WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND

There’s a character in W.O.Mitchell’s book Who Has Seen the Wind who lives out on the prairie outside of town in a piano box.  I can’t recall anything else about him except that he has been driven mad by the wind.  On days like today I think of him and feel a sense of connection.

I had plans.  This is a busy time of the year for a gardener.  There are trees to trim, weeds to discourage, and as always, there are dandelions to decapitate.  But, here I am, hiding out in the house because a few hours of working out there in yet another day of quasi hurricane winds and I’ll be looking for my own piano box.

I tried.  This morning, after more than an hour long pep talk, I wrote down an itemized list of what I wanted to get done, pulled up my big girl britches, and forced open my south-facing door so I could leave the house.  It took all my physical strength to get the door open and all my emotional fortitude  not to go right back in.

When the wind blows from the south in this yard the only ‘safe’ place is behind the house, so after one lingering glance over to the garden that needs weeding Plan B was invented and I made for the backyard.  I give myself extra credit that I didn’t go back inside to add this new job direction to my list just to give it more legitimacy.

 

I really didn’t have any particular job in mind until I got there.  I just wanted out of the wind, but lo and behold, there was a garden hose to roll up and put away.  People who know me are now laughing out loud.  As a general rule, being neat and tidy with garden hose is not my forte.

 

Also, tucked in behind the house is my small greenhouse, recently emptied of all its greenery.  That’s right: I’ve spent the past week carefully tucking hundreds of bedding plants into their forever homes just to have them threatened with frost for two nights in a row and now this crazy wind.  If I listen carefully I can probably hear their tiny cries for mercy.  The job at the very top of my To Do list was to do a walk around and see how all these babies were doing.  I can’t bring myself to do it.  I put them in the ground and tucked their roots in tight.  I just have to have faith they can hold on to the earth on their own.

But, at least there is a greenhouse to tidy up!  Trays to stack, unused pots to store away, shelves to clear off, floor to sweep; it took me all of 22 minutes.  It would have been less but I was texting with a friend at the same time and had to keep stopping to text her back – thank goodness for small blessings.

 But the work was done so I went back to the house to record these two jobs and then officially stroke them off my list.

It’s not even 11:00 yet, the wind is steady at 36 and gusting to 53; there’s got to be something I could do inside!

Well, besides housework that is.  I’m sick of that.

So, here I sit at my computer, telling you stories.

The dog is following me around looking pathetic because he wants to go out in that wind for a walk.  I’ve explained to him about the piano box thing but he seems unperturbed. 

MY COVID CLUSTER

It’s been months now, apparently.  Isn’t it funny how time slips away?

The year started out pretty much the same as always. But then there were some news stories about a place in China we had never heard of before having a problem with a new disease. ‘No biggie’ we said, ‘that’s far away’, and life went on.  I ordered my garden seeds, researched where we might go for a winter get-a-way, and booked the carpenters and painter to come re-do my kitchen.

Maybe that’s why this COVID thing managed to sneak up on me; I was busy with my kitchen.  We weren’t totally unaware, one of the carpenters was about to go on a cruise and we wondered if that was a good idea, but since we had decided to stay at home this winter travelling seemed like it was someone else’s problem.

Then came the day that I got a phone call from a very agitated daughter ... Did I know they were closing the schools?  Indefinitely?  Like, OMG, what am I going to do!

No.  I did not know that.  What else had been going on while I was ‘hiding’ my husband’s tea in a new cupboard space, and other such nefarious schemes to liven up our marriage? 

It’s all been downhill since then.  We had Optometrist appointments set for two days after the shut down, but of course they were cancelled.  The longer I sit and play on my iPad during this shutdown the more I realize my glasses aren’t up to snuff anymore. 

Also, that same day my husband had finally agreed to an appointment to see about hearing aids (“YOUR TEA IS IN THE NEXT CUPBOARD TO THE RIGHT, DEAR!”)  I’m left worrying that his acceptance that he might need hearing aids was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence and the opportunity has been snatched away by ‘The Covid’.

But, what it might have confiscated in vision and hearing it has been generous in replacing with other things.  Now that the spring weather is here I find myself needing to shimmy and shake my extra COVID-19 pounds into last summer’s shorts.  It can still be done but it’s not comfortable, and I assume it’s not pretty either.  I was blissfully unaware of the extra roll at my waist - I can’t see it because of the COVID-19 hair in my eyes.  A person should just grin and bear it but my teeth are feeling a bit skuzzy too.  There was supposed to be dental hygienist appointment in there somewhere, as well.

