The day started off with a call from Ed's friend. Their buddy, colleague, company board member, like-minded pal had just died this morning. Suddenly and unexpectedly. How can you not be sad... The guy lived in Arizona, but visited here frequently and stayed with us more than once. He was a New Jersey boy and that put him just close enough, geographically speaking, to Ed's home base, so that I often thought he was the only one I knew here who actually sounded like Ed. Both had the entrepreneurial drive, both had big hearts, both didn't mess with empty niceties. But man oh man, what a guy! When traveling recently with his wife through Holland, he looked at all those tulip bulbs in stores around him and thought -- Nina has a garden, she would like some. Shortly after I got a shipment of tulips.
I took my morning walk on this very cold day thinking about spring and tulips.
Breakfast. Surrounded by farmette flowers, including tiny lilac buds that I found today. I don't know why the white lilac decided it's May rather than October, but it did, and we have the flower buds to prove it.
Afterwards, Ed unloaded many wheelbarrow-fuls of dirt, followed by many wheelbarrow-fuls of wood chips, to bring the grade up to the front steps. You could say he spent the better part of the day shoveling dirt. Me, I polished windows at the front of the farmhouse -- something that one does to clear the mind as much as to clean a pane of glass.
Where do you go with a day like this? Too cold and gray for outside indulgences, too isolationist (220th day for us!) to abandon yourself into the warmth of a coffee shop where you can sip, eat and people watch.
So I walk on my treadmill (there are goals to be met!) and then I buy clothes online for the kids. Because buying clothes for the kids is somehow deeply satisfying for me: I imagine I'm wrapping these precious souls in warmth and color. Unfortunately, my credit card triggers a fraud alert. I spend the next 3.5 hours on the phone with fraud agent number one, then agent number two, then supervisor of agent two and presumably one, all trying to clear the card. They couldn't do it. I finally said -- no more. I'm calling it quits. Write a new script on how to clear cards and call me back when you're done.
It was a bold gesture, leaving me neither satisfied nor in possession of an active credit card. That is not a good place to be when you are in isolation, but there is only so many times I can listen to someone tell me that this time they have fixed the problem only to find that they haven't done anything of the sort.
For supper I reheat yesterday's crunchy chicken, because if ever a day needed comfort food it would be this day.
