religious freedom adviser has a history of making anti-Islam comments on social media.

I saw a $600,000 US Government grant opportunity for “Mapping Russian Disinformation and Propaganda in Sub Saharan Africa.”  The Administration knows Russia is doing this in the USA, right?  They are working to fight it here, right? Probably not, since Russian disinformation and propaganda helped elect Trump.

Maybe Russia was behind bogus social media stories that the KKK was marching through Minneapolis last week, or that only people from out Minnesota were looting.

Meanwhile, it’s unclear which Federal agency ordered the Predator surveillance drone that circled over Minneapolis during the protests.

Unreal!  But it is real!

Or is it?

—

So there you go, a fractured but honest account of my state of mind and emotions.

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Doing the Next Indicated Thing

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In 24 hours I will be on a bus headed from Oxford to Heathrow.  I hope.  Of all the legs of the trip home, this is the part I’ve been most anxious about.

What if … the bus zooms past me at the bus stop?  What if it doesn’t stop at my stop anymore?  What if the bus stops but the driver cuts off boarding at me, because they are only allowing 10 people on the bus v. the usual 50?  What if the service is cancelled completely?  They did that with the route to Gatwick airport.  I have a return ticket from my last flight—but should I buy a new one online so I can reserve a seat?  Service is down from every 20 minutes to every two hours.  If I miss the bus, the next one wouldn’t get me to Heathrow until 20 minutes before my flight takes off.  A taxi would cost about $100.

I suffered heart-thumping anxiety for years, now have been anxiety free for a decade except for the occasional work deadline.  Now it’s  back, in a milder form.  It’s a bit annoying, but given the state of global affairs, it would be kind of weird if I wasn’t anxious.

—

I have learned to Just Deal With Things that induce anxiety.  So I called the bus company.  The customer service guy, Josh, answered after two rings and assured me that ridership was so low I would have no problem getting a seat on the bus, at my stop, and I could use the ticket I already had.

He sounded bored.  I think he would have been happy to chat for a while.

I felt reassured for about an hour, then the What Ifs started up again.  What if he didn’t like my American accent so he purposely gave me the wrong information? What if he was new and didn’t really know the right answers? What if they changed everything right after I called?

I waited a few days, feeling dumb for continuing to worry, then emailed the bus company with the same questions.  Josh replied almost immediately with the same answers. Oh no, how embarrassing! Did he know it was me?  Did he wonder why I was asking the same questions again?  I usually thank customer service people, but I didn’t this time because I would have felt compelled to explain why I didn’t trust his answers the first time.

This second set of answers—maybe because they were in writing—erased the anxiety.

I may sound loopy but there it is.

—

My last day in Oxford.  I am doing laundry, cleaning the house and the chicken run, and fiddling around with packing.  I will go for a long walk later. Where should I go?  Into the city to gaze at the medieval colleges?  Along the Thames Path to see the waterfowl and other ramblers and the canal boats?  Up to Iffley lock and the church where I have watched the seasons change and enjoyed so many quiet moments?

This was my last view of Scotland last week.  Friend and driver Bob stopped the vehicle so I could hop out and take a snap.

I visited Iffley Church the next day.  The churchyard was strewn with wildflowers and an English robin perched on a headstone.

The next day I walked for hours through town, taking photos or just appreciating things I’d never noticed because I was trying not to bump into the 5,000 other people on the sidewalk.

Will I ever return?  The longing to live here forever see-saws with the excitement of the return journey and arriving home after four and a half months in the UK.

I gave the garden a good pruning, then sat and read the Sunday Times Rich List.  I should have gone into online gambling or started a hedge fund.  But then, I probably wouldn’t spend much time relaxing in a garden.

Here is a good question from HSBC.

I was born in New York, grew up in Minnesota, and feel at home in England—and most everywhere else I’ve sojourned.

Once I am on the bus, I will exhale and feel at home.