We are moving on to the next stage of pandemic living now.  Saskatchewan was the first province to crack open the door and sniff the wind, so to speak.  We are a changed people though:  back in 2019 a Premiere’s political address wouldn’t have had us all glued to our TV screens, but by the end of April we were dying for what he would say.  He milked it for everything it was worth, too.  First he announced he would be making an announcement, and then made us all ‘tune back in tomorrow’.  He knew he had us hanging on his every word.

We are only taking baby steps, and even that didn’t start right away but it has begun.  Golfers can golf.  Fishermen can go fishing.  We don’t have to do our drug deals on the front steps of the pharmacy anymore.

And, if you want a happy, animated conversation with someone, just ask a woman when she managed to book her hair appointment for.  She will be able to tell you the day, date, and time without looking it up.  For instance, mine is June 4^th at 3:00. 

I can’t wait. 

THE PAIN AND THE GAIN

I’m not sure in these days of COVID-19, when there are millions of people stuck inside their city homes trying to keep busy and sane, whether I should even talk about what I’m doing these days.

I am the first to admit that living where I live is a privilege; I’ve always felt that way.  The green space, the privacy, the solitude of rural living is unequalled unless, possibly, you own your own private tropical island.  Truthfully though in all but temperature, it is the same thing.  The COVID social distancing restrictions are pretty easy to satisfy when you live a mile from your closest neighbour.  I have had to modify how many times I run into town, trying to keep it to once a week, and the curbside pick up type shopping is less than satisfying but these things are the only way I am impacted at all.  I don’t have a job I am required to go to, and neither am I out of a paycheck because my business is closed.  I am blessed and I know it.

Even better, now that spring has come, I am busy.

I was always destined to garden; it’s in my very DNA.  There have always been flowers to beautify the yard and vegetables to feed the family.  Once the ground warms up my ‘to do’ list is never done.  It makes for satisfying work, fresh air and exercise, and peaceful sleep – another luxury in these uncertain times.  The sore muscles are collateral damage.

Many news stories lately have been about governments coming up with plans to safely ‘open up’ their economies without re-igniting the virus’ spread.  There are so many things to consider: people need their jobs to pay their bills and feed their families but if this virus hasn’t been sufficiently suppressed we will all end up back in quarantine and have to start over again.  Not only does no one want a second round of this fight, but the experts predict that it will be much harder the second time around.  Having experienced what ‘staying at home’ means people will not be so compliant for a second go – it’s not all about the paycheck, it’s about the sanity.

I have tried to imagine what life would be like in the city with only a small yard to contain the energy of kids who are denied friends to play with and have established that home schooling is not a fun experience – a fact that their parents absolutely agree with.  Of course there is an even worse scenario – apartment living, trying to survive without even the relief valve of a few square feet of grass.

They say that domestic violence rates are going up – one more very distressing implication of life with COVID.

 

In my protected, privileged cocoon of space and financial security I cannot imagine the emotional stress or financial anxiety so many people are going through.

Meanwhile I work in my garden.  For years I’ve been downsizing what I plant but this year the size of my garden will grow.  In the pre-COVID world there never were any worries about sourcing our food but we have all learned that the systems we thought were infallible have shown serious weaknesses.  It’s time to put to use all the information handed down to me from older and wiser gardeners.  Maybe this will mean that I do extra work for nothing and we will have excess to give away, or maybe we will need it all, who knows?  The thing about gardening is that the seeds have to go into the ground now if they are going to do any good.  The pain of the growing season will give us the gain of the harvest.  We have to enter this with faith that the seeds will grow and we will have a plentiful harvest at summer’s end.

It strikes me that this same faith and perseverance is what we need to triumph over COVID-19.  If we don’t stick with the restrictions of social distancing, wearing masks and gloves where necessary, and not gathering in large groups this spring, we can expect a very nasty harvest of more sickness and death and a second round of isolation come fall.

 

For everyone’s sake, let’s do this right the first time.

PLAYING CHICKEN

A while back in our COVID Compliant self-incarceration period – and I’m not sure how long ago because all the days are the same – there was a video circulating on Facebook .  It showed at least a hundred chickens all running for their lives and in every direction.  The caption read “This is us when they finally let us back out”.

