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!