Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing

1. Did you become what you wanted to be when you grew up? Are you happy with your choice?

A. At various times I wanted to be an archeologist, a geologist, an English teacher, a musician, and a writer. I ended up writing. I don't regret it. I did not go exactly where I thought I would with it but I have published literally thousands of articles (and became a photographer to go along with it and published thousands of those, too), and while I am no longer as well-known as I was when I was more active in publishing, I had a satisfying following for a while. The only thing I haven't done that I had expected to do by now is write a book.

2. Did man really go to the moon or was it a publicity stunt?

A. We went to the moon. Really? Is the earth flat, too?

3. Given the opportunity to change one major aspect of your life (i.e. career, relationship, family) with no guarantee of the outcome, would you take the chance? Why?

A. Yes. I would do so with eye closed and heart open and hope for better results in some areas.

4. Does money buy happiness?

A. No, but it buys health insurance.

5. What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?

A. Tell Alexa, "Stop." She is my alarm. Then I crawl out of bed, put on my slippers, and go to the little women's room.

6. What are we going to do when we run out of room to bury the dead?

A. Cremate.

7. What is your greatest fear? Why? Is it rational or unreasonable?

A. My greatest fear is ending up alone and homeless, living under a bridge. It is probably not rational but I also do not think, given the current political climate, that it is unreasonable should something happen to my husband.

8. How do you feel about the exploitation of your private data in the digital age? Does it ever cross your mind or are you hyper-aware of the risks?

A. I am very aware of it and have taken precautions where feasible. I have even put off buying a new car because I am aware that they are tracking everything now in a vehicle. They may be doing that in my 2014 Camry but it wouldn't be as complete as what they are doing now. I read an article about this in Reader's Digest at lunch today.

9. You can be forgiven one debt. What is it? If you don’t have debt, then how did you do it?

A. I guess that would be paying off a tractor.

10. Hot or cold?

A. Hot or cold . . . what? Cold water, hot tea.

11. What is your favorite thing in the world (aside from family, friends, pets)?

A. An internet connection.

12. You have to give up one of your five senses. Which one would you go without?

A. Taste, I guess. I need my eyes and ears and I couldn't type I suppose without touch.

13. Do you believe everyone has a doppelgänger?

A. I think we all have someone who looks a bit like us though maybe not at the same time in history. I've been mistaken for someone else on occasion, and have mistaken others for someone else.

14. Likewise, does everyone have a soulmate or is it just a matter of proximity and circumstance?

A. It is probably circumstance but the idea of a soulmate is nice.

15. Imagine you have a theme song that plays every time you enter a room. What would your song be?

A. Suicide is Painless (The Theme from MASH) with the words.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

Saturday 9: I Don't Care

Saturday 9: I Don't Care (2019)

 Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) This song begins with Ed Sheeran admitting he's not enjoying the party he's at. What's something you have to do this weekend, but don't want to do?

A. Cook a turkey. My husband decided that this should be the weekend we cook a turkey I bought on sale at Thanksgiving and stuck in the freezer. I'd intended to cook it Christmas but because I caught a respiratory thing I didn't fix it. Now it is thawing and must be cooked tomorrow.

2) Justin Bieber sings about trying to have a conversation at a party. Have you seen any of your social gatherings cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic?

A. My book clubs have been cancelled.

3) Both Ed and Justin conclude that this party -- and everything else -- is okay because they're with the ones they love. Who in your life always makes you feel comfortable and content?

A. Nobody ALWAYS does. Nor do I expect anyone to do so.

4) Ed and Justin have both appeared on The Simpsons. Are you a Simpsons fan?

A. I don't believe I have ever watched an entire episode.

5) Speaking of animation, Ed Sheeran has said that he'd love to do a Disney soundtrack, like Elton John's Lion King. Do you have a favorite Disney movie?

A. Now that Disney owns the Star Wars franchise, I guess it would be the original three Star Wars movies.

6) Justin Bieber is fluent in French, and Ed says he knows enough to get by. Say something to us in French.

