Wednesday - May 27, 2020

Taking The Measure Of Life During Lockdown

Many weeks ago, before this whole virus thing took off, we had a nice sunny day in the early spring. After the long dark of winter, we had actual daylight down in the living room. And we realized that the carpets were in God-awful condition. We have cats. Cats make a mess. And they throw up. All the time. It’s what cats do. And the carpet suffered. So we figured it was probably time to get rid of it, and we thought that maybe carpet wasn’t the best way to go. So we thought about putting in wooden floorings. So we traveled to the other end of the county and found a Lumber Liquidators store, and found some flooring there that we liked. And we paid to have one of their subcontractors come and measure our place.

Then the virus maelstrom hit, and life shut down for two months. Several phone calls with the measuring people over that time, and we finally scheduled to have somebody come and do the job yesterday. He got here at 11, after we both got up real early and did furious amounts of housework to make the place presentable. The job was only supposed to take 25 minutes. And we were all wearing our masks and gloves, being good little sheep and following Teh Rulez. But we got to talking, and talking, while he worked slower and slower. He finally finished 2 1/2 hours later. So now we have the precise measurements for every room and closet in the unit, and the exact number of square feet, and even how much overage will be required to put in wooden floors or tiles in each room here.

But he was here forever, and we talked and talked about all sorts of simple benign stuff. Dog stories, different home construction methods, the state of the internet, remember when Carter was president, and so on.

This was the longest, and nearly the only, face to face conversation I have had with anyone other than my wife since Friday the 13th in March. It’s now almost the end of May. Ok, we did see a few friends and relatives at her sister’s microscopic outdoor wedding on March 20, with all 7 of us in masks keeping great distances apart out in their backyard. We went home after about 90 minutes of that. It was nice, but it was very awkward. We haven’t seen my mom or her dad since Christmas. Right now I’m not even sure if it’s legal to drive out of state to do such a thing.

We’ve been living in nearly solitary confinement since about March 7; we were voluntarily self-isolating for more than a week because of the possibility one of her co-workers had the virus. That didn’t pan out, but we didn’t have that info until after the wedding.

I guess I’m rather starved for human interaction. 

Posted by Drew458     on 05/27/2020 at 10:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Pandemic Pandemonium •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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