Week 6: New Normal

So we’ve passed six weeks, and staying at home is feeling like a new normal. John and I figured out some ways to better handle busy work weeks (order food instead of cooking everything was the big takeaway!), Miles and Ashton kept up with classes and started the accelerated workload as they approach the end of their semester, and Nyx founds all kinds of new stuff to get into. And we’re happy to report that there was no snow this week.

Sunday evening Miles and Ashton built a fire in our fire pit.

During the week, we got news that the stay at home order was about to be extended, which it was until May 30. Some perks were thrown in though, including that golf courses and garden centers will be open, with distancing measures in place. Apparently golf courses have been mentioned in a lot of the daily press conferences the governor gives – people have been joking about how just when you think we got through the daily coronavirus press conference without a mention of golf, someone brings it up! I am very happy about the garden centers – because all this, and then no flowers all summer? That would be too much! This text exchange between John and me all within our house sums up how the news hit us initially.

We got a lot of rain this week – but that’s better than snow in late April! There are a lot of tree buds forming and starting to open up.

Winter is slipping away but I still haven’t finished the scarf I’ve been working on! It’s meant to be 6 feet long and it’s only about 4 feet. Need to get knitting again!

My book club met (again!) on zoom this week. We read The Soul of an Octopus, which we all enjoyed. I’m now reading The Dutch House by Ann Patchett – very good! John is maybe 2/3 of the way through Thomas Piketty’s book Capital and Ideology. Go ahead and ask us anything about octopuses or the economy!

I missed adding this last week but Debbie, Maddie and Jeff sang happy birthday to Miles, with a big point at him at the “TO YOU!” part. Thanks for the birthday wishes!

Today, my Grandview friends organized a surprise zoom b-day party for John Thomas, whose birthday is next week. We met from eastern and western Michigan, KC, Lake of the Ozarks and our back yard (where we are sitting in front of a very icky garage wall! It needs a scrub down!)

We also facetimed with Liam and Kat who are both doing well and kinda like us are just finding all the home time to be getting to be the new normal.

We did yoga with Natalie live from the Garfield Park Conservatory on Saturday morning, and then had a tour of the Fern Room with a conservatory staff person who walked us around. The yoga was great as always, and we really enjoyed being able to “walk” around the Fern Room again (pic below)! Later on Saturday we had an art club meeting with Debbie, Maddie, Mom and me on facetime, and we did paper folding projects and also drew bees (we decided that was to honor Earth Day last week). So engaging and also becoming so normal I forgot to take a screenshot!

We’ve been running in Humboldt Park in the mornings and often taking evening walks there too, and we’ve seen a heron twice! A lot of people are fishing in the park (to your point, Colette, sport or hobby?) and also we keep thinking about taking up bird-watching as a quarantine hobby.

So anyone who has listened to me on topics like this (and totally cool if you’ve been tuning it out) knows how it makes me crazy to buy Dark Matter coffee beans from a big grocery store. If we buy the beans direct from the coffee shop near us, first of all we can buy a pound bag and also the money goes right to the independent coffee roaster. If we buy it at a certain unnamed grocery store, the bag is only 12 ounces and we are paying a very well off middle man for the privilege. So today we decided to go to the coffeeshop for the first time since stay-at-home began and experience the new social distancing procedures there. Here’s John in line at The Mothership on Western Avenue. You wait at least 6 feet apart outside the store, and only one person is allowed in at a time. There’s also an app for placing an order and then you can pick it up at another entrance they have to the left of John. We bought 4 pounds of beans, which we will go through very fast! Stay home, stay safe, stay caffeinated!

We decided to wander over through the industrial and very empty areas by Hubbard and Ashland, and we got a bit closer to doing the brewery visits we’ve long wanted to do! I like these stars and sign outside the Goose Island Tasting Room. The breweries are open for pickup only. We also found a distillery that is selling hand sanitizer that they make. Woot!

Liam, we found your name on an air conditioner on Hubbard!

There’s a foundry / architectural metal place over there too, with this cool sculpture.

On our way home, we went through Smith Park. It was full enough, but not in violation. We had rain all day yesterday, and were saying that it seemed like half of every one had given up, and the other half were outside.

And getting back to the subject of coping strategies, we have really found that ordering food for pickup makes a big difference during the week. This week we ordered a brisket dinner from Big Guys in Berwyn (Miles’s friend Dylan’s family restaurant) and also a pulled pork dinner from Frontier in Wicker Park. This week we are first going to finish up all the leftovers we have, and then plan later in the week to get pizza. And speaking of pizza, this delivery truck we saw out today was super cute.

We got this photo today of Maddie enjoying the sunny spring day by doing some outdoor chalk art. Great stained glass, Maddie! Since Rory (and Colette!) did some chalk art in their driveway too this weekend, it seems like the whole world is coping in a similar way, with golf, fishing and chalk art!

Have a colorful week, everyone!