A. Je pense que la réponse du gouvernement fédéral au virus est au mieux idiote. J’aspire à l’époque où les adultes étaient en charge.

7) Justin can solve a Rubik's Cube in less than two minutes. Are you good at puzzles?

A. Generally. I used to be able to solve a Rubik's Cube in less than two minutes but that was a long time ago. I doubt I could even solve it at the moment.

8) In 2019, the year this song was popular, 20 new governors took office. Tell us something about the governor of your state (or commonwealth)?

A. My governor is a physician and therefore I trust his judgment in dealing with a pandemic. He is not without flaws, but who is?

9) Random question: Did you more recently give a compliment, or receive one?

A. Gave one. I told my husband he was good at installing septic tanks and driving the backhoe. That is what he will be doing now that he has retired from the fire department.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.

A Peaceful Easy Feeling

Thursday Thirteen

Some of my favorite pandemic memes:

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 652nd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Pandemic Tuesday - Day 31

Sunday night, I couldn't stand it any longer. I grabbed the pair of small shears out of my husband's hair-trimming kit, stood naked in the shower, pulled the mirror to me, and hacked away at my hair.

Normally I wear a shag style. Now it's more like a mullet that stands out straight on one side. It's shorter, anyway, and what's done is done.

I took about 2" of hair off of my head. I picked up what hair I could and shoved it into a bag; my husband filed in with the battery-powered vacuum and took care of the rest. I showered and blew my grey locks dry. I knew the cut would be bad - a previous effort to trim my bangs had not gone well. It's all I can do to manage a curling iron.

My hair had been 4 days overdue for a cut when the pandemic shut-ins began. My previous cut had been a tad short, so I was letting it grow out a bit for just a trim - a trim that probably won't happen for at least another month, if not two. Or three.

Who knows?

Hair is something that will grow back, so whatever damage I've done will one day be remedied. In the meantime, I can wear a hat.

Honestly, it is not like I'm going out anyway. I've left the house four times since March 13, and during all of those outings, I stayed in the car. My husband is insistent that I not leave the safety of the vehicle.

Since I last wrote, I ventured out to ride with the husband to drop items into a FedEx drop box, pick up medication at the drive thru-pharmacy, and to purchase lunch from Bellacino's at the curbside pickup. We ate with his mother. We try to do that occasionally so she doesn't die of boredom up there alone in the house. At least he and I have each other to fight with.

He is here all the time now since he has retired. Well, he is off farming and putting in septic tanks at times, but after 37 years of getting up at 5 a.m., he has discovered he likes to sleep late. He likes to fix breakfast. I let him. My routine is in flux. I can't expect anything to become regular, though, until the virus issues lessen.

I've picked up work editing a manuscript, so that has been fortunate. It helps the afternoons go by more quickly. From 2 p.m. onward, I struggle. I start roaming the house. My restlessness seems endless and ongoing. I fight not to eat (another) candy bar. My husband has lost weight in the months he has been home because I do not fix the major meals he had at the fire station. I haven't lost a pound. I am still eating just as I always have, if not more. My exercise routine is nonexistent, not because of lethargy but because of a bad case of heel spur/plantar fasciitis in my left foot. It is all I can do to walk to the kitchen, must less contemplate a 30-minute bout on the treadmill.

Audiobooks are my friends. So is music. My one bright spot of the day for the last two weeks has been the live 3-4 song concerts Melissa Etheridge is putting on for her fans. Every single day on Facebook at 6 p.m., there she is, playing favorites and telling us all to drink lots of water, take a walk, and spread the love. She is a damn good guitar player and my eyes are glued to her fingers while she plays. Her songs are full of difficult chords; I want to see how she does it.



Me jamming with Melissa Etheridge. This is after my haircut. Can you tell where I scalped myself?

