I am officially obsessed with rhubarb, though I don’t have any more. I had been getting some from the CSA the past two times and from the grocery store twice, and chopping it up and freezing it, and now it’s all gone, and there wasn’t any at the grocery store today.

I’ve made a rhubarb dump cake, which was tasty (I didn’t feel like making pie crust, even though a pie sounded better) and I made two kinds of jam, one rhubarb vanilla and one much larger batch of strawberry rhubarb, which I consider a classic.

I hadn’t worked with rhubarb or cooked with it in any way as an adult until this season, and now I just want more. I don’t know if now I’ll have to wait until next summer.

I got confused and thought today was Tuesday for a brief period of time. I got a few groceries and when I got back I parked in the driveaway instead of on the street, because I thought it was Tuesday and we had street cleaning. Then I started wondering why the tornado sirens were on a Tuesday, and then I realized it was Monday. Mondays are tough!

I have been thinking about getting back into my cross stitching. I’ve been doing a lot of good reading, and making some jam obviously, but I haven’t been feeling like playing extra violin (some might call this practice, and it’s hard practicing for concerts in the fall that are probably just going to be canceled but haven’t been yet). I have a few cross stitching kits I bought, but then never did. Truthfully, I stopped stitching in January because I did something to my hand and it was hurting too much, but that has long not been an issue. The other issue is light…I don’t have a great place to stitch at home. I was doing a lot in my rooms where I taught, and it was a great thing to do to kill time when students didn’t show up for their lessons. Anyway, maybe I’ll start getting back into that, or maybe after my travels happen I will (if they happen, haha!).

I really want us to go on our camping trip out west, but I worry it is the wrong thing to do. I am jealous that many people have been going places, but I also feel bad because many people aren’t, and I worry we are part of the problem. How can I rationalize going on a vacation when so many things are going on, and when this virus is rampant? Yet, if we can go and stay mostly apart from other people, make our own meals, and camp/hike mostly, shouldn’t that be okay? But then I feel like it’s an unnecessary risk, and the thing with risks is, once you take one, you feel like taking more. For instance, you visit a friend, and you go in their house without masks, and suddenly you think, well, this was fine, so you want to do more of that. And then you just let your guard down entirely, and then what, a cruise to Europe? But it is a slope, and you start feeling like various things are okay (which may or may not be) but then I start to worry I should be teaching in person in the fall if I can go on a trip. Even though the risks of teaching in the fall in person are totally different from a road trip…the gray areas here are so difficult! And does it make sense to skip a vacation out of principle? Even if you think you can take all reasonable precautions (and probably some unreasonable ones?)

I miss my pre-covid life. Don’t we all? Of course I’m grateful to have my health, and my employment, such as it is. So many are struggling and I’m not. Mentally and emotionally, yes, I am, but financially I’m not. I’m lucky in that I have a very low cost of living, for one main thing, and various other factors. But it doesn’t mean I don’t miss doing things, having friends, going to concerts, all of that. I don’t miss eating out enough to actually go and do it, but it would be so nice to have somebody else clean up the dishes after I eat a meal (and I don’t mean Louie)…I miss ordering things and sitting there and people watching, and eavesdropping on conversations. I miss meeting a friend for lunch between lessons and talking about work and life and all the things that used to matter in the pre-covid times. I miss going to a concert on a Saturday night with friends. I miss playing concerts and having the thrill of performance and the joy of making music with others. I miss feeling like each day is different because evenings were full of activities and we left the house more than once or twice a week.

Sure, we are still doing stuff. I had a little live stream with my band, but it wasn’t the same as playing with my quartet. I’ve had a few socially distance gatherings with friends, but I haven’t been super comfortable with them, because I worry too much. We get takeout and you can just eat out of those containers and then throw the away. It’s nice having free weekends to relax, and I have lots of time to cook delicious food and work out and all of that makes me feel good. And weird things, like my family has a weekly zoom meeting with one of my aunts as well, and it’s fun to feel so connected to them…but I feel so disconnected from everybody else! I feel like I only know how to talk to Louie and my cats.

Sigh. I know that I’m not alone in all of this, and that as many people that are out living their lives, many more are staying at home for the most part, stressed, feeling isolated, all of that. But I miss people! I think it doesn’t help that even in normal times I would love to have a few more friends that I see regularly, but my work schedule is tough, and then I love my work colleagues and have fun with them, but then…I don’t see any of them anymore, of course.

Life isn’t so bad though. We’ll get through it, and we humans are so adaptable…to a fault, likely!

Last week had a lot of ups and downs. I finally feel like I’m over the burnout I was feeling earlier, and at that point in the summer where I can really accomplish a few things that felt impossible earlier. I had a wonderful time attending a teaching seminar online (even though I don’t consider myself a bona fide Suzuki teacher, I take full advantage of their teacher training opportunities as the ideas and teachers are top-notch) and am working my way through a few other webinars on video. I signed up for two more seminars in July on teaching, so I look forward to learning more and being inspired.

But the virus surprisingly hasn’t simply gone away when we ignored it, and as you know numbers are rising everywhere. And it’s shown to be because people aren’t wearing masks in public, but yet this is a political issue, because why not, why not make whether or not to die from a virus a political issue, everything else about life is. I sometimes feel like I must be going insane when people say things like, well, how could anyone have predicted this? And then they will go on to espouse all manner of conspiracy theories and propaganda about not being able to breathe properly and all kinds of bull, while I’m sitting there thinking, but he disbanded the pandemic task force! I sometimes think people really just don’t understand how much other people really DO know…they don’t know things so they assume no one does. I assume the opposite, that somebody probably knows the things I don’t.

