Romance in the time of Covid

 Everything is harder in The Time of Covid.  Small errands take much longer, finding needed products takes longer and typically costs more.  And i our KC who is 16 has his first romance.  A is a lovely young woman and KC is a very caring and respectful young man.  He has been enarmored of her for over a year. She came to our church last fall and they bonded quickly over shared interests in dance and theater.  But they were just friends until the past couple of months.

And Covid makes this so complicated.  A does not live in our city.  So her "bubble" is not really the same as ours. She is schooling remotely, but like my wife and I , her parents both work outside the home.  (Mom is a university professor)

We had to have a weekend where they did not get together because A's mom travelled down south by plane and was down there for a few days to help a friend in crisis.  K and I were just not comfortable with A then coming over to our house for the day.  It was understood by her  parents but it was a hard conversation to have with my teen.  It isn't that he was unkind about it.  He just looked so crestfallen and it literally made me cry inside.

Her trip  quarantine is now over and KC will see A at youth group tonight.  He asked if we thought it would be okay for him to hold her hand when they walked to their cars after youth group.  We said yes, just to please use the hand wipes in the car afterwards.  At some level this all just feels so surreal.  I am so proud that he was careful and mindful of the fact that we need to still take precautions, but my heart hurts for the two of them.  First loves are supposed to be that time of giddy-anything is possible-the world is full of wonder times.   It's not that for them, but it is still special and magical and I am so grateful that it is that.

Camping!

 Last weekend we went camping with friends.  Good friends and good coffee make for a grand weekend.  And I was lucky enough to have both.  I am a tent camper--which appears to be a declining form of camping as I saw RV's everywhere but very few tents (except those doing duty as overflow for the RV folks)  I find this interesting as to me, an RV feels like I am a hermit crab, carrying my house along with me.  I enjoy the freedom of choosing minimal essentials and making it work for the time we are there.  I usually forget something--the only thing that would ever cause panic would be the coffee pot!  The pot above has camped with me for more years than I dare to count.  It was falling apart til I had to lend it to my friend this weekend and he fixed it before returning it to me.  Clever guy can fix anything. But, I was able to fix their caffeine deprivation because I had an old fashioned perk pot and they had a Keurig and the electricity at the campground went out!  Old school to the rescue!

Between our two families we had 10 kids, ranging from 3 to 17  It was so much fun.  Evening campfires, games at the picnic tables, several communal meals.  Lissa got to night swim, which is always a big deal at 13.  I remember how special that was at that age.  There were smores, laughter and a birthday celebration for our friend's son who turned 14.

This will be our only campout this Summer of Covid.  But it was a most excellent one, with warm and wonderful memories that I will grasp as tightly as I do that coffee on a chilly camping morning!

A shiny new door!

 This weekend we tackled installing a real storm door on our front porch.  I wish I had been smart enough (or not embarassed) to take a picture of the old screen door that was there for literally years.  It was slightly too big for the opening and did not close all the way.  The screening had been busted out on the bottom level by a youngling trying a karate kick and the upper screening was in no great shakes as well.  I wanted a true door that would help block some of the wintry elements so that when you reach the porch in December through whenever winter leaves you have a bit of protection.  

It took most of Saturday but we got the door installed and it is lovely.  There is a screen but the solid bottom will hopefully give stability and prevent cats from trying to climb the screen.  This picture does not show it but above the door is a bit 6 ft long and 36 inch wide opening that we made a frame and screening for as well.  Oh, and the door has an after market door handle with a key lock.  This is so that we can secure the porch if we are in another part of the house and want to give the pets access to the extra room.

Today, we made screens for the top two "windows" beside the door.  That was practically a cake walk for us at this point.  The two openings below those small screened windows though took a goodly amount of time.  Those are plexi glass windows that we made and framed.  We did not want screening because we figured the pets would wreck it and we did not want an indoor pet gaining access to the great outdoors via a torn screen.  Plexiglass is  a bear   interesting to work with.  It is probably easier with a power saw.  Because we don't have that (yet!) we had to score it with a utility knife and then snap it. It did work. There was one jagged section but it is thoroughly covered by the framing so it was not a problem.

The last thing we did was hang out the new mailbox. I bet the mail man is going to be so happy that this job is nearing completion. Our mailbox has been getting moved around a bit while we worked!

Here's a close up of the window!  It is so clear that the cat ran head first into it when they went out onto the porch the first time!

And here is the cat enjoying his new space.  We still have to paint the floor but that won't happen for a few days as I am going camping next weekend!