I call my brother frequently. He is running an essential business; he makes frequent trips to the store. He brought me Easter candy to give to my husband. I fret over his being out in public so much and worry that he isn't taking precautions. I have been dreaming about him regularly, and this concerns me. In our family, we're a little fey. Dreams are not taken lightly. Fortunately, they are not bad dreams, but I do not dream about him as a rule. So every morning after I dream of him, I call and ask him if he is ok. He knows it is because I dreamt of him. I don't even have to tell him. I don't know if he is amused or irritated by my concern.

Other family members I've not heard from in years have called. My first cousin in Texas, Matthew, called and talked for a long time (the first time in about three years I'd heard from him), then sent me pictures of his daughter and his new truck. The next night I texted him and told him guitar legend Tommy Emmanuel was performing live on Facebook. I found it funny because he'd told me in our phone conversation that he didn't waste his time on things like Facebook and Instagram. His wife, though, has a Facebook account and the next thing I knew we were texting about guitar licks as we both watched the man play.

My husband's cousin, whom I've met about three times, lives in California, and she called Friday and talked for well over an hour. I kept suggesting she call my mother-in-law, who is her aunt, but I don't know if she did.

When I was a reporter, I learned that the secret of good conversation is to talk little, listen a lot. People like to hear themselves speak. They like to be acknowledged. No one wants to be alone all the time, not really. Not even someone like me, an introvert in the extreme. I like to let the long pauses grow longer still during conversations. That is when someone will pop out with the most unlikeliest of sentences.

Sunday night, we had 3" of rain. It flooded to the south. Monday morning, I opened the patio door and listened to a symphony of birds as they sang their hearts out after the long night of heavy rain.

The wind picked up and blew the grass dry in between rain showers as the day progressed.

Last night, I stepped out on the patio to breathe in the fresh, clean air. The wind had died down, and in the ensuing silence, I heard an unmistakable noise.

It was the background chatter of the 17-year locust.

The BIG Announcement

My husband, after 37 years with the Roanoke Fire-EMS Department in Roanoke, Virginia, has retired to work on the farm and install septic systems.

He was a Battalion Chief for the last 10 years of his career. He started there February 15, 1983 and rose through the ranks to run half the city when he was on shift.

He was the second-longest serving firefighter in the department when he retired. One other man has been there a few months longer. He takes with him a lifetime of experience and memory.

Battalion Chief James Firebaugh, 2019

I remember when he took the job. We were dating, and he would not propose to me until he had found work that was more permanent than farming and digging septic tanks with his father. (Interestingly enough, that is now what he will be doing.)

His grandfather passed away when he was about two weeks into the job, and he had to take funeral leave right away. He had not accrued vacation when we married in November, so we married over a four-day break.

His work schedule was basically 10 days of 24-hour shifts during the month. However, they rotated and went like this: Monday, Wednesday, Friday - 4 days off - Wednesday, Friday, Sunday - 4 days off - Friday, Sunday, Tuesday - 4 days off . . . hopefully one gets the idea of how that went.

Spending 10 days a month alone did not bother me generally, although it was a given that if the hot water heater was going to go out or something else around the house was going to go whacky, or if I were to become very sick, it would be a day when he was at the fire station and not on one of his off days.

During his off days, he helped his father farm and install septic tanks just as he always did. For the first 10 years of our marriage, he also served a volunteer firefighter with the Fincastle Fire Department, and I was very glad when he gave that up. We saw each other at night and then of course not every night because he was at work. I also had classes at night and then I worked a lot at night after I became a full-time writer/freelance news reporter, so our time together was minimal, really.

Until he injured his arm in 2014, we had not spent more than three weeks together without him having to go back to work. While he recovered from that injury, which occurred on the farm and not at the firehouse, we were together about two months. In late November, he had surgery on his ankle, and we have now spent all of these nights together. As my stepmother said, "You didn't kill him, so that is a good thing."

During his career, there were several incidents that I recall. The first is the Flood of 1985. Roanoke City and surrounding areas drowned in over 11 inches of rain, and he was on duty. I was out at a doctor's appointment. We had no cellphones back then, so it was hours before we each found out the other was ok. He and his crew made some daring and heroic rescues at that time, using the ladder truck to reach out over raging waters to pluck people from streams.

