Winding Down Another Week in Another World

It has over six weeks since I was in my office at Juvenile Court, six weeks since I was last in a grocery store (well, any store), and almost six weeks since my oncologist put me on lockdown.

It is almost six weeks since Warren closed the Symphony office and moved the base of operations to our home.

And the verdict is?

I'm fine.

We're fine.

The second floor of our house is now home to the Symphony North Annex and one of three satellite offices of the Delaware County Juvenile Court Mediation Department. Warren puts in far longer hours than I do, both because I am only a part-time employee and because even though the Symphony, like every other Symphony in this country (and most in the world at this point), is locked down, there is still work, not the least of which is writing grants and trying to imagine what live music will look like going forward. Never one to waste a good crisis, Warren is making plans and alternative plans for the Symphony's future.

So what does life in a time of shelter-at-home pandemic look like for us?

Well, it's quieter, certainly. I mean that literally. The streets are quieter because car traffic in our town of approximately 40,000 is a sliver of what it was in the beginning of March. Our downtown, our main routes, and even US 23, which slices through just east of downtown and only three blocks from our house, have far fewer vehicles on them. As a result, the birds are now providing a soundtrack to daily life which, for a change, is the main sound, not just background sound.

But life is also figuratively quieter. I don't have to balance work, chores, social obligations, community commitments, whatever. My only for-certain calendar events are our weekly Court Zoom meeting and my oncology appointment with infusion every four weeks. A very occasional webinar might get noted on my calendar, but that is the exception, not the rule. A number of my friends have commented (in letters, in emails, in social media) how much slower life is and how much more satisfying the days often are because the layer of busyness we all live with is removed. (This enforced time of quiet, of less doing, is also providing me observations about my health that are both insightful and troublesome, but that is a topic for another day.)

So, besides working, what else does one do in these strange times? If you are Warren and me, you move by hand and hard work the perennials that you plopped down in the vegetable garden in the fall to winter over before putting them in a flowerbed. These were end-of-season markdowns at a local nursery.

Which season?

Fall 2014, but who's counting?

Warren dug the holes by hand because it is not possible to rent a rototiller from our hardware store right now. I helped lug the dug-up plants around, helped replant them, but all those holes, not to mention digging the flowers up? That was Warren.

Our vegetable garden space (above) has easily doubled. Those perennials—lilies, coneflowers, butterfly weed—had thrived, but were out of hand and took up about 2/3rds of the space. I am looking forward to seeing what we make of the expanded vegetable garden, but that time is still a few weeks away.

This is the new bed, now in the back of our yard.

We will put down a heavy layer of mulch to kill off the grass. This bed makes me smile every single time I look at it. It is my favorite garden for its raggedy spirit and for all the love that went into every one of those holes.

I walked out this morning to check on it and found everything in order. The coneflowers especially have settled in and are thriving.

And so are we.

Observations About March Money

Well, can I call them or what?

When I wrote about this household's February spending, back in mid-March, I predicted that March would be worse. In February, we spent $231 and change on food and household staples, and that was as the COVID-19 issues were just starting to swirl around us in Ohio.

Since my post on March 14, all things related to COVID-19 have only intensified here as our Governor and Director of Health, the who-would-have-thought-it? amazing duo of Mike DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton have taken steps to make sure Ohioans flatten the curve. Warren and I had already bought a lot of staples by mid-March; our last grocery trip that month was March 20, which Warren conducted alone because I was not allowed in stores (or anywhere else) per my oncologist. [Note: I am still not. And I do not expect that to change when I see Tim next Tuesday for infusion.]

March totals? $281.97 in groceries (food items), $23.83 in common household goods. Grand total? $305.80.  Year-to-date average? $238.47, or about $59 a month over my 2020 goal, set back in pre-COVID-19 times, of $180 a month.

Now that is a curve it will be hard to flatten. Oh, our spending will go down, but I'm not sure I can drag that monthly average back down to $180.00. If my math is right, we'd have to hold monthly spending at $160.00 for the rest of the year. Doable? Sure. Will we do it? Remains to be seen.

But it is what it is. We are eating out of the pantry and freezer, we have had only one grocery trip in April (and will likely have one more later in the month), and life goes on.

In a note that makes me smile, our eating out expenses in March were a little higher than you would expect for two people who don't eat out much in a state that is all but shut down. Our total was $31.25. That amount covered meeting a friend for tea in very early March, a quick, late evening meal, also in early March, following a music presentation by Warren in Marion (20 miles north), Warren buying a sandwich for takeout in downtown Delaware when the Symphony office was still open to show support for local restaurants, and a takeout lunch with another local restaurant at month's end to celebrate an important anniversary for us. (Why did we get takeout? It had to be Mexican to tie in with the anniversary.) Eating out this month will probably be...zero.

In the meantime, the weather is finally showing signs that spring is no more than a wild story.  We will be starting our garden soon and, assuming all goes well, we should be eating out of it by early June (at least the lettuces, maybe, I hope, please).

So keep on washing your hands and staying safe. I know we are.