Older son, the husband, and I took Lassa, the family dog, on a "pack walk" at a nearby park this morning. The dog park was limited to ten "patrons (humans)" who were asked to keep their distance from each other. Lassa views the dog park as the opportunity to get petted by any and every human there, and there were no humans there at the time, so we just walked. Because we all walk at somewhat different paces and because older son was going where Lass led him, keeping a social distance was easy. All the other people we saw were solitary with the exception of a couple running into the park as we drove out. She was pushing a pram that likely held in infant. He was pushing a double stroller holding two toddlers. Since they couldn't really keep social distance between adult and child being pushed, social distance between the two adults was probably superfluous.
On the news front, once again The Post's front page was all pandemic all the time. The Sports section (now only available on Sunday) was all of six pages, one of which held a full page ad. One and two-thirds of a page were devoted to a list of sports-related movies chosen by Post sportswriters, columnists, and editors. I've seen only four of the 32 movies listed; perhaps I really should get out more. On a related note, the posts of an internet-based quilt group to which I belong have of late focused on what to binge-watch or just watch while hermitting. Most of the titles mentioned are unfamiliar to me, possibly the only person in the country who has never watched any of "Downton Abbey," series or movie, or the movie "Titanic."
My kids are grown, so I won't years from now be asked by my children, "What did you do in the pandemic, Mom?" I'm clearly not watching TV, at least anything other than the news. I am likely on this computer too much, checking email and Facebook far too often. Writing this blog takes more than a few minutes each day. For some strange reason, officers of the quilt guild for which I am webmaster have used their free time to come up with more than several additions to the guild website. I have two non-trivially sized additions to make once I'm done or take a break from writing this post. I was working on a bag my local guild is doing as a sew-along, but I got bored with that and yesterday pieced a small quilt or large wall hanging. Creative undertakings help me ignore whatever news I am not hearing at the time.
While I do follow news of the pandemic on the television or computer, I probably would not need to. What I hear from the husband and older son would be sufficient to tell me things could be going better. I fear being sucked into the news coverage, becoming too obsessed with the who, what, when, etc. of the larger story, in which case my current doses of anti-depressants might not be enough. At the same time, though, I don't want to be the ostrich burying its head in the sand. There is a happy medium out there between too much and too little pandemic news. Some days I can find it; other days, I can't.
2 comments:
"possible the only person in the country who has never watched any of "Downton Abbey," series or movie, or the movie "Titanic."<--Nope, I'm right there with you.
I saw Titanic, once, and tried but couldn't get into Downton Abbey; only watched part of one episode.
I thought I could resist Outlander, too (my sister has been watching it), but familiar scenes from Scotland were too hard to resist. Now I'm midway through season 3, having started just a couple weeks ago...it's my wind-down before bed. News (esp. cable, though our cable co. just added more stations through April 19 so we can now see CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews...) stays off, so I don't hear the daily blather, but I do *read* the news (NYT as well as WaPo, plus Facebook).
If you like witches and history, the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness is fun (1st book is A Discovery of Witches). I could mail my copies to you.
Since VA is a bit behind NY and PA, if you want to work a different sewing project you could make face masks. They may or may not be requested by your local medical facilities. If not, my NY guild knows where to send them and I can give you an address there. Someone also suggested small quilts for hospice.... (note: I've gotten as far as rifling through my batiks for usable fabrics, and found 3 yd of elastic; each face mask needs 14" so it won't last long and I can't make too many. But there may come a time where we might need them in our house, or my kids' houses)
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