Here's a youtube video about the flood.

He also worked what is locally known as the TAAP fire, when the Total Action Against Poverty building burned down. It was cold and the firefighters all had icicles hanging from their gear as they fought the blaze. I couldn't find any photos of that, though I'm sure there are some somewhere.

Around that same time, Chief Harry McKinney passed away. I attended the funeral because his daughter was my math teacher in high school and we have kept in touch all of these years. I remember feeling so out of place sitting with my husband amongst that sea of blue uniforms. My husband had a lot of respect for Chief McKinney. There is no funeral like a fire service funeral, I must say.

Of course there are many other fires, wrecks, etc., that he worked throughout his career. I have no idea how many people he watched die, how many people he saved when he was working as a medic - those statistics may be kept somewhere, but I doubt it. He was a citizen doing his civic duty, on the job taking care of his community.

This is what one of the firefighters wrote about him on a page dedicated to remembering the firefighters:

"James has served as the Northside Battalion Chief (Battalion 2) for the last ten years. He has served many roles during his tenure and leaves large shoes to fill. James served as chair of the apparatus committee and was directly involved in the design of many of our trucks throughout the years. He also served as one of the original members of our regional Hazardous Materials Response Team. James, regardless of his or other people’s rank, has always been someone that could be easily spoken to and has always been a force to be reckoned with in the firehouse. He has carried a strong presence on fire scenes when a job needed to be done but isn’t one to stand available for a photo."

There aren't many pictures of him at fire scenes. Usually he has his back to his camera in the ones he is in. He never sought recognition for anything he did.

Having a square-off with another battalion chief, apparently.

He's the guy on the far right hanging on the hose and shouting orders. Best guess is this was when he was a captain.

He had intended to return to work following his ankle surgery. His recovery from that took longer than he anticipated, and then the Covid-45 virus hit. He decided he could not risk bringing that home to me (I have asthma) or to his 86-year-old mother, whom he checks on every day. She lives alone but he takes her the newspaper and the mail and checks on her a lot. When we heard the news that the virus had hit the fire department in Lynchburg, I think that sealed it for him.

So his career comes to an end, and he will be back where he started, really, farming full time and running a septic installation business. He loves to do that work, so he will be happy.

I have grown used to having him about the house more, so I don't think I will hit him upside the head with anything. The Covid-45 virus has interrupted our schedules, but it has interrupted the whole world's schedule. Eventually we will find a flow that works for us.

My heart is full of pride for all that he has accomplished. It is no easy task to go from firefighter to battalion chief.

May he enjoy his new life without the fire service and all the stress that brought him.

Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing

1. What is something you are doing due to the pandemic that you normally don’t do? After the pandemic will you continue to so this?

A. I am trying not to bite my nails in an attempt to keep my hands from my face. Hopefully that will continue. We'll see. I have chewed on them my entire life; that's a long habit to break.

2. What made you happy, sad, or frustrated today? List, all big and/or small, as there may be some of one or all of these feelings!

A. It is still early for a range of emotions. I was happy when I woke up, as I had dreamt I was mailing the state Attorney General a letter about my medication costs, which went up 700% from last month to this month. I also had snuck in a chocolate rabbit for my husband. I sat that out and was glad to surprise him. Things have gone downhill since, and now I'm sad.

3. What is one of the first things you will do when the pandemic is over?

A. Probably go to the store. I would like to get a haircut but I expect it will be another month before I can do that - everyone will be booked and I don't have a regular stylist.

4. Are you an essential employee or do you know someone who is? Is this affecting you in some way?

A. My brother continues to work as his business is essential (something to do with making things for the military). I worry about him a lot. He has been good about stopping at the store a time or two for things we've not been able to find. He is out a lot because he has to keep his company up and running.

