The View from the Hermitage, Day 243

How many days ago did I mention the number of new covid-19 cases in the country hitting 150,000? It happened yesterday, with 153,400. Should I just go out on a limb here and say that next week we'll see 200,000 in one day? Why not? Next week we'll see 200,000 new cases in one day at least once. 

Uncle Joe has been declared the winner in Georgia subject to the planned recount, while The Orange Foolius is the winner in North Carolina. The projected margin in the Electoral College then? Uncle Joe, 306; The Orange Foolius, 232. That's certainly not a landslide or a mandate, but it is certainly a victory. Can we just get on with a transition now? That's probably wishful thinking. There are all sorts of rumors, stories, innuendo going around about what The Foolius will do when. Some say that he will never concede but will instead say that the voting was unfair but he will step aside and leave the way clear to run again in four years. Some say that he is again raising the question of whether he can pardon himself. How sad, but he can only pardon himself or be pardoned for federal indiscretions, and the Manhattan DA will be charging him at the state level. He may be in jail when the 2024 election looms, but I doubt it. He'll manage to string the pre-trial process out as long as possible. 

John Berman, co-host of New Day on CNN, every morning notes how many days it has been since The Foolius's voice has been heard in public. The silence concerns him. Given the visceral reaction of The Professor to the sounds made by The Orange Foolius, I'm just as happy to have him stay on mute. I will get concerned if he stops tweeting, bigly concerned. We have taken to watching the BBC news on PBS every night and PBS NewsHour some nights. They offer more insightful and in-depth analysis and fewer hyped headlines. The Professor watches CNN as he does his morning stretching, though I often can persuade him to switch to a music channel instead. I don't want his blood pressure getting too high.

I have been trying so far unsuccessfully to find some form of handwork that does not aggravate the DeQuervain's syndrome in my right wrist. I had to put away the knitting I'd been doing each evening. I'd be going to bed with a painful wrist that would still be painful in the morning despite spending the night in a brace to keep it in a neutral position. It seemed okay with needle felting until I started trying to finish a Christmas present I've been working on for a couple of weeks. Putting in a couple of hours a day is now setting off the pain. I know I could do less, but if I do, it won't be done in time to be mailed and arrive for Christmas. And since I can't leave anything related to it out in the open thanks to the wool-loving resident feline aka The Family Cat, it's not worth it to get everything out and then just do it for a little while before packing everything back up. That pretty much leaves using my sewing and felting machines or warping my loom and seeing how weaving affects a wrist. I probably should break down and email my trusty hand doctor and ask whether I could get cortisone for it a time or two before considering surgery or, given how often it's happening is surgery my only option. 

The Professor only has three more lectures to tape. There are four more class sessions before the Thanksgiving holiday, but one of those sessions will be a midterm. Once the little darlings go home for Thanksgiving, they don't come back until February 1. They will all supposedly be tested for covid-19 before they go home. They will probably have to be tested before they come back, but that has yet to be announced. 

We are finally have fall-like weather even if it's just been a day or two in a row. Winter is coming even if it's more than a month away. We started the pandemic and I started this blogging last winter. How can another winter be coming? It seems too soon to approach being able to say it's been a year. I think about how I like to spend the autumn to winter transformation cocooning and reconnecting with the small family I have. The authoritative "they" are counseling against that this year. What cocooning and reconnecting I do will be masked, socially distant, and without the hugs I have so missed these past 243-plus days. I hope The Professor and Son #1 don't mind being hugged because they may be standing in for a lot of other people on the hug front.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 190

The local university continues to hold its own in the covid-19 battle. There were 29 new cases in the athletics department, but the number of cases from the first-year dorms affected is much lower ... so far. What I wonder is what is the number of off-campus cases? Those kids are very likely coming onto campus and interacting with the resident students there, spreading the virus even further. I do not envy the decisions the powers that be have to make these days. 