Scrambling, Scrabbling

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Week six of UK lockdown is behind us.  Tonight Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, will outline changes to our restrictions.  The Sunday papers have already broadcast what those are likely to be: once-a-day outdoor exercise will become unlimited exercise, it’ll be okay to go to the beach, garden centers will open (all of these assume two-meter distancing).  Boris is likely to advise the wearing of face coverings in shops and public transport.  A mandatory 14-day quarantine for people entering the UK and stiffer fines for violating the rules will likely be announced.

For me, nothing much will change.  It’s snowing in Scotland, but I would be unlikely to request a day on a North Sea beach even at the height of summer.

As I wrote in another post, my flight home was cancelled by Delta.  I scheduled a new one; it was cancelled the next day.  I will be issued a credit, but Delta has ceased flying to the UK so I can’t use the credit to get home.

There are no more direct flights to Minneapolis-St. Paul from the UK.  I prefer not to stop over in New York or Chicago, where there are coronavirus outbreaks.  I found an itinerary on Icelandair that would take me through healthy Reykjavik but my gut told me to wait a few days before booking it.  Two days later, Icelandair was no longer flying to the UK.  I thought about flying from Scotland, which has less coronavirus than the UK south, but Scotland’s airports are shut down completely or offer only two-three stop itineraries.

As I see it, every stop, every additional flight or airport, is a new opportunity to catch the virus if it’s present.

I continue to get updates from the US State Department.  The latest informed me that Heathrow has closed three of its five terminals.

Today was the day I was supposed to join Lynn and Richard and two other friends in Crete, after traveling through France, Switzerland, Bulgaria, and other points unknown and never to be known.  It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago my biggest concern was whether to take the Eurostar to Paris or get off in Calais and take a train down to Bergerac to meet a friend.

Wah, wah!  As usual I pinch myself that I should have such “problems.”  I keep thinking about the Ethiopian refugee camps I visited three years ago for work.  There was no running water.  People lived in tiny cinder-block houses with half a dozen others.  Activities were carried out in groups, sometimes very large groups.  I feel helpless to do anything but “hold them in my thoughts,” which doesn’t mean a thing and just makes me feel guilty.

—

Meanwhile the days pass, fast but slow.  Until today the weather was fine, enabling outdoor projects and hikes.  On one hike I saw a giant slug crossing the road.

“Now, if this was a turtle, I would pick it up and deliver it safely to the other side,” I thought.  “Isn’t the real test of compassion whether I care for creatures I find repulsive?”  I kept walking.  Another thing to feel guilty about.

Richard and I hiked to Wormy Hillock.  It’s shaped like a donut was pressed into the earth, then removed.  It was probably built by Picts, and probably prehistoric (which just means before there was a written language).  Its purpose is unknown.  Worship?  Sacrifices?  Entertainment?

Back at the house, I moved my finger around on the local map and chuckled at the names: Knappert Knows, Little Riggin, Green Slack, Bogs of Noth, Muckle Smiddy Hillock, The Lumps, How of Slug, Darnie Heuch, Mairs of Collithie, Buried Men’s Leys, How of Badifoor, Grouse Butts, Shank of Badtimmer, Slack Methland, Hill of Glack-en-tore, and my favorite, the Glen of Cults.

Another day, Lynn and I visited a neighbor across the road who maintains the garden her late husband—the former head gardener at Cambridge University—created.

Lynn’s garden is coming on as spring progresses.

A visit from the fishmonger was a highlight.

My award for most creative pastime goes to a friend who has been playing x-rated Scrabble over the phone with friends.

Stay well, and don’t forget to laugh!

Slogging Along

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I have begun to long for home.  By “home” I don’t mean my family or friends—who I wouldn’t be able to visit anyway—but my bed.  For some reason, it symbolizes all that is familiar and safe and comfortable.

Not that I’m not safe and comfortable.  In Scotland, at Lynn’s, I am more safe and comfortable than 95% of the world’s population. I have a spacious room with my own bathroom.  There’s a library full of books.   There is even a sauna!  There is plenty of space for us to do our own thing.  We come together at mealtimes or for a G&T on the patio or to watch a movie at night.

I have projects, like scraping and repainting a wrought-iron patio set.  The more I scrape and paint, the more flakes of paint I discover.  It’s a great way to kill the hours and medicate my obsessive compulsive tendencies.

