Morning Thanks--and blessings

A few meetings scratched. No toilet paper--we're loaded anyway if you need a roll. No hamburger, but we buy quarters. On Monday, Fareway was out of eggs, but Barb says we're stocked. Sunday, like a million others, we did church from the couch. Went fine.

The gym is closed. That's a bummer. 

I'm sentenced to hours and hours at the keyboard, but two MAJOR projects would have me here anyway, even if a certain blooming suction-cupped virus weren't roaring about like a lunatic Sherman tank. We don't live in a major urban area, so the elbow room country life affords makes social distancing a breeze. 

Retired folks like us are in the cross hairs, I'm told, but, right now at least, our time and place leaves us pretty much untouched. I miss the gym. Badly. But to be honest, I can't think of another way in which I'm inconvenienced, as long as we don't somehow catch the dang bug. 

The fact is, this morning I'm right where I normally am, in the basement. The cat is out so the house is still. There's nothing beyond the big windows to my right but darkness and pinprick farm lights. There's barely any traffic on Hwy. 60. Trains pass unnoticed. If we wouldn't watch the news, it would be hard to imagine we're under siege.

But we are. All of us. 

We live, cheek by jowl, beside two colleges where life is a wild scramble. Yesterday, a Facebook friend/prof said after two hours of home schooling that she had determined the whole quarantined arrangement was not going to be sustainable. I wish I could help.

My grandson, with a furrowed brow, told his mother he was worried about us because he heard the elderly were in big trouble. 

Really, Ian, so far, so good. These elderly, at least, are just fine. Don't know that I'm ready for two long months, but we're blessed.

This morning I'm thankful for Dr. Fauci, and thousands of others who carry the burden of getting the rest of us out there beyond the curve, the doctors and scientists who dare to tell us what we need to hear and see and do, experts who explain how we can arrive safely once again at nothing more or less than ordinary life. Oh, yes, and nurses--my word, nurses--who every hour of every day smile at those of us who aren't safe-and-sound.

Blessings for the journey.