You would have to hog tie me and put me in a wheelbarrow....

Sometimes I think the only thing I know for sure is that I am not going to reserve a cabin on a cruise ship - ever.  You would have to hog tie me, put me in a wheelbarrow and push me screaming all the way up the ramp.  It is a been there; done that situation.  Just not my cup of tea. I will spare you the details – like descriptions of seas so rough that my sister and I were belted into our bunk beds with bands that looked like wide seat belts.  (That cruise was over 60 years ago. I have a long memory.... But I digress….)

After almost a year now of staying at home, following what are basically repetitions of only slightly modified routines, I have come to the point that I find it necessary to organize my "nutritional supplements" in one of those dispensers that have little compartments for each day of the week -- so I know if I took them or not.  I keep a wooden calendar on my kitchen counter so that I know what day of the week it is – unless I forget to slide it to the next day before I go to bed the night before. (Thank goodness I can find this information on the lock screen of my phone or in the lower right-hand side of my computer monitor.)

I clean something in my house every day.  Sometimes I get on a roll and clean a bunch of things that I would have totally ignored for years on end before the damncovid. I make To Do lists and then thoroughly enjoy checking items off.

My laundry is always caught up.  I have taught myself how to steam my denim shirts rather than iron them. (It takes longer to steam.) The mending is caught up. I have the time to do all sorts of stuff. I crocheted one and knitted two afghans in the month of December.  I cannot even begin to guess how many books I have read or how many puzzles I have done on my iPad. Currently I am working on a counted cross stitch project that is roughly the size of Kansas.  The amount of my television watching is shameful. However, I must confess that I have not cleaned out closets.  Every closet in this house is too full of stuff.  I am waiting for a particularly desperate day to do closets. I almost reached that point last week. Almost....

I try new recipes, enjoy cooking for family dinners and write to people with whom I have not communicated in years -- or ever. (I exchanged notes recently with a very nice person who owns a small book store in Oregon.)  I have cleaned my silverware drawer and gently scraped hairspray off a mirror with a razor blade.  I sometimes scan my home for cobwebs.  I think the spiders are in hibernation at the moment. Dust still appears though -- somehow. I figure it is a sign of life. In contrast -- I sit too much.

I write for a couple of hours every day (sometimes more than that) -- part of that time is on a documentation of life in my part of rural America during the damncovid. I am writing this with one of my cousins. She also lives in rural America, but she has a lake. Anyway -- we communicate by email and are now up to about four pages per day x 30 days/month – now starting the twelfth month. You do the math.  Guess we will have to cut a bit before we store it away someplace for future generations to discover. I know from talking with her that she, too, has closet issues. It's not a bad thing really.

Then to finish my list... (and then I can check it off my To Do for the day...)

Going to the store for groceries has become an outing and...  I almost enjoy it, although I am thinking more and more of shopping online and just driving through to pick up.  Those of you who have been reading my blog know that I am not a fan of, nor have I mastered the wearing of the mask and breathing at the same time. (Dr. Fauci is not one of my faves these days ....) So…

How are all of you doing?  It's the small things that become the big things sometimes. Right?  Does anyone else wish that they could do more to be useful in these nutty times? I am thinking that is a big YES.  It’s a helpless feeling at this stage of the game. Come to think of it -- that is another thing that I do know for sure. The damncovid has made everything underlined and harder.