I clear dead stuff out of the garden.  This involves sitting on a foam mat, reaching in to grab a handful of dry twigs or grass, and yanking them out.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  Then I gather it all up—being careful not to snag myself on any rose thorns—cram them into a bucket and haul them to the brush pile for burning.  It’s very satisfying.  One morning this classic Led Zeppelin album cover popped into my mind:

Why not do what all those cleaver people on social media are doing, and recreate this with found materials?  So here I am, looking just like the album cover except I have a wheelbarrow, and I’m wearing a lime-green jumper and pink sunglasses, and I do not have a beard.

It was good for a laugh for a few minutes.

I go for long walks.  This is the Clashindarroch Forest, where I hiked for two hours the other day.  Even though it hadn’t rained for an unseasonable 10 days, the mossy path was still so springy it was like walking on a memory foam mattress.

—

So physically and socially I couldn’t be in a better place.  But I think the pandemic and lockdown are taking a low-grade toll on my psyche.  It’s subtle, but it’s probably cumulative.  If I am feeling it, how much worse must it be for people living in precarious situations with no financial means, no internet, or no access to nature?

—

There are nagging worries, as there always are in life. I haven’t received my stimulus payment from Donald Trump yet due to an Internal Revenue Service foul up.  I’m not too worried about it, yet.

It’s been a month since I tried to get cash from two cash machines in Oxford and was given the message, “We’re sorry but we cannot process your request at this time.”  But they had processed  it on their end, so I am out $260 until it gets resolved.  I’m not too worried about it, yet.

This quote from the New York Times sums up my situation:

“Those who had assumed they could stay overseas, and wait for the pandemic to ebb, now face an unnerving choice: Either stick it out, and prepare for the possibility they will be infected with the virus and treated in foreign hospitals, or chance catching it on the way back home.”

I thought I had secured a small victory when I got through to Delta and re-booked my return flight from one stopover to as direct.  One less airport, one less plane—this could reduce my risk.  Then I got an email from the US State Department informing me that only three airlines are still flying from the UK to the US, and Delta is not one of them.  So another call to an 800 number is in my future.

—

In the before times, I worked two part-time gigs and had a to-do list with 17 items on it every day.  Now I feel like I am wading through thigh-deep pudding.  I feel victorious if I manage to remember why I came into a room.  This must be what dementia is like. Or maybe I am getting dementia, coincidentally at the same time as a global pandemic.

I hope you are well!

Safe in Scotland

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Greetings from Scotland, where I am a house guest of Lynn and Richard’s.  Lynn, my friend with whom I have traveled in Japan, Italy, Prague, Colombia, Berlin, and road trips across the UK and US.

I weighed the pros and cons of relocating from Oxford to Scotland carefully.  I would get a ride with a friend who has homes in both locations. He drives back and forth once a month anyway.  But would I be violating the law? The guidelines for the UK lockdown are pretty unambiguous: Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives.  Don’t leave home except for exercise, to shop for food or medicine, or to work if you can’t work from home.

Would going be irresponsible and selfish? The Scottish chief medical officer had just resigned in shame for not observing her own advice; she’d been driving back and forth between to her two homes.

Sure, the chances of my giving the virus to, or catching it from, anyone as a result of the nine-hour drive across the length of the country were slim.  But could my friend expose me to the virus, or vice versa, during a whole day in a vehicle together?  Could one of us pick it up from the petrol station pump or the bathroom door handle in the rest stop?

Was I in denial?  Did I just want to go because I wanted to go?

In the end, I reasoned this way: In Oxford, I had to go shopping almost every day in order to keep enough food on hand.  I couldn’t order home delivery because I don’t have a UK bank account.  I didn’t have a car so I couldn’t do a bulk shop—I could only buy as much as I could carry four blocks, which was where the closest store was.  In Oxford, the stores are tiny and cramped.  There were employees at the doors allowing only one person in for every one who exited, and the floors were marked to keep people two metres apart, but there were plenty of people who ignored these measures.  It made me nervous.