5. What are you doing to destress during this stressful time?

A. I read, play guitar, play video games. Same as I always do.

6. Have you tried any new recipes during this time? Please share your recipe if you want to.

A. I made a meatloaf that did not have a tomato base. I used vegetable soup in it and cut up a summer squash and put that in it too. It was pretty good.

7. Have you always lived where you do now? If not, how did you wind up in the place you currently live?

A. I have always lived in this area. We built our house here 33 years ago.

8. Where is the last place you visited on-line?

A. My video game, Elvenar. It's a city-building game. I've been playing it for a couple of years.

9. What is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to you?

A. That they love me.

10. Tell me about the last photo on your camera (phone or real camera or both!)

A. The last picture on my phone is a photo of a mailing label so I can track a package. The last picture on my camera is of my husband removing a tree stump with his backhoe.

Saturday 9: Easter Bunny Bop

Saturday 9: The Easter Bunny Bop (2015)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) This song encourages little ones to celebrate Easter by doing a little dance. Do you feel like dancing this morning?

A. Not really, no.

2) Everyone in this video is wearing bunny ears. Target, Amazon and other retailers sell bunny ear headbands sized for adults and priced at about $5. Will you be wearing bunny ears, or perhaps a more conventional chapeau, this weekend? Or, because of the corona virus, will your Easter attire be the same as any other day?

A. It will be the same as any other day.

3) This week's featured artists, The Bounce Patrol Kids, are a children's entertainment juggernaut: CDs, DVDs, downloads, and t-shirts. Additionally, they often update their YouTube channel because they want children the world over to have access to their upbeat, energetic songs for free. Besides the Bounce Patrol, what's the last YouTube video you watched?

A. I think it was a video on how to do stretches for plantar fasciitis.

4) According to Forbes magazine, the average American household spends $20.66 on candy each Easter. Will you be consuming candy this weekend?

A. Probably not Easter candy. No one will be out to purchase any.

5) The biggest chocolate Easter egg was made in Italy, measured 34 feet tall and weighed a staggering 15,000 lbs. Do you thinks it's possible to have too much chocolate?

A. I'm sure it is, but I have not yet hit my limit.

6) After chocolate, the top-selling Easter candy is Peeps Marshmallow Chicks. They're so popular that, in 2018, they were the subject of a Jeopardy clue. Do you often watch Jeopardy?

A. We watch it frequently, and play it on Alexa almost every night.

7) Jelly beans are also popular this time of year. In a 2019 poll, jelly bean fans responded that Jelly Belly Buttered Popcorn is their favorite flavor. Sam is crazy about cherry. Do you have a favorite?

A. I don't like jelly beans at all.

8) We've been talking a lot about sweets this morning. The only holiday that generates more candy sales is Halloween. When do you eat more candy: Easter or Halloween?

A. Probably Halloween. I used to really like Cadbury Eggs but they aren't as good as they used to be.

9) Easter is considered the season of rebirth. What makes you feel refreshed or rejuvenated?

A. A nap, a laugh with a friend, or a change of pace.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.

Thursday Thirteen

Pictures from past Aprils - and one from today.

1.

This tom turkey was out front this morning. The wind kept ruffling his feathers (2020)

2.


A redbud from 2019

 

 3


A dogwood from 2019. They are not yet in full bloom.

4.


A cardinal from 2018.

5.


A newborn calf in 2017.

6.


A bucolic setting in 2016. The tree to the left is no longer standing; it's an ash that the emerald ash borer killed. We had to cut it down.

7.


A white squirrel from 2015.
 

8.

A pileated woodpecker from 2014.

9.

Forsythia from 2014. It's already bloomed out and gone this year.

10.



The hayfield full of mustard grass, 2014.

11.



Canadian Geese on the pond, 2014.

12.



We had a little snow on April 4, 2013. The blue spruce in the foreground is another tree that died last year.

13.



A large area of trillium, 2012. The landowner cut trees later that year and the trillium has died out.

