Three Beautiful Things 03/18/20: Cleaning the House, Debbie Shops at Barney's, Cocktails and Popcorn in the Time of Pandemic

1. I cleaned house today, disinfecting kitchen surfaces, the bathroom sink, toilet, and shower, sweeping, vacuuming, cleaning dishes, and doing some laundry. My lower back gets fatigued sort of quickly -- this problem started when I was sorting through Mom's belongings and moving boxes and bags of things after she died -- and so I needed to rest often, making the housecleaning a slow job. Now I just need to do more cleaning day to day and not leave it to be done in one fell swoop.

2. In the middle of the afternoon, I got a text from Debbie letting me know she was in Pinehurst. Ah! Good! She had safely driven from Portland to the Silver Valley. I didn't actually know why she was in Pinehurst, but found out about 45 minutes later that she went to Barney's Harvest Foods to shop for a few things like oatmeal, pancake mix, barley, lentils, rice, some canned vegetables and fruit, popcorn, canned fish, peanut butter, and other items that we will have around as we stay close to home during the pandemic.

3. Debbie and I gabbed for the rest of the afternoon and on into the evening. I don't remember exactly when I opened the bar and went to work as the resident mixologist, but it was fun making Debbie a Manhattan or two or three or . . .and I enjoyed a couple dry gin martinis up (stirred, not shaken) and when, later on, it was popcorn time, I indulged in my most recent favorite home cocktail, Gosling dark rum and Coke with lemon.

Debbie and I had a lot of ground to cover. We talked about how things are going with Josh, Adrienne, Jack, and Ellie in New York; about conversations she had with Patrick and that he and Meagan are doing well in Portland; about the Diaz family and what's been happening with them in Maryland.

We talked about Charly, family life in Kellogg, our sense of life locally, regionally, nationally, and beyond during the pandemic and mused about whether we might make some physical changes in our home;  to me, the chief question is whether we might bring the Vizio, on occasion, out of the Vizio room into the living room if we want to watch something together on television.

I've never read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, but that title keeps running through my mind.

Until today, for the last several days, I've stayed home alone, only going out to buy some groceries, take a hike, and take part in our St. Patrick's Day family dinner.

Now Debbie is home and we will enter into Staying Home in the Time of Pandemic.

I'm not sure how we'll make this work. I have confidence we will. For the next, what? few weeks? months? this blog will, in part, report on our life at home, doing our small part to stop the spread of COVID 19 during the 2020 pandemic.