Monday Through Friday

Today is Monday. Sometimes a friend will make a post and state the date, the day of the week, and it's never failed to be a good service for me. I'm shaken out of a fog, and make a connection with our place in time and space. I thank them for the kindness. It almost doesn't matter any more, but then there are critical moments when it matters very much, like when a bill is due, or a class is meeting, when I've determined to catch a live discussion online. These instances, small yet insistent, are reminders of the days BC, and I like them less and less.

Today is Monday, and we have an Easter to celebrate, because Bambi can join us in the house. Maria saved up the ingredients to bake a lemon cake, and we are going to make other favorite dishes, and count blessings, like our good health, and being together, safe, with interesting things to do to fill the long hours.








We saved this new to us recipe for the day... we learned from a Basics With Babish, Chickpeas episode. Here's the deal, and it's as easy it sounds, and tastes great... you can drain the water from a can of garbanzo beans and make fluffy meringue! Aquafaba, friends, is magic. And probably everyone knew this, and we are just catching up... but I am no less thrilled and effusive.

We added sugar and vanilla, and I think it's like a lightly toasted marshmallow.

This is William's Easter gift to us... no, you can't bite this chonk of chocolate. William 3D printed and painted the cute thing! The young folks enjoyed the meme-ness of it, and that was fun, hearing them laugh about "big chungus"


Today is Tuesday. More sun. More drying out from the flood.
Liberty, Pepper or Pippi, and Trillian... all looking resplendent and well. Such good chicas.

And Emma Thompson, such a winsome lady, so dignified. She is a cuckoo maran, just like Liberty. Their eggs are not as dark as typical of the breed, but still a silken chocolate brown, and very pretty.

Today is Wednesday. Cairo, I imagine, feels like me that the news, conditions around the world, are too much. We have entered an age of comeuppance, it would seem. Do I want to believe that? I don't know. Sometimes I believe we will all come out of this as better people, and we will embrace the earth, and forego plastic forks, and feed each other from our gardens, and then I see another headline, tweet, press conference (aka IncomPotus {c}lan rally) and the despair it drops on me is unbearable.

Sorry. After that election, I imagined the worse, but I did have hope. The hope is fading, fast.

Sorry.

What was I saying? Yes, it's Wednesday.

Do you know what I love about Wednesdays? On Wednesday trucks come around, and they take away our garbage. It's miraculous! Those good people whisk away our recycling, our dirty odds and ends, and refuse, and we... we get a cleaner slate. I love it.

I am going to come out of quarantine as a hippie, a crone. Hold on... what the what? A crone is an "old woman who is thin and ugly"? Hell no, patriarchy! I am coming out of quarantine as a Crone... older, wiser, helpful, clever, caring, gray, with hands marked by work and craft, and living, and with my light still shining. And I am going to take my calendula and make healing ointment, mend my dresses, make aquafaba meringues, and listen to my Grand Mothers.

My Grand Mothers taught me to make tortillas, and quilts, to sew, to crochet, to heal, to go on long walks, to keep gardens, to know the names of flowers, read books, to listen with appreciation to the sound of running water at the sink full of dishes, to paint, to listen, to share.






On Wednesday, Bambi's dogs came for a visit, for baths and nail trims, and running around. It was good for all of us. Well, almost all of us. Cairo scrammed, and Feynman bristled. But the rest of us, even Sakamoto, had a fine visit with Chica and Pippy.

Oh, Cairo! It's Thursday. Let's see... anything? Max and Maria will have some school work, and Geoff probably has a meeting. There will be PPE to work on, a garden to water, chicks and goats, and laundry to tend. Beans to cook. Yeah, ok. It's not exactly too different from yesterday, or tomorrow. And for how long? We don't know. Fine. You can go back to sleep, kitty. The day can start at 7, or 8 or 10. It's ok.



Friday.
Terrible things are happening... death tolls, job losses, broken systems, heartsick families, stress, division, isolation, grief, anguish. The numbers are hard to conceptualize, the statistics shift, and grow, a name stands out, then is lost in the shuffle of more tragedy, more losses. Something that breaks me, are the accounts of people dying alone, without their loved ones, in hospitals, or makeshift facilities, hooked up to ventilators, intubated, exhausted. What a weight on the healthcare workers who care, who tend, who have to keep moving forward. What a toll on families who cannot hold a loved one, say goodbye.

This baby bird fell from the nest, at our feet... and all of my sorrow and sympathy, all of my grief poured out over her, as she flailed and struggled. I held her, out of the harsh sun, as gently as I could, and prayed on her all of the comfort and peace I could imagine and hope for, until her very last breath. The intimacy of one death, close at hand, can mirror countless losses and sorrow, and I cried for all of them.




We are all one under heaven.