Are you feeling overwhelmed? Oh, but imagine being a bus driver right now. Or a grocery store clerk, as we approach a string of big grocery shopping days. During a crazy out of control pandemic. Or, imagine you live in the Upper Midwest and you hold the job of a nurse or a physician. Add a kid, or maybe two, who hasn't seen the inside of a school building since March. I'm sure I could ask you to join in and I'd have a page full of listings of people who are even more anxious about life right now!
For those of us with diffuse anxiety, it's a reminder to take stock of our own situations and keep in front and center the good stuff that is still with us. And I'd say that a string of sunny days is just one example of that good stuff. How good it is to go out and turn your face toward the sun! Welcome, vitamin D! Come right in and give us the benefits of your curative powers! (No sunshine where you live? Well, pop a vitamin D pill and take a walk anyway. It's guaranteed to make you feel better. Perhaps not great, but better. Pile on the better! We need a lot of it!)
Morning walk...
Breakfast. We are in the kitchen and this is a disappointment to the cats who enjoy our porch company.
Ed would love to just let them all in for a cuddle or two inside the farmhouse. Initially, when the cats looked in with their pleading eyes I was agreeable. But of course, the cats are insatiable and there is now always someone at the porch door, meowing to come in. Sometimes, Ed asks me if it's okay. Lately, I'm stubbornly firm. I recognize the slippery slope here and I am most adamant: I do not want five cats milling about in the farmhouse. I do not even want one cat with free access to our home. We are both mildly allergic and we've both done pets in our better days and I think we need to resist the temptation to go down that path again. Still, it's tough to push back all day long.
No, Ed, I don't want to let them in. No, not even for two minutes (it's never two minutes).
Just for a little bit.
You're asking? Well then... No.
In the early afternoon, we both go out for a New Development walk. We watch the houses go up, the people move in. Three years ago -- corn and soy. Now -- Santa in front of the porch.
Still later I drop off some stuff at the young family's house. It's not a great day for reading outside with Snowdrop. Too cold. But I have a chance to hand to the little girl something that she has missed a lot: two of her rag dolls, Rosie and Clover, that have been sadly collecting farmhouse dust in her absence, along with their "toys." She is ecstatic.
(Even though we're outdoors, mask goes on. We take no chances.)
And then I hurry home -- my two friends and I have a ZOOM chat scheduled and I dare say we need the boost that always comes with a visit, even a ZOOM visit.
Evening quiet now. A comfortable quiet that is far more beautiful in the winter than on a summer day. Inside, all windows closed, all noise of the outside world shut out. Well, except for the occasional meow.
If it weren't for the cats, Ed reminds me, we'd have the usual November mouse problem.
Fine, let them in. But only for two minutes. No more than that!