So it’s hard to focus on anything positive. I worry I won’t be able to go visit my sister again in July or do anything else. I worry that I will be teaching online for the whole next year but half of my students will quit because they don’t want to deal with online anymore. I worry that people I know will get sick and die…I am still thankful I don’t personally know anybody who has died of this illness and I hope it continues (I, unlike so many, don’t actually need a loved one to die to take it seriously, even though I know I haven’t been taking it as seriously lately as before and have done a few riskier activities lately, which would be LESS risky if everybody around me wore masks).

And during all of this, we have a mayor who is threatening protestors, we have people waving guns around threatening demonstrators who dare walk down their streets, we have a government trying to take health care away from freelancers and small business owners and unemployed people IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC.

So it’s nice to sit for a few hours and listen to a more experienced teacher than myself talk about how listening to music helps a child learn. And I try to read books instead of the news and twitter…and I am still doing a lot of physical activity and trying to get outside.

I think what hurts the most is feeling like all the drastic life changes we made in March were for nothing. And I’m tired of the people who say, oh, my life is about the same. If that’s true, they are likely part of the problem. My life is completely different and I don’t see how or when it will ever change back…do we really think that there will be musicals and concerts in the fall?

So I forge ahead. I can read. I can cook and bake and jam. I can exercise. I can keep an eye on my garden.

Running errands is so full of strife, isn’t it? This morning I had a dentist appointment and then I needed to get a few things at the grocery store. The dentist went well, there were very few people (1) in the waiting room, the receptionist was behind plexiglass, and the dentist and assistants were all wearing quite a lot of protective gear. The grocery store was fine…a few more people without masks than usual (WHY can’t the store just require them and make everybody safer? Oh, it’s because our stupid government has managed to politicize a public health pandemic and wants to kill tens or hundreds of thousands in the name of “freedom” and “personal responsibility” which means they don’t take any personal responsibility and as a result, we are mostly stuck at home unless we believe the virus is fake. But I digress.)

The one things at the store was I couldn’t get everything on my list because the produce section was in bad shape. Normally I would go to a different store afterwards and finish up, but instead I chose to improvise. It was not a problem, but for everybody who thinks our problems are behind us…everyday we do so many things differently because of the pandemic. It’s childish to think it’s behind us, which is what our governor here in Missouri is making us believe.

It’s hard NOT to digress, because the information from the government is so dangerous. And seeing other people is such a tricky thing, and I’ve found that many people we thought were being careful really aren’t, and that’s a tough thing too…when you think you’ve been clear on what you are comfortable doing and someone else agrees but then in the moment you have to keep being “the bad guy.” It’s tiring, and I know at this point we just have to make our own choices about what is safe, but it’s just tiring not having the government giving correct information and not having basic health precautions required.

SO! The good news.

I told you we planted a garden in the late spring, right? I planted a variety of seeds, and some seem to be growing well and others have not grown at all. We knew our “garden beans” (seem to be green beans but the seed packet said garden beans), beets, and swiss chard were doing well in our first plot. The second plot was planted a few weeks later with lima beans, basil, zucchini, and carrots. In that one there is no sign of the limas or basil, but the zucchini are growing like crazy and the carrots are there as well. (I’m concerned we will have an overabundance of zucchini—we have about 5 plants and I read online later than 1 is good enough and will produce 7 to 10 pounds of zucchini…). We also have raspberry bushes which produce each year but usually mostly get eaten by the birds.

We had gotten a few berries though, and I went out yesterday morning to check…all gone. But I noticed, hmm, the green bean plants are drooping quite a lot, why is that? And lo and behold, beans were ready!

This may not be that exciting to some of you, but I always pooh-poohed the idea of a garden in the past because it seemed too time consuming. This year I knew I had more time, and so far so good! I really haven’t put much effort into it after the initial planting which took a couple hours total. (That was also my plan: low maintenance, keep track of what works and doesn’t, so that looking to the future we can maintain the garden with low effort as I’ll likely be busier in future summers).

I went back later and also got a few swiss chard and beet leaves to eat, so we made a lovely dinner with some salmon from Imperfect Foods.

I’m hoping we will get more beans. The internet tells me more grow after you pick them. They were very tasty! And I’ll have to check into the beets soon, it’s hard to know how something is growing when it’s underground, any tips?

Tomorrow we are getting some lovely produce in our CSA box, so that will make up for the dearth of produce at the grocery store tomorrow. I’m trying to eat down a few things in our pantry with added fresh vegetables. We stocked up a few months ago (like most of you!) and now we want to cycle through some things so we don’t have too many things just sitting around forever.

Another really cool thing going on this week is I’m taking an online Suzuki Teacher Seminar (for violin teachers). We had one class yesterday morning and it was wonderful: inspiring and educational. Tomorrow is the next class and I am looking forward to it. I love that this is an opportunity we haven’t had in the past that has only happened because of the pandemic…I don’t like to be that person finding good things about the pandemic, because no matter what it would be better if it never happened or was properly dealt with, but it’s good to focus on the positive. I love learning more about teaching (I always have more to learn) and I already tried to apply a few of the things we talked about. I’m not a real Suzuki teacher, but I take a lot of the principles into my teaching.

I’m feeling finally like I’m relaxed again. I have been burned out for a long time and just pushing through. I don’t want to feel more relaxed now than in normal times, but yet I do. I worry that my students are growing less happy with online lessons and will want to have in person lessons before I’m comfortable with them: one of my schools in the fall is definitely online due to the small spaces, but I’m feeling a bit pressured (perhaps only in my head, as we were told it was a choice, but for reasons I am feeling pressured) to teach in person at the other school in the fall. I know ultimately it’s up to me, but as you know, sometimes the decisions we make lead to much less income, so that’s always part of the decision making process. So I’m relaxed, but I’m also still worrying

How are you doing? What’s your area doing as far as “getting back to normal” and “pretending the pandemic isn’t real?”