Here in the highlands, I can Stay at Home for a month. There are deliveries by a bread man, a milk man, and a fish man, although the latter didn’t show yesterday.  Lynn can order meats and other basic products from the local butcher, pay online, then stop in front of the butcher shop while they load her order into the back of her vehicle.  For everything else there is an enormous Tesco where it is easier to observe the six-metre rule.

The house has two water supplies, one of which is dedicated to the house.  There’s a massive garden where a profusion of vegetables are growing.  The river can be fished for salmon and trout.  Richard has enough wood and peat stored up to keep the house’s dozen fireplaces roaring for months.  Richard hunts deer and game birds.  The guns will come in handy when the zombies try to come up the drive.

I hope that’s still funny a month from now.

—

The UK has extended its lockdown for at least another three weeks.  How do you pass the days in a country house?  Some days I feel like I’m in a dream where I’m trying to run through thigh-high pudding.

But mostly, the days fly by.  I used to get up early—6:30, say.  Today I slept until 8:00.  I used to snarf my breakfast down.  Now, with people to talk to, we might spend an hour chatting away over coffee.  I’m still doing my remote work and have seen funding opportunities shift from malaria control and water sanitation and human rights training to COVID, COVID, COVID.  I wonder how far it will go.  Will there eventually be no funding for anything but COVID?

I go for walks in the hills.

I have been assigned a project—to scrape and re-paint a wrought iron set of outdoor furniture.  I take yoga classes on Zoom.  I spend hours talking to friends.

I proposed  a creative activity of making plague masks out of papier Mache.  I think Lynn and Richard thought I was joking.

And now, some delightful daffodils.  Hang in there!

Pandemic Reading List

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We are finishing up week three of our lockdown in the UK.  When it was announced, the Prime Minister said it would be reviewed after three weeks.  Signs are, restrictions will not ease up anytime soon.

I limit myself to scanning the headlines of the New York Times, BBC News, and Minneapolis-St Paul Star Tribune every morning.  I can literally feel my heart start pounding faster and my palms sweating, so after reading one or two articles, I force myself to move on to something else.

Later, I can’t resist tuning in to the Downing Street Daily Coronavirus Briefing.  You may have heard that the PM, Boris Johnson, was hospitalized for coronavirus.  He was just the best-known figure outside of Britain.  Every day there’s a different line up of authorities.  One day the chief medical officer for England is on tap, the next day he’s gone because he’s got the virus.  Ten days later he re-appears, but in the meanwhile he is replaced by the health minister, who disappears and is replaced by the secretary of state for health and social care, who disappears next, and so on.  It’s a bit disconcerting but also gripping television drama.

Every evening they show a series of graphs. I don’t know if this is being done in the US.  I can’t bring myself to watch he-who-shall-not-be-named.  Reading about his gaffs and lies the next day is bad enough.

When I look at the trajectory for US deaths, it looks bad, right? This is one of the things that compels me to watch the briefing—I want to see if any of the lines have changed course.

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It could be worse.  In the past year I happened to read two books and a short story about post-apocalyptic worlds.  I made a list of all such books I have read, and here it is, in case you are looking to scare the b’Jesus out of yourself—or make yourself feel better about the current pandemic.

Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel. This is the book that most closely resembles the current situation, except that the virus has a 95% fatality rate.  Lots of food for thought about how we would survive, physically and socially, once the grocery stores were looted and empty.  One of those books I was still thinking about months later.

Blindness, by Jose Saramago.  As the title implies, this is about a plague that causes 99% of the population to go blind.  Similar to Station Eleven, themes are about how we would survive physically and socially if we could not see.

Memories of the Space Age, by J.G. Ballard. The title of a short story and collection of similarly-themed short stories.  Lately, I find I only have enough concentration to read short stories.  This one is about how man’s intrusion into space causes a plague-like time-slowing effect that starts at NASA and advancing through Florida until the entire state has to be shut down and emptied of people to stop the spread.