Screening our Saturday

 You can't really tell from the picture but we built three ginormous screens and installed them on our front porch.  The openings are about 6 ft x 7 ft so it was quite the experience.  We got a good groove on it though and they look really excellent. (pats self on back)  

The next thing we are doing is putting on a new storm door.  We bought that yesterday at the orange big box store.  We want to be able to lock the screen door because we envision times when the indoor cats will be enjoying this space and we don't want a delivery person to open a door and have an indoor furry suddenly outside.  We found out most storm doors don't have locks unless you want to pay a LOT for them.  I am doing this as frugally as possible so that is not an option.  We found out that we can buy an after market door handle that is lockable and install that ourselves on the door.  It cost like $6.00 and our door way under $200

Today I took off the old door, sanded the framing and patched for painting.  I'll probably paint after work during the week so that we can jump right into door installation next Saturday.  After the door is installed we have two side panels that need plexi glass installed. They are down at eye level for dogs and cats and I don't want screening there because I know if they see a squirrel they will blow through it!  Then there are three small upper screens around the door frame to build and install.  After that, I paint the floor and we will be done!

This is by far the biggest project we have done and we are also sandwiching it around my wife's business work.  She has picked up some extra clients to help off set a whopping dental bill, so time is not always available for us to work together.  Big projects like this need two sets of hands frequently.  I can sand, patch and paint on my own. But I don't think even home improvement experts could build 7 foot screens without two people!

My thoughts unmasked!

Since in pandemic times the renovations just.don't.end.  (because seriously what else is there to occupy my time and energies?)  My wife and I need to start making ginormous screens for our front porch. They will be about 7 foot by 8 foot.  We went to the orange big box store for supplies last night.  We had a question on if a staple gun or a brad nailer  would adequately fasten the mitered edges.  We asked an employee if this would work or if there should be some other type of stabilizing agent.

The employee looked at me and said (and I quote) "you mean a paper stapler?"  I'll give you I still had my work clothes on.  Picture older woman in office wear asking this question.  Still. . .  wouldn't the fact that I even used the term "mitered corners" have indicated I had at least a rudimentary knowledge of carpentry.  (or had binge watched 50 million home improvement videos during lockdown?)  Technically both statements are true.

I looked at the fellow and said "I'm a girl, not stupid!" and thankfully he had the good grace to appear abashed.  For the record, I can you the staple gun according to this fount of information.

The incident did not really annoy me as it was such a whacked out comment that I just responded in kind.  But it points to assumptions which are never good.  And in our society at present so many assumptions are being made in so many arenas of our lives, that I am mindful of how scary that is.

There are the people who are making the assumption that being asked to mask up in public is an infringement on their rights. It isn't.  If you don't like it,  please stay home.  Have a friend shop for you if it is impossible to mask up.  Order on line.  Use one of the burgeoning delivery services.  I respect your PTSD, your belief that you are dying of carbon dioxide poisoning, your COPD.  But realistically if you have COPD you are at such high risk of complications with Covid that frankly you should be staying home anyway.  Is being asked to wear shoes in a public building infringing on our rights?  Nope. Because we are a) used to it. b) puritanical about our bodies and c) we have learned that it is no fun to catch athletes foot fungus from walking around bare foot with lots of other folks in the same space.  I have spent the last month communicating with my sister long distance as she fought Covid. She lives in AZ which is a hot spot state. She has asthma.  She appears to have made it through okay but it has been 25 days of worry and she still has pneumonia. She caught it giving a co worker a ride home from work.  They were not masked up in her car. The coworker had no symptoms and did not cough or sneeze once in the vehicle.  So, seriously,  mask up folks!

More renovations

Early on in the pandemic we made a "to do" list for the house. My thought was that if we had something tangible to focus on it would keep our minds off the crazy.  It would help me think less about the fact that I have camped zero times this summer, hung out with friends zero times this summer been to the beach zero times this summer, seem my mother zero times this summer. . . You get the idea.

The biggest project we decided to tackle was our front porch.  I binge watched youtube vids and shared them to my wife, pumping up her enthusiasm (while she pretty much enjoys this journey now she was a lot less confident than I was that we could do these things.)  And initially, our project pretty much mirrored the helpful videos that we saw.  I got myself an orbital hand sander and got the beams sanded and we painted to a fair thee well.  I ripped up old flooring and sanded the floor.  We inspected said floor for damages.  And just like the videos there was a small section that needed repair.  

Armed with my boundless enthusiasm and said videos we pulled up the punky boards and discovered!  A missing joist.  Hmmm. Odd but this is an OLD porch on a 200 year old house.  Stranger things have been found working on this house.  We put in a new joist where there was not one, we married a new sturdy 2 x 4a to a less sturdy one and framed it in nicely.  Doesn't it look lovely?

Then we removed the last punky board and discovered that the support post to our porch was disintegrated.  As in, 40 years of hard living had turned it to dust.  I called a good friend in a panic.  He came over and looked and said well Sh### !  There was talk of jacking the house and contractors and all I could see were dollar signs.  And lets face it, while working on my home in the pandemic is fun--I am still very mindful of our money right now.  My wife is only recently back to most of her work. My middle son is not back yet.  And unemployment tanks next week unless there is a miracle. But back to the porch.