At the time the idea of stampeding through the door and going all the places we hadn’t been able to go for ages seemed like a reasonable reaction to freedom.  Of course we’d all dive for that door.

Although I can’t put a date on it I do know that it is far enough back that yes, we were in lockdown, but it was early days.  We were just getting our heads around the word pandemic.  Terms like ‘sheltering in place’ and ‘stay at home orders’ surfaced in news stories from all over the world.  Anyone on holiday out of the country was advised to head for home and then self quarantine for two weeks when they got there.  In the beginning these orders and restrictions – although we complied – seemed more like we were humoring the authorities.  In theory we understood what an epidemic was, but in practice because it had never happened to us before, it didn’t feel 100% real.

But the news stories grew.  They grew bigger.  They grew scarier.  They changed from ‘far away’ to ‘in our own back yard’.

All of a sudden, with every country on the planet in the same jeopardy at the same time there weren’t enough resources to fight this thing.  We learned what having COVID-19 does to a human body.  We learned that patients needed something called ventilators and there weren’t enough of them anywhere to meet the demand.  We learned the acronym PPE, and learned that this, as well, was going to be needed in the millions to keep our healthcare workers from contracting and dying from this disease they were fighting.  We learned that our government was so serious about us staying home that they were dishing out money to keep us there.  We learned death counts in Italy were staggering.  We were told that this maelstrom was on its way to us.  It was just a matter of time; a little bit of time.

There has been a reset in our understanding of how our world works.  Obviously doctors and nurses are important at a time such as this, but by themselves they would have been powerless.  It turns out that ‘frontline workers’ and ‘essential workers’ carry the whole country on their shoulders with their cleaning, sanitizing, growing and delivering food, processing meat, running transit, and working in grocery stores, quite often do this vital work for as close to minimum wage as we can keep them.  That is something that needs to be fixed.

But over this time of confinement and contemplation we have had a bit of a personal reset, as well.

I have another chicken story to tell you. 

Our daughter and her family make their home on an acreage.  There are plans someday to have larger animals but at the moment she just keeps chickens for their farm fresh eggs.  This spring her egg laying hens were showing their age so she decided to increase her flock by buying a bunch of year old layers from a large egg farm that was rotating to younger, more productive birds themselves.

Now, one would think that these new birds of hers – recently sprung from their production quota, sterile environment, factory farm existence - would be like the chickens in the video I mentioned earlier, but that is not what is happening.

They are wary of everything.  They are not sure about the soft straw to walk or sleep on.  They are suspicious of all this room to walk around in.  And that little door that leads to the bright light and moving air - well, that can’t be trusted at all!  Gathering eggs is an exercise in not tripping over the birds that flock around her feet.

Who would have thought back when we began this isolation thing that we wouldn’t go roaring back outside at the first chance?  But as of this week the door has been cracked open a bit and no one is rushing for the exit.  Yes, we all need haircuts and long to visit our friends in person, but we are not so sure that it’s safe yet.  We’ve watched the interviews with survivors, we’ve been shocked by the numbers of dead, we’ve seen the refrigerator trucks parked outside hospitals.  We want no part of that.

This pun is so bad and so good at the same time ... but I think we are just a bunch of chickens.  Smart chickens.

Jesse says that a few of them are starting to poke their heads out and take a look around.  That sounds about right.

MINUTE TO MINUTE

5:52 am -  My eyes open and I spend some time trying to guess what time it is.  With the sun getting up just a little earlier every day this is a bit of a challenge.  Challenge is good; might be the only one that happens all day.  I also take a minute to ponder why my jaw is sore.  Well, actually, I know it’s sore because I clench my teeth in my sleep.  The puzzle is why?  Was it the dream I was having about shopping for curtains, the fact that it isn’t warm or dry enough to garden yet, or that I made the mistake of watching Donald Trump on the news before I went to bed?

Oh well, whatever it was, coffee will fix it.  Coffee fixes nearly everything first thing in the morning.

7:02 am -  Breakfast is eaten,I have a second mug of brain juice on the go, and Facebook presents me with my memories of this day for as far back as I’ve been a member of their club.  For this past month of Covid-19 isolation almost all of my memories have been of somewhere else.  Apparently this is when we travel.  Two trips to Australia, a stay in China, Mexican beaches, grandkids in North Bay and Wainwright, family in Calgary and a really fun time in Sedona, Arizona.  Sigh.  

