KEEPING SPIRITS UP

Well, guess I'm overdue for a blog post, huh? Being confined at home, it takes a bit longer to accumulate enough worth talking about and the photos to go with it! Guess I'll start with the bad news and get that out of the way. Our little town finally has its first confirmed case of Covid-19. I guess we are lucky to have held out this long, huh? Oh, and we finally watched a couple of episodes of Tiger King, just to see what everybody was talking about. A couple was more than enough, since it just reminded us how many crazy-stupid people there actually are in the world. Which is why this plague has spread across the U.S. like a wildfire out of control, even though we had plenty of warning and could have been sooo much better prepared, if only we'd acted quickly and decisively on what we learned from the countries who were hit first.

I let myself wallow over it all for a couple of days, but, being a bit of a Pollyanna by nature, I couldn't stay down for long. Before I knew it, I was thinking about all the positive things that have come out of this, and the way people here jumped right in and started helping one another, just as they did a few years back when we had that tragic flood. And, even though I miss seeing my friends and family in person, it hasn't kept us from staying connected. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, right?

Apparently little Calvin is loving this whole pen pal thing I started. I finally got my first letter from him, accepting my invitation.

I immediately sat down and made this new card for him, inspired by the time he got a head start on his preschool teacher and dived straight into a big muddy puddle on the playground.

A couple of days later I got a video chat from him and daughter Lex. Calvin was super excited about the Peppa card, and wanted to assure me that he was going to send me another letter. He then turned to his mom and said "We should go do that. Right now!" She replied "We're talking to Mimi and Papa right now." But no, it could not wait.

My best friend Paula and I have spent most of our lives in separate cities, but ever since she forced me to learn to text, we've been talking to each other all day every day -- so much so that I often forget how long it's been since we've actually seen each other in person. We especially like talking at dinner time, about what we got from Blue Apron, or new ideas we've come up with, or what we could or couldn't get at the grocery store. She still can't get toilet paper, but the new Cooper's BBQ place that just went in near her house is offering a free TP roll with each food delivery. They are eating lots of BBQ!

As for the Muses, Hubby just added the Zoom program (which I had never even heard of pre-Covid) to both my phone and computer, and we are now able to pick right back up with our Tuesday morning coffee meet-ups, albeit virtually. The first one was a doozy. We had so much to catch up on!

As for that wallowing slump, it reminded me that I'm a person who needs purpose and routine in my days. So, I came up with a loose sort of schedule, just to insure that every day doesn't turn into a jammy day! And, one thing I made certain was on it, was a couple of hours of creative time each afternoon. It can be reading, writing, painting, working in my journal, making cards for Calvin, or anything else I can come up with. But, I must do something. Yesterday, it was an acrylic painting on a gelli print which I had inserted into my mindfulness agenda -- inspired by one of the many hummingbird carvings my dear mother-in-law Theda suddenly got the urge to make in her 60s and 70s, after a lifetime of being a painter.

Just goes to show, it's never too late to try something new!