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 651st time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

The Orange Lamp

I've been watching Melissa Etheridge play live on Facebook (6 p.m. EST) for about 10 days now. She gives a four-song concert every evening. She talks about how she wrote the song, plays hot guitar licks, throws in a day on the piano, and talks about taking care of ourselves during this time of weirdness. She advises us to drink water, take walks, be kind and fill the universe with love.

Hey, that's a message that I can get into. It's like stepping into her secret room and learning a lot about her. How very kind of her to do this for her fans during these difficult days.

Her concerts are taped in what looks like a little shrine room, where she has a chair, her Grammy statue, things she's been given or whatever that has to do with her career.

Beside the chair, is a lamp. Its shade is orange and fringed.

 

Melissa's orange lamp.

From the first concert, I have stared at this lamp when I wasn't watching Melissa play on the guitar. I swear my mother bought a lamp just like this one when we went to California in 1976.

We were on a family adventure, complete with extended family that included my grandmother and two young uncles plus the four of us, taking a cross-country tour to California. We were in a big van of some kind; my mother said it drove like a bus.

Anyway, in San Jose, I think it was, there was a huge flea market. Stuff everywhere. My mother decided she had to have this lamp.

We had to sit with the lamp and nurse it all the way back to Virginia, trying desperately hard not to break it.

Having succeeded in getting it back home safely, my mother put the lamp in the formal living room.

I hadn't thought of it in years, but seeing it in Melissa's room has had me wondering what became of this lamp.

My brother told me in a text that it was destroyed in a house fire that occurred in my parents' home in 1989. I was married and out of the house by then, and my mother insisted that only she and the ServPro people could clean her stuff, so I have no real notion as to what was and wasn't destroyed when the roof of the house burned off following a lightning strike.

But I guess that is what happened to the orange lamp.

(I never did like it; orange is not my color.)

The Pink Moon

The moonset was about 6:45 a.m. this morning, give or take a few minutes. I was still in bed when I glanced out and saw it heading down toward the mountain. I jumped up, grabbed my camera and tripod, and out the front door I went. Most of my shots were blurry (no food in my system yet), but these two turned out well.

This is another so-called super moon. It certainly has been bright the last few nights.

Pandemic Monday - Day 23

No reason to write a daily update of our lives as we live at home, doing  . . . whatever it is we're doing. Things are happening and changes are occurring, but at the moment I'm not free to write of them.

Stay tuned.

What I can write about is a little weekly diary of how I am feeling about this pandemic, and how we're managing. As a long-time married couple with no children, we mostly have only ourselves to rely upon. Fortunately, we do have family close by - I have a brother who has called frequently, bless his heart, and my father and I have talked some, and my husband has checked on neighbors and his mother. We're not exactly sequestered in silence up here on our little knoll.

That doesn't mean I don't want to get out of the house. My outings previously were limited mostly to trips to the grocery store, the chiropractor, and Walmart, but at least I got out. Now, I go nowhere except on short drives "around the block" which here is an hour's ride because we don't have blocks but eventually you loop back to where you started.

My husband insists on doing the grocery shopping. Because I tend to catch everything, he doesn't want me out of the house.

When things come in the house, they either sit in the sun or are sprayed with Lysol or wiped down with a Clorox wipe. He takes a shower every time he leaves our property and comes back. I stay six feet away from him until he's clean. I wear gloves to handle food until it's all been washed and put away.

I freeze grapes. I used to not do that, they'd go bad faster than I could eat them, but now I am immediately taking half of them and putting them in the freezer. I also froze a half-gallon of milk so I would have milk here if I needed it for recipes. I put two cups each into smaller containers and froze those. I mean, you never know when you may need two cups of milk.

Spring is bursting out all over the place. The grass is green and the cows no longer need to be fed - they ignore the hay in favor of the new grass. The blackberry brambles have leaves. The oak trees have growths of green. The redbuds have been beautiful this year. The dogwoods are starting to bloom.

The deer and turkey have been roaming around the house, unfazed by our continued presence. Sometimes it seems like we're the ones in the zoo and they're the ones looking in.