We called another friend.  He loves old housing and works for  a contractor.  One of my big worries was losing the fancy gingerbread trim if the whole post had to be replaced.  Yes, he agreed, nodding sagely, that would be horrible and very expensive to save.  However it was not clear if we would have to replace the whole post.  It was possible that this damage was caused by faulty gutters and moisture and that it only went part way up.

A glimmer of hope!  Back to youtube I went.  The next week armed with a 4 x 4 fence post that we got free from a job site my wife worked at, some 2 x 4s and a lot of prayers we went to town on the porch. We dug out all the punky wood.  We discovered good and bad things.  Bad.  There was no real footing for the porch post.  Good. The post was not a single entity.  At some point my grandfather had replaced the bottom half of the post with a couple of 2 x 4s joined together.  

We debated trying to make a nice footing for our post.  But as you can tell from the picture there was not a lot of room to dig.  I would have to use a hand trowel and I would likely still be there. LOL

In this picture you can see that I braced the porch with a 2 x 4 and inset my fence post.  We set the post on bricks which was the "footing" my grandfather had used. Why mess with what worked for 40 plus years?  We also had to take off that weird green stuff which was a thin, sort of papery backing board that he used before putting the finish boards over it.  My guess is it was all they could afford and it most definately was not rated for exterior work.  We took it off (but only in that section, I am not up for redoing the whole porch!) and put up exterior rated backing board.

Here's the exterior backing board we installed and you can also see that we had repaired the floor at this point as well.  It was starting to look like we would finish and that it was going to come out ok!

And it did!  Here is the repair with the new finish boards, ready for painting. (they have since been primed and I will paint this weekend.)  I will also paint that small area beside our repair where my paint was damaged by having to open the wall up. All in all it was about 8 hours of work and 5 trips to hardware stores as our efforts revealed new and different issues to address.  I should also mention that we don't own a power saw.  This stuff was hand cut, though we do have a drill and a few other small power tools.  I am beginning to dream about a small table saw set up!

Aside from painting the repair our next part of the project is making screens.  Another new skill to learn.  And yesterday the gutters were replaced so hopefully the water issue will also be a thing of the past.

Reaching for the new normal

Most of the state I live in has cautiously re-opened.  There are differences though.  It is not a return to what we had before.  I am not sure it ever will be.  For instance my bank is still in person by appointment only.  Most transactions are by ATM or from a remote teller during the day.  They are still not open extended hours and my son has to use the night depository for his paychecks as a result.

My beloved yoga studio is opening for two months only with severely limited numbers in the class and a requirement to wear masks the whole time.  I have thought this over and I can not see me successfully doing yoga with a mask on. So I will revert to my home exercise program with Beachbody.  I can't do yoga successfully without someone really watchng my posture for me.  What feels straight to me is not, because I have scoliosis and am always slightly off kilter as a result. But I can do barre, I can do a lot of strength training, those things I can do without issue here so I have to resign myself to that being my only official exercise.

Today Elisabeth is at a social distance birthday party for a close friend. They are having dinner for 5 girls at a local restaurant. The restaurant has social distancing.  You wear a mask till the food arrives.  The wait staff are masked. The menus are disposable.  After the dinner they are returning to my friends home where they will sit on the patio and watch the present opening and have cake.  Is it perfect?  Probably not.  But I let her go because as worried as I am about Covid (and I do worry) I also worry about my kids emotional well being.  For Elisabeth particularly, the need for some in person socialization is very evident. And if this thing is going to be around for the long haul, my gut feeling is that hiding in our homes is not going to save us.

Today I decided to go raspberry picking.  I have always picked a lot of fruit. When the kids were little I had 2 helping me pick and one strapped on my back and one I dragged along beside me in a car seat type gizmo.  We would do strawberries, raspberries, blueberries peaches and apples.  This year our state did no pick your own strawberries, but they are doing raspberries.  Like everything, this is a familiar experience with unfamiliar guidelines.  We used to ride a wagon down to the fields, the benches filled with laughter and chatter as groups of us became acquainted and talked about our plans for the fruits of our labors.  We'd have cold water in water bottles with us because this is thirsty work and the sun is hot. We would wander through the rows of produce looking for the biggest berries or the juiciest ones.

Now you have to make a reservation to pick (unless you show up super early like I did!) You must wear a mask the whole time you are in the field.  There is a mandatory handwashing station.  You have to walk down to the fields, no more tractors pulling a wagon of eager pickers. And just like the grocery stores, the rows of fruit are one way rows with arrows to show which way to go.

It was definately not as pleasant--picking with no hydration in a mask will never be something that could be called comfortable when it is 85 degrees and humid.  But it felt like at least in some way I was doing something that I was able to do pre-Covid. There was something important about that for me--especially as I keep in contact with my sister in AZ who has the virus and is trying to get healthy.

(note: I actually picked four containers but didn't think to snap a pic until I had the first one flash freezing!)