HWSNBN says he will announce his nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court Friday or Saturday of this week. Two Republican senators have said that they think the winner of the November election should be the one to make the nomination. Without two more Republicans willing to buck the President and the party, HWSNBN will put a third justice on the court, meaning (among other things) that women may lose the right to make the choice when it comes to their own bodies. Some pundits have put forward that if the Senate goes Democratic in November, there should be a move to put two more justices on the court. The Constitution does not specify a size for the court, only that there be a court with member nominated by the president and approved by the Senate.

I did get things in place yesterday so that we could move back into the master bedroom last night. The husband says he slept like a log. Unfortunately, I did not. I'm hoping it was the first-night-in-a-new-bed syndrome and that tonight my body feels at home and lets me sleep more soundly. In terms of unpacking, I am now wrestling with the fact that I wanted the main floor less crowded with furniture, which means that I must find new places for the things that were sitting in places that are no longer there. I don't want to just stick them in the basement; I'd like for them to look as if they belong wherever they end up being put.

I've also been sorting through a large box of knitting and crocheting patterns. There are duplicates of some and others I can't believe I ever thought I would make. Then there are the oddities such as the Chicken Sweater. It looks more like a sweater vest than a sweater, but I guess wings aren't the best foundation for sleeves. I do know someone with chickens and am sorely tempted to try to make one for her. Fortunately or not, I have too many other things to think about doing right now.

The first day of fall is tomorrow, and the weather is welcoming it with lower temperatures and crisper air. The leaves on the trees are still green, but plenty of leaves have fallen to the ground. The husband and I have been taking the family dog for a pre-dinner walk, and today I actually was thinking that I should have worn a light jacket. And this morning I wore long pants and sleeves for my morning walk. I started with a sweatshirt over a long-sleeved t-shirt but took the sweatshirt off about halfway through the seven miles I did. Older son was running and he shed his long pants for the shorts he had on underneath. I may do that tomorrow morning, but since I'm walking and not running I can see not warming up enough to want shorts. 

Spring started this year on March 19, meaning that I've now spent two full seasons--spring and summer--hermitting. So many ways to mark the passing of time.

 

 

 

 

To Every Place There Is a Season

Or, as I've been thinking lately, to every season there is a place. It is fall in the northern hemisphere now, and I can honestly think of no place I'd rather be than at home in Virginia. The air is so crisp in the morning you can almost hear it snap in time with the crunching of the leaves under your feet. What leaves are still left on the trees blaze with color, mocking the monotonous green they bore all summer. I was in Florida for almost two weeks of October (possibly the subject of another post here, when I'm ready to write it), and I worried that I might miss the best part of fall. I did not, and am reveling in it now. I would offer photographic evidence if it weren't for the large bandage on my right hand, from which only my fingertips emerge for typing. Another possible blog post, but not today's.

Fall will segue into winter before I know it, and I shall dream of being in northern Iceland, looking out on a sea of white. There was something so magical about northern Iceland in the winter last year that I would not have been surprised had an elf or troll made an appearance however brief. The cold solitude inspired a feeling of strength, of survival, of possibilities. To be complacent would be to freeze and die. The shortness of daylight is more than offset by the night's auroral possibilities, a ceiling of color over the white floor.

In a world of wealth, spring would call me to Asia, to the streets of Hue or the temples of Angkor. I would doff the cold of the north and don the heated blanket of the south. I would trade the movement required to keep warm for the stillness required to endure the heat. I would savor the smells and sounds of the market even if not enamored of the excessive attention given to a Western visitor. I would try to draw the rooftops of the city as the clouds rolled above them before a rain and find music in the cacophony of car horns.

What does it say that my summer place sits at almost the same latitude as my winter one? I would love to spend a summer in Norway, making the most of some of the best Mother Nature has to offer without the hot flashes she offers places such as Virginia. My energy would stretch with the daylight, and I could forego my usual inclination to want to go to sleep the day before I must awaken. I would love to hike through some of the mountains while leaving the hang-gliding off them to younger son. I would love to dabble my toes in the cold of a mountain stream or wash my face in a waterfall.

Awakening from daydreams now and returning to the mundanities of the day. At least it is fall and I am where my soul needs to be in that season. Yes, life is good.