8:16 am -  I wrestle with the decision of whether to stay in my pyjamas or change into my sweatpants and t-shirt ensemble.  The daytime clothes win out as I will likely take the dog for a walk in the afternoon.  The chances of anyone seeing me are pretty low during this time of low traffic, but who wants to be known as ‘that crazy lady who wears pjs to walk her dog’?

10:12 am -  Should I pencil in a phone call so that I ‘stay connected’ or vacuum dog hair?  Decisions, decisions.

11:11 am -  Menu planning!  My favourite!  But it does occupy a fair bit of time, and time is something I have a lot of these days.  Maybe I should get all fancy and try out new recipes?  I do a brief consult with my Creativity and Ambition Department ...  Nope.  Apparently I haven’t reached that level of crazy yet.  Got to save something for next week.

1:06 pm -  Lunch is over.  We’ve caught up on the local news.  No new cases of ‘the Covid’ in the province; this presents the double edged sword of “Yay! We’re doing great!” and “It’s imperative that we continue to isolate.”  Good news and bad news in the same breath.

Now, what to do with the rest of the day?  The dog has me under intense surveillance.  Does he actually think I would go for a walk without him?  He’s the only reason I go for walks!  I have also promised to make someone a batch of raisin oatmeal cookies ... pretty heavy schedule for a Wednesday!

3:47 pm -  A two mile walk takes 38 minutes when I put some effort into it.  These days it takes more like 51 minutes.  And then we spent some togetherness time on the deck trying to get ahead on this shedding thing the dog is into these days.  He is probably 2 pounds lighter, all the little birds for miles around have ample soft, fluffy material for nest building, and he still leaves a trail of husky fluff everywhere he goes.  Vacuum session #2 is scheduled in while the potatoes are boiling for supper – proof I haven’t lost my ability for multi-tasking, thank goodness.  It may come in handy again some day.

6:56 pm -  The evening meal is behind us once more.  There was even dessert.  That’s getting to be standard these days.  Lord help us when they finally open the gates and let us all out again.  Also, the chips and popcorn are not helping.  I finish the dishes and almost instantly find myself rummaging through the snack cupboard.  There is a serious possibility that they will have to widen the gate or we will never make it out of this pasture we’re in.

8:22 pm -  A good evening is spent texting with a friend and swapping the funniest memes we’ve seen all day.  I’m also a puzzle addict so I regularly run my iPad battery down doing puzzles.  And then there’s always my self-destructive penchant for trying to keep up with world affairs.  Typically I do all three at once. 

On Fridays I allow myself a glass of wine to celebrate having made it through another week.

9:43 pm -  The day is officially over, although it’s a tricky thing to convince my brain of this.  In an effort to steer it toward dreamland I go over what I did today, or what I plan for tomorrow; it’s pretty hard to tell the difference these days. 

Maybe I’ll end up back in that dream about shopping for curtains.  I wonder: do I really need curtains?  Or is it that I just want to go shopping ....

AS TIME GOES BY

Well, here we are, day 384 of house arrest.

No, wait a minute, that can’t be right.

No, no, no, make that HOUR 384 of house arrest!  You’ll have to forgive me.  I’ve never been any good at that ‘feels like’ conversion math they use for wind chill.

Anyway, it’s been a long time.

Long enough, in fact for me to have gotten all philosophical about this situation we find ourselves in: this being confined with another human being in a comfortable home with no worries of running out of food or toilet paper.  One would think that being as I had personally chosen this particular human years ago and that the home is my own, things should be going along just hunky-dorry.  If success is measured in the fact that we are both still alive and talking to each other, then yes, this is the epitome of hunky-dorry.

The success of our mutually happy co-habitation is that he does a lot of his habitation out in his shop or up on the pasture cutting wood for future shop heating use.  He is part artist, part inventor, and part mechanic and I am his cheering section.  As long as he’s out in his shop I will cheer on any job he’s doing.  Sometimes the dog goes with him.  This is even better.

Meanwhile, I wander the house remembering the plans I had last week when it was still spring.  I had dragged flower bulbs out of cold storage and rejoiced at the sight of sprouts – proof that the future would hold flowers.  I even sorted things out and prepared a more stable growing environment for these treasures just to have Mother Nature throw another snowball at us, sadistic dame that she is.  I think it’s because I dared to hang laundry out on the line last week; I should have known better.  She always has to have the last word.

