Amusements

For the past eight months, I have had time on my hands. 

We do keep busy delivering for our local Meals on Wheels chapter, delivering a week's worth of frozen entrées to our clients every Monday. We are, of course, masked, and we deliver the food, ring the bell, and back off at least six feet as we wait for our clients to come to the door to retrieve their food. We enjoy a short visit with each person on our route. If these safety protocols seem excessive to you, remember that these dear clients are often very much at risk with pre-existing conditions. We would feel terrible if we brought the Corona virus to their homes.

Because we are in our 70s, we also need to be careful for ourselves and the few friends and family with whom we interact (at a distance). It feels strange to always be assuring people, even in print, of how careful we are but one of the most noticeable features of this strange time is the differing levels of risk-aversion we encounter. Some of our contacts are pretty casual, willing to come to our house to eat food prepared in our kitchen and served on our china, but draw the line at hugging. Others are okay with visiting outdoors, as long as we keep the six foot distance. Still others will meet outdoors as long as we are all masked and distanced. One couple, both attorneys that we adore, actually came up with a four-page contract outlining what is acceptable behavior for visits, including a dire threat of ostracism if the guidelines are breached. And some dear friends have asked us not to visit them in person at all, depending on Zoom and the like for their social contacts.

We also do our own grocery shopping but we limit that to stores that have good safety protocols, insisting on masks, sanitizing carts, limiting the numbers in the store. 

But, a few hours doing Meals on Wheels and another hour grocery shopping does not begin to fill the days. I tried jigsaw puzzles and even completed a very challenging 1,000+ puzzle but after that one, I was toast. We are trying to limit television (except My Beloved's auto racing programs) to the hours after dinner, so we don't usually turn on the television during the daytime. I have taken to walking a mile or so in the early mornings just after dawn. We have leisurely mornings with the newspaper and coffee stretching past 10am. During the warm months, I spent nearly every afternoon with a good book on our street-facing deck where I could safely greet neighbors as they walk by and watch the birds coming to my birdbath and sunflowers.

And, still, there is plenty of time. Plenty, plenty, plenty.

One of my occasional pleasures is painting. I'm not good at it - I make no bones about that - but I do enjoy the colors, the decisions about what to try, and the variety of things on which one can make marks. I made a set of napkins and painted them with Black-eyed Susans. I decorated a bird house for cousin Jan, who livens her weathered back fence with multi-colored bird houses of all different shapes and sizes. I potato-printed some note cards to give as gifts. I have tried still life and landscape, both with disappointing results - I seem to be better at decorative than fine art.

So, when the days seem longer than usual, I get out my paints. My Beloved's younger daughter gave me some lovely papers that she was not using, so I sometimes use those, although I feel slightly guilty at using such nice materials for such sad failures. Time spent painting goes by faster - I wonder if the Theory of Relativity encompassed painting time?

So, around here, it's not unusual to find newspapers splotched with color. Maybe I should just frame them and call them art.

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