I seem to have even more time on my hands these days than usual to think. So here are some random thoughts that have gone through my head in the midst of these isolation days;
1. I always buy Erinn a puzzle for Christmas. She loves taking Boxing Day to put it together. She’s really good and fast at doing them so this year I bought her one that seemed impossible so as to make it a little more difficult for her to do. The pieces were either all black or just a little bit of white and black making a picture of cool shells.
It turns out that I made a mistake in buying this. She loves doing regular puzzles but this one was anxiety inducing and not relaxing for Christmas leisure. So it got put on the back burner.
Until now. It has been in process all the way through this COVID-19 thing and is now complete.
So instead of it being the Christmas puzzle, I have named it the COVID puzzle. Even though it was a Christmas miss, it was perfect for isolation (which made me feel better about the purchase...)
2. I have not been ignoring the horrible things about COVID. They weigh heavily on me. I’ve just been trying my best to lighten the load. But some things just can’t be ignored. COVID-19 has finally taken someone that I knew and liked a lot. In the Salvation Army world, Major Tom Tuppenney was a colleague, friend, and brother to many. He was also a husband and a father. He was a force to be reckoned with. He ran the Harbour Light treatment centre downtown and then ran another one like it in the heart of Detroit. He befriended some real hard living people who were addicted to any number of things. He didn’t treat them as projects to fix. He treated them as people.
He will be missed by many, including me.
3. Nova Scotia. I don’t have the words.
So very tragic.
And heartbreaking in so many ways.
4. Speaking of things that are hard to ignore, there’s Donald Trump. I have been waiting and hoping that he would say something that would finally lose his support base. When he talked on Friday about disinfectant and light possibly killing this virus (even though I'll concede that he never literally told people to go drink bleach and stick a light down their throat or up their butt. It's just that as the US president he might as well have), I thought that he had finally done it. I thought that surely after this, his fans will finally see what a complete idiot he is.
But boy was I wrong!
Two of my Facebook friends were saying how much they still love him. One said he was their fave Politician of all time. My mistake was that I couldn’t leave it alone. My fingers had a mind of their own and wandered off to my keyboard:) Usually I don’t bother with those kinds of posts. But I guess I got so riled up I couldn’t help myself and so I commented that he was a very dangerous, despicable, blight on humanity, human being. But that too clearly was out of anger and frustration and a complete waste of time. It backfired on me when their friends ganged up on me.
I tapped out when I finally cooled off and remembered that trying to change a person’s mind on Facebook was futile.
5. Back to saner things. Cate has been filling her time by baking and cooking. The other day she barbecued steak and vegetables and served us supper. It was so stinking good.
6. I’ve been inhaling books. Because my hands are starting to fail me I am reading electronically now. The upside to that is that I have figured out how to borrow books from the library online. And they have some awesome things.
I’ve even joined my first book club ever. We are called the ‘Philandering Pharisees’ and we meet via Zoom. We are reading a book by Frederick Buechner called ‘A Crazy, Holy Grace’ which I’m loving. It's about grace in the midst of suffering. Very timely too.
I’ve also, thanks to Cate, discovered an author named Heather O’Neil. She’s even Canadian which I didn’t know at the time. I just love her writing and have read two of her books thus far. Her first book is called 'Lullabies for Little Criminals'. It’s so, so good! I’d highly recommend it.
Anyways, that’s it for now I guess. I’m thinking I will write a blog every week with COVID random thoughts. It’s helpful to get stuff out of my system by writing.
So thanks for humouring me.
Bye for now.
Stay safe.