Saturday - 162nd

If you are in total isolation -- no visitors, no family, no one popping it at all, do you clean your house with the same fastidiousness as before?

My guess is that most will say yes. I should think that people who like clean spaces would feel diminished if clutter, dust balls, debris all messed with their environment. But don't you loosen your standards just a little? I know that in normal times, before we have visitors, I clean like crazy. I mean, to the point that I even wash the shower curtain. There isn't a surface that I don't touch. I can say that over the 162 days of isolation, I have not cleaned like crazy. Not even cleaned like normal. I've been spotty, erratic, almost (though not entirely) indifferent.

Traditionally, Sunday is clean up time at the farmhouse. This morning, I shrugged my shoulders and went inside to tend a little to the garden.
















Breakfast, in the heat of the very late morning.











And then I recoiled: I have eight days of kids at the farmette left. Will I truly grow indifferent to neatness once they stop coming? No, that can't happen. Can it?

I take out the vacuum and do a very thorough job vacuuming the floor and sucking in stringy webs from up above.  (We have quite the number of daddy long-legs sharing space with us. They're harmless to us and they do pick up any stray bugs that come around. But every once in a while, one has to reign in their habitat!) We will see how long I will remain motivated to keep this place solidly shiny and sparkly!

In the late afternoon, Ed and I go for a walk. Not around here, and not in the county park, but over in the area of town where I pick up our CSA box of veggies. The streets by the lesser lake have been mostly closed to vehicles and we thought it might be an interesting change of pace to walk city streets once more.






I'm glad Ed came with me, otherwise I'd have let myself give in to the nostalgia of the place. There are too many images of the countless other times I strolled here with Snowdrop, during saner years. Her family used to live in the neighborhood and this, too, is where her school, well her former school now, is located. Sparrow never made it to the playground at Bernie's Beach, and we stopped coming to the coffee shop here once he began school. But Snowdrop knows these spaces intimately. Oh, the ice cream games we played on the playground equipment! She asked me to drive through here last week. I had asked her -- are you sure you want to? Yes.






After the walk, Ed and I pick up our veggies and head for home. Such a heavy box of good stuff! What does late August bring? Well, corn, of course. Broccoli, carrots, more zucchini. Onions, potatoes, tomatoes, garlic. Cucumbers, peppers, edamame. A melon! We are swimming in potatoes and zucchini, but the rest is a welcome addition to our week's stash.

Clouds roll in toward evening and I am hoping for rain. Really hoping. A good, honest soak. I retreat into my computer and shop for school clothes for the kids. I know, right? How strange is that! Only Primrose in Chicago will actually be going somewhere! Still, like house cleaning, this ritual has meaning for me, for them too maybe.

There is comfort and pleasure in imagining that maybe, just maybe the clothes will carry them through to a time when schools will be safe and the two Madison kids can reenter the real world once more. Sweatshirts, dresses, polo shirts. Brittany stripes and dazzling stars. Wear them with a happy smile, little ones.

With love.