Week 14 - A New Routine

It was the 2nd week of sheltering at home, not that our governor had shut down the state yet. But I was settling into working from home and was ready to enjoy warmer weather. My goal was to spend an hour outside at the end of each work day, making use of the time I wasn't commuting.

I put out an invitation to the Monday Night Knitters to do some social distanced knitting around the fire pit in my driveway. Heidi and Andrea said they'd come so I raked the front yard at 5:00, nuked some leftover lasagna and started some disinfecting - the chair arms and my bathroom handles. I propped the screen door open so they could open it with an elbow and I was ready for some knitting fun. The fire was nice and burned the entire bin of brush. Heidi brought long forks and marshmallows so we roasted those when the fire was just coals. After all my disinfecting, no one used the bathroom but better safe than sorry. And as a bonus, Andrea had gone to Aldi that afternoon and picked up a few groceries for me that will mean I wouldn't need to go to the store this week.

I had plans for another social event on Tuesday - an early lunch with my friend Lorri. We both go to go lunches from Mocha C's in downtown Wahoo (my fave chicken salad croissant, chips (Lay's yellow, of course) and a scotcharoo) and sat at opposite ends of a picnic table in one of Wahoo's parks. Her husband came along and I had brought 2 table cloths so we spread those and ate a quick lunch. I had to get home for a 1:00 Zoom meeting plus it got chilly whenthe sun went in so quick worked. It was still chilly after work so all I managed was picking up sticks in the backyard and breaking them up for another fire. My neighbor has a dying silver maple so there's never a shortage of sticks in my yard.

Wednesday was the first of the month so I spent the day doing monthly reports. I also popped out periodically to pick up wood from my neighbor across the street, who was having a tree cut down in her front yard. I had mentioned that I could use small logs so the man obliged and cut all the smaller branches into 6" cuts. The wood was green so would be for later burning but I got quite a bit. Nice. We had a cold snap coming so I didn't want to rake flower beds yet so at the end of the day, I raked the side yard. It felt great to start loading up that empty compost bin. I ended the day messaging with Dawn while watching Survivor. The work week was more than half over.

The weather was cold and dreary on Thursday so since I wasn't going to be going out, I got dressed in jammie pants and picked matching socks. At the end of the day, I Zoomed with Connie, who has been home even longer because she's got a compromised immune system. It was great to see her since my trip to her house at the end of March had been cancelled. I talked to Lori after Connie and so had nachos for dinner for the 2nd night in a row, with the layed bean dip Andrea had gotten for me at Aldi. Not nutritious but yummy. I needed to make sure to cook on the weekend.

I slept like crap that night and then had a bit of a panic on Friday morning. I was scheduled to do a Zoom demo of one of the new online forms I'd created but I was getting errors. Brook was nowhere to be found to help and I was a mess. He came back online and talked me through a fix in the nick of time. Between exhaustion and stress, I was over the day. I went down stairs at lunch and made masks for Carolyn and her family (I'd chosen the fabric in the wee hours while wide awake) and I got them into the mail for pick up that afternoon. We had a Zoom FAC (where would we be without Zoom?) with the office gang at 4:00 so it was an early day, which I needed. To celebrate the end of the 2nd week of working at home, I cast on new socks using the Stomp on Coronavirus pattern and yarn in the same colors as the virus molecule we see on the news - purply gray, red and orange. 

On Saturday I was going to drop my mower at Cindy's for her son to tune up and then go to the office to pick up my plants. But first I wanted to make a mask for Cindy with Eiffel Tower fabric. What should have taken 15 minutes took and hour because I broke my sewing machine needle. Grrr.... I found some but the first one wasn't right so I was pretty frustrated but did manage to finish it and it was cute. 

Just driving again felt great. Who knew I'd ever appreciate my commute? Cindy and I chatted in her driveway and then I headed to campus, which was eerie as all get out. The office was dark and creepy so I grabbed my violets and got out of there. I then went in search of my cats and found Pipsqueak, who I can touch, but Tortie Girl, who is totally skittish, also came out. She wouldn't come near me but she did come out when I called. Cool.

I had driven by Starbuck's on the way to campus but the line was nuts so I went home through town so I could check out another one. There was no line but that was because they'd closed half an hour before I got there. Bummer. But right across the street was Kaw Valley - the plant seller that pops up in parking lots this time of year. They were unloading trucks and were open so I bought some pansies for Lorri and me. Then I saw that Amigo's drive thru was open and they sell Winchell's donuts so I got 2 and a bag of crispos (deep fried tortillas sprinkled with cinnamon sugar) - yum! None of them made it to Wahoo. Talk about carb overload! I started streaming the new season of Ozark when I got home and didn't get hungry until much later so had stuffies and a Guinness. I absolutely needed to cook on Sunday because I had had way too many crappy food dinners this week.

We hadn't had the rain that was forecast so I needed to water the veg bed I'd planted a week ago. I dragged out hoses but hooked them up to the front of the house so I wouldn't have to snake them under the deck. It made for lots of walking back and forth but I got the bed watered in so hopefully I'll see germination soon. Then I pruned my roses and took the branches to the city burn pile. And somewhere in there I made masks for Lorri and Bob and dropped them off while I was out.

With the outside work done, I got busy cooking. I made a rock awesome homemade pizza and while my dough wasn't perfect, the toppings were and it tasted as good as Pizza Hut. I'll do better with the dough next time because there will be more pizza in my future quarantining. I also made chocolate marbled banana bread then Andrea came over and we swapped food. She gave me an entire loaf of homemade white bread and some banana cake. It's great to swap food to give us both more variety. Between all this, I finished Ozark. SO good.

I was settling in with a new routine and it wasn't all bad. I was reverting to the time my body wants to sleep - 11:00 to 7:00 - and wasn't setting an alarm, which is always a treat. I was not resenting working at home and was just the right amount of busy. I was getting some yard word done a bit at a time in the hour I used to spend commuting. And I was managing to incorporate seeing people in person but still maintaining social distancing. If I can keep this up and manage to stay healthy, this won't be so bad. Now for some warmer weather. Stay safe everyone.