This morning, having finished vacuuming the brick wall in my kitchen and letting the dog in and out six more times, I decided that my next big project would be a manicure. 

Usually doing my nails involves a pair of clippers.  Because, normally, I’m not into spending a lot of time on such a mundane task.   COVID-19 has changed all that, though.  Expeditious Jocelyn is so last March.  Now I’m all about savouring the moment.  Why take three minutes to do something that you can stretch out to a full seventeen?  I filed my nails.  They are all nicely rounded and uniform.  It’s really a pity I have nowhere to go and show them off, but that wasn’t the point.  The point was to occupy myself, to engage in self care, to blend artistry and exercise.

Counting the three minutes it took to find an emery board, I used up one third of an hour.  So you know -  win/win.

By that time the dog was long overdue to be let back inside so I picked up where I had left off, and went on with my life.  I really am getting to the point where I need a haircut.  That’s a little scary.

So now I have reached the quandary of what to do with this, hours 384 to 408, of self imprisonment.  Vacuuming?  Thank goodness the dog is spring shedding so that’s a twice daily job.  Cleaning out the fridge?  Well, it’s not the May long weekend yet, but I suppose I could give it a whirl.  Likewise washing the windows.   I was asked if I was going to sew up some cloth face masks – mildly interested in this job I went to check out my sewing supplies ... the fabric was no problem but apparently a person should be hoarding elastic too.

Let’s see ... finish that novel?  Go out and stare at the ground willing my tulips to come up?  Apply for my pension before they run out of money?

Try not to think about when 384 days doesn’t need any conversion math.

 

KEEPING BUSY

For all those people who have put off big jobs for ages, telling yourselves that “if you ever have time, you will get right to it”: how’s that working out for you?

Have you discovered it wasn’t the lack of time that was holding you back?  But, more like the lack of ambition?

And, for those of you that have buckled under the pressure to do something with your COVID crisis time, and now find yourselves knee deep in twenty odd years of keepsakes and your kids’ entire 12 years of scholastic artwork, are you truly glad to be where you are?

Have you binge watched everything you can think of?  Twice?

Are there any books in your possession worth reading again?

Do you need a hair cut?  How hard could that be ... really? 

Do you know how to sew?  Do you have a sewing machine?  Could you find it under the Christmas decoration boxes?  If you have said ‘yes’ to any of these questions, they need face masks out there on the front lines. 

Do you find yourself scrolling through Facebook over and over again, looking for conversation, even if it’s only trading memes?

Do you even know what day it is?

Personally, at this house, today is the day after I made the carrot cake with cream cheese icing and three days after I made the lace cookies.  Last week it was three dozen buns and a few days before that it was a batch of pies and a couple dozen butter tarts.  Today, out of self preservation, I have a roast beef in the oven so there’s no room to cook anything else.  I started out treating this period of isolation like a gift of ‘every day is casual day!’ and revelled in the slouchy comfort of sweat pants.  If I don’t manage to squelch this urge to bake soon sweat pants are going to be my only option.

We are trying to keep occupied though. 

We heat the shop during the winter with a wood burning stove so the resident lumberjack has been going up to the pasture to fell and pile trees for future use.  He tells me that his supply is three years ahead of his demand so far, but as long as he’s not in the house driving me crazy, I’m fine with that.  Besides, in this crazy world, who knows if we won’t need to be heating the house with wood down the road? 

Also, with all that fresh air and exercise, he comes home with a big appetite; all the better to use up all this calorie laden baking I’ve been inspired to do.  It’s a win/win situation.

This feeling of limbo is a strange one, isn’t it?  We prairie people are used to weathering storms.  We are a tough and resilient breed.  But our storms, though they can be very powerful, are also fairly quick.  We prepare, we hunker down, we ride it out, and then the sun comes back out.  This time around we are being told the sun is going to be a long time in the coming.

There’s no adrenalin rush from the wind of a tornado, there’s no measurable dimension of how deep the snow banks are, there’s no radar map to see where we could escape the storm if we wanted to get away.  There is just a plea to stay at home to stop the spread of an invisible and deadly enemy.

It leaves us feeling like we should be doing ‘something’, but ‘nothing’ is what we are required to do.

And so I find myself trying to curb my fetish to bake ... or to cut my own hair.

Heaven knows I’m going to have a hard enough integrating back into society at 300 pounds.  I don’t need a bad hair cut too.