Pandemic Skilz

It's amazing what you can do when there is nothing else to do! Or when you really have no choice. I think families all over the world are making the same discovery, given all the YouTube performances, crafts, and sudden interest in homesteading slathering social media. Here's what we've been doing at the Queen of the Hill Cottage:

I re-learned how to make bread, so we could go to the store less.

Hubby bought a tractor to clean up our forest after the pines were logged. 

The boys hacked a trail to our creek through the autumn olives old-style -- with machetes. There is no photo of this because they looked scary and I kept a wide berth!

I am finally cooking meals. Every. single. freaking. meal. I'm still waiting for my house elf to reveal itself and clean up after me. 

D learned how to yo-yo. Like, from couldn't do it at all to being a total trickster.

I'm starting some herb and vegetable seeds this year, and I am planting lots of flower seeds that I always meant to.

Look at me! The gardening queen. 

D taught himself how to make survival bracelets. Naturally, he believes this will make him a millionaire. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it is really billionaires that run the world these days. 

G is cleaning up a canoe that has been languishing by the barn for the last 40 years or so, after my ex brother-in-law "paddled" it over The Sinks in the Smokies.  

My mother has learned how to FaceTime! 

My mom is the real gardening
queen.

Mom also made a whole new garden bed, complete with a drainpipe -- all by herself. 

Out of utter desperation, I finally gave in and cut D's hair.

Isn't he handsome? And still has 
both ears.

My family does rock star quality
FaceTime sessions!

While it is genuinely torturous for some of us, the "shelter in place"proclamations and "social distancing" and "safer at home" campaigns have gifted my family and friends many things. Most of all, the gift of time.

What have you learned to do or found the time to do that you always wanted to do "some day"?

The Thing about Ends

The first time I heard about the coronavirus, it was an off-hand mention by my husband, waaaaay back in December. In Pandemic Time (TM), that feels like a decade. In December, China still seemed a safe distance away and it really wasn't all that weird to hear that another virus emerged from the cesspools of exotic animal marketplaces and crowded factory farms that I see in my mind's eye. New Years Eve came and went with all the promise each sparkling clean January 1 deserves.

Just take up knitting, Mr. Coyote.

In early January, I heard enough that I began to follow what the media then called it a "novel coronavirus". We were told then that it was zoonotic (bat, pangolin, or both), but had jumped to humans. The Chinese government seemed to be taking some extreme steps to put and to keep people in quarantine. Video emerged of people being dragged out of their apartments kicking and screaming. Others of people being stuck in a small box on the back of a truck, carried away to somewhere unknown. Some people were welded into their apartments. This was not the flu. Following the news about the virus became my hobby. I should really have taken up knitting, or taught myself French, because knowing didn't help anymore than seeing the train coming when you are on the train tracks, Wile E. Coyote-style.

We dubbed this "Pandemic Day."

Fast forward to March, because what happened in between was a lot of political gobbledy-gook that other people will cover ad nauseum for the next hundred years probably.

What a March it has been! It has truly been the longest March in human history. On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) labeled the novel coronavirus a "pandemic" and suddenly the earth shifted underneath our feet. As people say of the moment they learned of the assassination of JFK, I will never forget where I was when I learned of this. I was touring Biltmore House in Asheville with two of my dearest friends. I had already decided this was my last outing, as we understood that my children and parents were all at elevated risk if they caught the virus. We ate in two restaurants that day. Like, inside. Sitting at tables. Surrounded by other people. All things that are not done in the year that the last three and a half weeks has felt like.

All that to say, the Thing about Ends is that you never know when they are coming. At the beginning of March, kids went to school. Families went to church. They had plans for Spring Break. They went to amusement parks and attractions, like we did. We all used to go to the grocery store without feeling like we needed to wear a hazmat suit or to call on our ninja skills to avoid touching anything or breathing any air. We had friends over. We met at pubs. We had book club meetings. Life was normal, until suddenly it wasn't.