Around 4 a.m. this morning I woke to a bright shining Strawberry moon, not quite full, as it sent moonbeams sliding into my window. A cloud soon covered it and I went back to sleep.

I tire easily these days. I don't know if it is the atmosphere, the constant drumbeat of "something is wrong," or simply my age, but I feel worn out by the time afternoon reaches its zenith. I don't nap, though, because I don't sleep at night if I sleep in the day.

That constant hum of "all is not well" has become a monotonous drone in the background, rather like the chatter of locust in summer when they come out, or maybe it's like tinnitus, which I have and which frequently sounds like a high-pitched squeal. But now there's a low frequency background,  one not of my own making, resounding in my heart. Drums beating out an unspeakable message: stay home, stay home, stay home.

As an introvert, staying home is not awful. I like to be at home. What's got me bumfuzzled is my changing routine. I had a routine and then my husband had his ankle surgery. That changed my routine significantly. Now he is up and about, and my routine is not yet back into something recognizable. Because now I have to spend much time wiping down doorknobs and wiping off the groceries and worrying over him if I know he is out beyond the boundaries of our farm. I do more laundry. That constant hum of "all is not well" overlays everything, and I can't think clearly, and my focus is that of a butterfly, flitting from flower to flower and never quite landing safely.

So this is the Pandemic Monday notation. It's a partly cloudy day, though we've had a sprinkle of rain. And my routine will once again be interrupted today, because I'm off to watch my governor update us on the latest number of deaths and positive cases, and see what else the officials advise.

Be well, be safe, stay healthy, stay inside, dear reader. Take care of yourselves as best you can.

Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing

1. Name a highlight of your day.

A. So far today, it has been a ride around the block in the car. Of course, a "block" here is miles and miles.

2. What made you smile today?

A. Nothing much so far.

3. What made you laugh today?

A. A running joke I have with my husband about nasal spray. You'd have to live here to understand it.

4. Recall a time when you needed encouragement.

A. Way back in 1985, as I was trying to figure out what to do with my life (a task I have yet to complete, apparently), I was encouraged to apply for and attend Hollins College (now Hollins University) in order to obtain my bachelors and focus on writing. The encouragers were my professors at the community college and a couple of friends.

5. What is a luxury you are thankful for?

A. At the moment, being able to go to the grocery store feels like a luxury.

6. Favorite childhood memory.

A. I don't have a favorite one. I remember though that there was an abandoned house up the street from my grandmother's house, and my brother and my two young uncles (one a year younger than I, the other four years older than I), along with myself, would ride our bikes there and then dare one another to go look in the windows.

7. Favorite song–and why?

A. I don't have a favorite song, but I like most songs by the Eagles. They have nice melodies, are fairly easy to play on the guitar, and I like their harmonies.

8. Where is your favorite place?  Why?

A. My favorite place is my home, because it is where I belong and where I seek shelter from the storms of every day life.

9. What is your favorite scent?

A. The smell of Nestle's Original Toll House Cookies baking.

10. What is your favorite topic to talk about?

A. Everyone's favorite topic is themselves. However, I also like to talk about writing, music, books, video games, nature, politics, and many other topics. I'm widely read and I know a lot of stuff.

11. What do you like doing so much that you lose track of time?

A. Write or read.

12. If you had 5 minutes and the whole world was forced to listen, what would you say?

A. Get over yourselves and think about other people. Go read the New Testament and forget about the Old Testament if you want to live a Christian life. Otherwise, just be a good, decent person. That doesn't take five minutes but it sums up everything wrong with the world.

13. Whose life do you envy the most, and why?

A. I don't envy anyone's life. I admire some folks who have more talent than I, but I don't actually envy anyone.

14. What would you do differently with your education if you got a chance to start over?

A. I'd go for the bachelors at 18 instead of 24.

15. What would you do with your life if you had no fear?
A. I have a hard time imagining that, no fear. Actually I don't think I can.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.