I guess. Until it’s not. I’ve started doing my walks now without a stop at a coffee place, although Mark stopped in at one today (Sunday). I guess that will stop if/when Wisconsin follows Illinois and Ohio, and makes all bars and restaurants carry out only. Or I mean he could stop and pick up a coffee, but not sit.
I’m feeling a little more scared today, since we are both in the high risk over-sixty group. You know the ones who can buy senior tickets for the movies.
And we also both woke up feeling a little sick – for me, I’m 99% sure it’s my standard sinus infection. Sore throat, sore lymph nodes in my neck, stuffy head, left ear plugged up. You can’t even catch it from me. I’ve had the symptoms all week. What set me off was reading this chilling article in the NYT that’s on the front page of the print paper today but I read it on my phone while I shoulda been all snugged up warm in bed this morning.
And Mark said he felt “pre-flu-ish”. Yikes.
John & Al’s dad Jeff is here, came down from the UP, where there’re no cases, and where they’ve been spending time with his wife’s dad (who’s even older than us, obvs.) since the beginning of March. Jeff’s staying at Al & Emma’s and they were going to come over for brunch but we told them not to, especially since Jeff’s going back to the UP and Cheri’s old dad, I think tomorrow. So, we had a nice littler brunch with John and Megan, who had come from Chicago to see Jeff. Scrambled eggs with cheese, with optional black beans and a kind of quick salsa of avocado, cherry tomatoes, lime juice, and cilantro, for toppings – and toast and bagels. I wiped everything off with bleach and they went back.
Both the young women in the NYT article felt ill and took naps and woke up with high fevers. I took advantage of my enforced captivity, after my walk, to lie on the couch and read one of the books I have to read for the Wisconsin Library Association Literary Awards, and tried to doze a bit too – but was afraid I’d wake up sick. Took my temperature when I got up, though, and it was a cool 97.2°. Whew.
We’ll have Pi Day pie again, tonight – yesterday we ate pie and ice cream while watching a grim movie about “civilizing” the outback in Australia 150 or so years ago, although The True History of the Kelly Gang, that we saw at TIFF in September was worse. At the beginning of the one we watched last night, The Proposition, I experienced this weird deja vue, because the Ray Winstone character, Captain Stanley, looked so much like Russell Crow in the newer movie.
Then we watched the remade High Fidelity with Zoe Kravitz – Episode 7 and Episode 8, that’s gotten good reviews, I think because it focuses on the love life of one of Zoe’s record shop employees, Simon. I think his recounting of his top five, desert island, heartbreaks has more of the original dry cynicism of John Cusack than Zoe’s version of Rob does, so maybe that’s why the critics liked it.
Tonight I think we’ll do Outlander and maybe West World.
Pi Day pie raw. It’s grocery store strawberries that Mark bought, that we forgot to eat for a few days, so perfect for pie, and last year’s frozen rhubarb that should get eaten before the new comes in.
Pi Day pie cooked – got pretty gooey
Tomorrow I think I will make this Smitten Kitchen sweet potato salad and some other night this week I’ll for sure make this black rice salad. I swear I remember posting it on Insta, but can’t find it now.
Monday morning postscript:
Getting set up to work at home – gotsta mess around with a blog post, 1st
I think my self-imposed all clear day is my brother’s birthday, March 27. Or maybe a bit earlier in the week, March 24. The last time I went out and did stuff in public like regular was a lunch on Tuesday the 10th, with one of the iSchool faculty candidates. But on Friday the 13th, Mark and I went out for coffee and sat for a bit at Colectivo. So who knows what my last contact with a potential carrier of the virus really is. This morning I worried about bringing the papers in in case the paper delivery person’s hands might have left virus. I stashed the plastic bag one of them came in in the bag ‘o plastic bags in the pantry closet then wiped off the door knob with bleach and washed my hands, and bleach-wiped the counter under the papers.
I suppose know it will pay for us all to become a bit OCD, at least about wiping counters and hand-washing.