Monday, March 23, 2020

Week One of Social Distancing


WEEK ONE OF SOCIAL DISTANCING

As for all of us, this is a new experience and I am trying to make the best of it.  I’m not afraid at this point of the COVID-19, but deathly afraid I’ll weigh 200 pounds by the time this is all over:  Gold’s Gyms have closed!  I’m stuck at home with lots of food and wine.  How am I going to keep myself busy enough to resist the temptations?  My first step is to make a list of all the things I want to do in the house and yard.  Hahahahahahaha  I did the same thing when I retired eight years ago.  Where is that list?  Anyway…..

On Day 1 I cleaned our bedroom under the bed (hello dust Bunnies), the floors, the windows and all of the bed linens.  Then I tackled my “studio” up in the loft.  It is all clean now and set up for my next mosaic project. 

Day Two I biked with friends to the Cherry Blossoms and back for around 20 miles.  We kept our distance from each other and from people on the trail.  I also cleaned under the living room sofa and discovered at least three years of detritus from Christmases past.  Don’t judge me.  It is almost impossible to move the sofa and nearly impossible to get behind it to clean AND no body sees it but me.

Day Three I walked to Shirlington and back, which is about 4.4 miles.  This is the first day of my training to walk the El Camino from Porto, Portugal to Santiago de Compestelo, planned for late April 2021 with my intrepid fellow traveler, Suzanne Triplett.  I’ve got a lot of training to do.  Even with all of the gym work, that 4.4 miles did me in.  Up and down hills…I’m out of shape for walking.

I’m also thinking that social distancing will be just the time to finish culling my photos.  I’ve already digitized about 90% of the albums and photos I had taken with film cameras.  Remember how expensive it was to buy film and then have it developed?   I’m sure this is why we kept those awful photos.  I encourage all of you out there to delete delete delete the photos you don’t really need.  It took me weeks to digitize my printed photos and that was after I had thrown 95% of them in the trash.  How many photos does one need of the Eiffel Tower, the Cherry Blossoms or the bridge in Bassano del Grappa?  My plan is to make a book of photos of my life.  It will surely be a best seller, not.  But it is a way for me to organize what I decided was worth keeping.   I mean who could throw this first birthday picture away?  I believe it proves I was born to dance.