I dug out the yarn for Ranibow Sprimkle today but I really need to dig Wooloo back out and finish that. I can't find the row-counter I was using with that so I suppose I will count stitches and figure out what round I was on.
This evening I've mainly been working on the afghan - I'm sort of tired because I put in the better part of a day working (I did the editing work I had for the ONPS, and I finished the biostats stuff for Tuesday). I also made a pot of western-style beans - these are cooked beans with just an onion and meat (I had bacon, and froze the rest of the package for other cooking - there might be a soup I could do a bit later. Bacon doesn't keep very long in the freezer but it keeps longer there than the fridge).
I'm still thinking of maybe doing bread tomorrow. And some pickled onions; I saw a photo of an egg-salad sandwich with pickled onions in it and I thought "Why haven't I ever done that?" I don't care for raw onion, but pickled onions, you cook them a bit in the vinegar and spices and they wilt down and lose some of their harshness.
I was going to do them tonight, but after I got done with the biostats stuff I went out and spent about an hour and a half both trimming back the front hedge and clearing out the brush from the little spot on the north of my house. At least I'm going to eventually get it knocked back this year? Even if I CAN'T go out and get plants to plant....though maybe early this fall I order a few bare rootstocks from Native American Seeds (if they're still hanging in there) and do a little planting for NEXT spring....
I also reorganized some of the books in my room and found "The Black Cauldron," which I started but never finished....maybe I go back and re-read "The Book of Three" (Which I do not remember all that well; I read it in the immediate wake of my dad's death) and maybe plow my way through all of them? Maybe I just go YA fantasy-with-fundamentally-good-guys-winning for a while? (I also have some retellings of Arthurian legend also). Then again, I also have "Brat Farrar," which I could re-read, I remember that being fairly entertaining (if not so much a "good guy winning" story)
I think what I have to do here, is just....be used to staying home, doing things at home. Having the yardwork helps because it's active and also out in the fresh air and I can see the results of it. Teaching is....approaching being done. There will be a lot of grading and a lot of wrestling with accursed BlackBoard to write tests/exams for the end of the semester, but except for one more set of lectures, I'm done with that part.
It will be distinctly odd to not have a graduation to attend, or to be heading off to my mom's immediately after....I'm not even sure the late-May travel plans I have should come off, my inclination at this point is "no." Not until there is better data out there about just what is going on, there's an awful lot of terrible data out there and people trying to push through studies that seem to have....not-great methodology. (I know, I know: I should be harvesting these references for a future advanced biostats class, but....I can't quite do that now). There are some inklings of good news out of the UK about a potential vaccine, and frankly, at this point a vaccine is what I'm hanging my hopes on; I doubt we can restrict our own movements (I mean as a mass of people; I've been pretty darn good about it myself) enough to totally stop the spread of the disease; so it will be out there, in low levels, and so mass transit (the train) seems unwise for a trip that is not strictly essential. Maybe I re-make the reservations for mid-July, and hope then we've got it under better control?
(If my mom WEREN'T 15 hours away, and across the scary scary Mississippi (I do not like driving across big bridges over big rivers), I admit I'd be planning on driving it. I think that would be safe enough, especially if I either carried my own food or did exclusively drive-through for eating on the road. But it really is too far to be a safe drive and I'd rather not stay over in a motel. If I had a friend who was going to the same general area and could share driving with them - and trusted them to be disease-free - then that would work. But I don't know anyone like that. My mom understands, but I would very much like to see her.)
Mostly I can deal now okay with the staying home. I get a little lonely - I had to call Mike for something about church scholarships the other day and we wound up talking for a while about just other stuff, because it was nice to hear another voice. And I have my work, and even once summer starts, I think I am going to try to be disciplined and do a few hours reading or working per day. Not sure whether to plan ahead towards teaching online in the fall (doing things like writing exams ahead of time) or just reading ahead on stuff....it will depend a lot on how widely we're allowed back on campus. If we are? I do research and probably come in every day and work on campus. If not? I read/write teaching stuff at home. Maybe I even try to innovate some new labs? If I could, maybe I could even write that up for publication....But I don't feel quite the same desperation, the same sense of everything-ending and there never being anything at all like the "old normal" again, the way I was feeling last week. I don't know if I've come back around to having hope or if I've just got used to it; often times I react strongly to big changes and feel like nothing will ever be "right" again until I DO get used to them.
(If I knew for sure that my job would continue, I'd be a lot more secure; that's the one thing that nags at me. I think it's *unlikely* I would lose my job, but I suspect there will be some serious cuts....maybe even a pay cut, that I'll have to budget for.)
But yeah: as I said elsewhere, because I have the privilege to work from home, in some sense I also have the responsibility to stay at home - the whole idea of people being unavailable for the virus to infect, that cuts a firebreak to protect the vulnerable. Not quite as well as vaccination would, but it's all we've got right now. (Also, there are.....really not that many places I used to go that I can still go. Some of my favorite restaurants are doing carry out and at some point maybe I get a big barbecue dinner to carry out or something from Roma's, but the craft stores and book stores I used to go to are all closed, or only doing "order online, pick up at the curb" and frankly, I'm just as well ordering books from Powell's or some such. Other than craft/book/similar stores, church was really the only place I went....it's possible, if our case numbers go down or don't increase any more (my county has 5), at some point this summer we might re-open with distancing, and I could go back then....we'll have to see. But yeah, having few places to go is....different from how my life had been. I'm getting used to it again, though. And I'm glad of my fabric and yarn stashes, and the hundreds of books I own, and the weekly delivery boxes from Imperfect Foods, all of those things...my life now revolves around keeping myself fed (I am doing more cooking), and doing my work, and doing a bit of sewing/knitting/crochet, and working in the yard and picking up what I can in the house (I have so many school papers and books scattered around though! I will be glad when I can go back and slowly tote it all back over there....). I think I said before that maybe this is a sort of preparation for retirement, and now I realize: retirement will be a bit of a shock to me, and maybe it's good to realize that now. (Then again, God willing, when I DO retire, it will be safe to go out and run around again, and I can take trips out to quilt shops or antique stores or go do volunteer work....)
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