The Word for World is Forest, by Ursula K. LeGuin.  Humans have depleted every natural resource on Earth and are now plundering other worlds.  On Forest, they meet their match in the natives, who eventually drive them off but not before their innocence is defiled. Not a plague, but post-apocalyptic and not so unbelievable considering our rampant destruction of our planet.

The Man in the High Castle, by Phillip K. Dick.  This novel has been made into a TV show starring one of my favorite actors, Rufus Sewell.  In this scenario, the plague is fascism.  Again, not that farfetched, I’m afraid.  The plot: Germany and Japan won WWII.  The Germans are exterminating every person in Africa and chasing down the few Jews who slipped through the cracks.

On the Beach, by Nevile Shute.  A nuclear holocaust has exterminated the human race except  in Australia.  They know it is just a matter of time before the radioactive clouds reach them and cause them to die in agony.  By far the scariest scenario because they know their plague is coming.  I couldn’t finish it.

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And now, a beautiful view of Oxford’s spires from a hilltop on a spring day.

Lockdown Diary

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Today is the 14th day of the UK’s three-week lockdown.  There’s been no indication of if the measures will really be reversed, or how.

Most people I know think the lockdown will be extended.  A couple think it’ll all be over in a few weeks.  I tend to agree with the majority.

For now, it will take mental, emotional, and physical discipline to get through this time.

Mental, because without outside stimulus the brain quickly becomes disoriented.  What day is it?  Who am I?  What was I going to do?  This is very common among elderly people who are moved to care homes where there is nothing to do.  Now we’re all fighting in it together.

Strategies that have helped me:

Making a to-do list.  I write it on a post-it note, so it’s not a long list.  But if I don’t write things down I forget them.

Talking to at least two friends or family members a day.  Not messaging, talking. There is something about hearing the human voice that makes it more intimate.

Limiting news and social media: I scan the news headlines each morning and limit myself to reading 1-2 articles.  I have to admit; checking the daily “scoreboard” of how many cases and deaths have been recorded in every country is a fascination to me.

I read an article, “What you should know before you need a ventilator.”   I read it because it was in the New York Times and written by a doctor.  I should have known better.  Do Not read it.

I turn off my laptop and switch my cell to silent, then do something mentally absorbing, like crossword puzzles.  I brought this pile with me from home, threw them in the recycling bin when I hadn’t looked at them after a month, then frantically dug them out of the bin when the lockdown was announced.  Whew!

Baking is mentally absorbing, especially for me because the measures are different here.  You measure things by weight in grams and in millilitres, not cups.

My first attempt was tapenade-filled yeast rolls. They didn’t look great but they tasted wonderful.

As a bonus, I use the weights holder, which totals about five pounds, to workout.  Normally I would do shoulder presses with about 15 pound dumbbells.  Now I just do a ton of reps.

The highlight of my day is getting outside for a walk, rain or shine.  Even passing strangers at a two-metre distance somehow helps me to know I still exist and to believe we will all be together again eventually.  This was the last meal I had in a pub, a fish pie at The Head of the River.

This was my dinner a few nights ago.

I do cook fresh, but in times like these, crisps are also called for, especially when watching the Downing Street Daily Briefing.

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I am so lucky to be in a British beauty spot.  I live a few blocks from the Thames, which has a wide path along it that—if I only had a bike!—I could follow all the way from London to a place called Kemble.  The water has turned a lovely green.  Is this because there is less effluent being dumped into it, and less boat traffic?

Those are garden allotments on the opposite side.  People who have allotments are allowed to go dig around in them.  Sigh.

In addition to walking and weight training I am taking yoga classes on Zoom twice a week.  It is hilarious to see people’s cats standing on their backs and toddlers imitating their mothers’ downward dogs.

Emotionally, all of the above helps—staying connected and not overdoing the news or social media.  Also, not fighting battles unless I have the strength.  For instance, I have been trying to get through to Expedia for three weeks.  Two days ago I was on hold for two hours and had to give up.  There will be some sort of reckoning for Expedia and other companies that have so massively failed.  I realize the times are “unprecedented” as we hear over and over, but still.

I hope you are well.  I would love to hear what you’re up to.

Now, some photos of beautiful things.  Enjoy!