AN ESSENTIAL SERVICE IN A PANDEMIC AT A BED AND BREAKFAST

Much has changed since my pre-Corona life when I returned from seeing my grandbabies in Australia. I've gone from the dark of the night, faced  with fear,  scorn, anger, shrieking, and accusations while having a cold and travelling, being told to quarantine at home NOW by my government, to embracing unexpected inner peace. 

As an A-type person, initially I crawled the walls with lack of motivation, lack of human contact, and being out of sorts. I've had to decide whether this is a time to go crazy or realize this is the best paid vacation I've had in years. I can't go anywhere, I can't talk to anybody in person, I don't feel obligated to visit people; my time is finally my own to do whatever I want to do. Most importantly, l am not glued to the TV news because it is too negative.  I get all kinds of articles I read from Public Health and FB watch parties by the PM (this was my favourite of Trudeau Speaking Moistly made to a song:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eySDeBdqxGY).  I read lots of "official" articles and it's still just a repeat of what I know or think I know aka fake news.  Rest assured, if I do anything wrong or go anywhere wrong my friends are front-and-center correcting me, tearing me a new one for sticking my head in the sand. 

Technology and social media are killing me. My phone and laptop are like a pinball machine all day long.  Yesterday I was so fed up that I turned everything off and  slept for 3 glorious hours. Friends are noticing they're getting very wired because they're so connected to everything and they're doing the same thing too.  I don't have to worry about missing calls for potential guests and it's very liberating. 

My B&B was deemed an essential service but only if I host front line workers and I'm not sure I want the exposure.  More importantly, I haven't had to deep clean for a month and I love the freedom.  Imagine having your house in selling, ready-for-a- showing 365 days a year for six years.  This time off is priceless.

I now have stacks of paperwork covering every table in my house.

For the very first time in six years, I can leave out all my messes and not worry that the phone is going to ring and somebody's looking for a last-minute booking so I would have to shove everything into a bag never to be looked at again. I'm finally getting through it all, the boxes are disappearing and a miracle is happening. There is counter and table space underneath. 

I used to go to bed late, not intentionally; I'd just lose track of time engrossed in all sorts of projects.  Now I'm getting caught up on a lot of sleep especially lost while around toddlers. On my unmotivated days, some would say my "best vacation" days, I get up,  have my daily long bath, go for a walk, have a morning nap, maybe exercise and the day is over. I look at the clock and its 8pm and I wonder what did I do with yet another Groundhog Day?

My taxes are done but I should never do anything to do with numbers.  I'm terrible at math calculations even though I use a calculator and it makes no sense. How can so many calculations not compute? The biggest problem came when I added up the last column and it was totally out of whack from the previous one. Turns out if I put in 83, my calculator changes it to .83. Every single column was wrong and then I realized how long has the calculator been doing this???  I'm going to prison.

Another plus is I have seen so much generosity since this has happened. One of my biggest challenges is I like to grocery and second hand shop. I'd been in quarantine for nine days with groceries being my biggest challenge. l left my fridge empty when I went away and coming home, it was still quite empty.  

I have a wonderful group of eclectic spiritual ladies whom I zoom with online and a few of them have offered to do my groceries but they're either older and shouldn't be out or they live too far away or they live in another province and they're going to drive all that way drop it off at the doorstep and turn around and drive away. That makes no sense to me. I don't like to ever ask anybody for anything so this is a real challenge for me. 

One neighbour Marie, who should not be out shopping would fill a few bags for me of fruits and vegetables. I didn't even bother giving her a list anymore, whatever she wanted to buy me I would gratefully accept and pay for. It was like Santa Claus left me a care package . It didn't matter whether it was full of socks and chocolate; it  was really quite exciting and I will be eternally grateful for her. On my last day of quarantine my fruit drawer looked like this.   I knew scurvy was coming soon if I didn't get to the grocery store asap.

 It killed me that I couldn't do competitive shopping when I know one store has raspberries at a $1.59 and I'm paying $6 if I do actually get the raspberries which I never did. I must assume the stores are out of them. I had no idea what the shelves looked like even though I saw pictures on Facebook. I wished I had the luxury of seeing the empty shelves myself. I guess it's all first world problems. We never had this problem in Australia when we shopped everyday  with the four of us sick spewing our unwellness. We had no idea  the world was spiraling out of control except that Australians were buying up all the toilet paper.

 I have a deep freeze full of meats like bacon and sausage which I really don't eat a lot of so at least I know I've got food if I really need it. They're strictly for my guests and I will never touch it since I crave vegetables and salads.

On the plus side, I was so sick with a cold in Australia that I lost my appetite and I refused to eat junk if I couldn't taste it. Back in Canada I realized I had lost eight pounds but now that I'm getting my appetite back those lost pounds have taken a dingy across the oceans and settled back to where they were.

Started little projects. Since the food is challenging I thought I

would make my own bread in my daughter's bread maker. No, I do not have bread maker yeast but how much of a difference could that make? I didn't have the proper bread flour either, or the proper quantities but being the queen of substitutions, I'd figure it out with the different kinds of flours that I have in my house, I mean really, what could go wrong? 

According to the manual, you put everything in a special way, close the top turn it on and when it beeps a lot you put in the fruit or the seasoning and close it up and I thought it would go for another whole cycle but no it didn't.  So there's this ugly twisted brownish dog turd where nothing mixed in. I took it out sliced it all up and tasted a hint of Rye and Caraway but mostly just glue. I dropped it and it made a loud clunk but did not break the countertop this time.  The good thing was because there's no preservatives in it, it turned moldy in 2 days so I got to throw it out yay !  I'm getting so sick of everybody on Facebook doing all their own home baking and it turning out like Martha Stewart and Betty Crocker had a baby. Stop it all of you, WE DON'T CARE.

I have multi pane glass doors to paint Birds on, book reports to do, retreats to plan, closets to clean, sewing to do, gardening if the snow ever goes away, and so much more useless papers to go through.  No one is here to bother me or stimulate my mind or anything else for that matter.

Initially there were no walks for me- just the frozen back yard in quarantine. I heard of a family that did a zoom call with 42 of her family members across the world including Italy. I was inspired to set one up for my family but oh the challenges they presented. In the end a good majority of my family participated. It was like a comic event among IT challenged siblings. One had neither internet connection, a decent cell phone nor a computer so he was out. One could hear us but not see us or talk as their webcam was faulty. One could talk but not hear us or see us. Two forgot and for the rest of us the sound cut out for no apparent reason.  Oh, it was a dog's breakfast but still kind of fun. Because I am the host and I didn't want to press any extra buttons and get locked out I never did press the host button and at exactly 40 minutes, with no warning, we all got cut off. Just curious I logged on again and they were all doing exactly the same thing so our phone call continued. Cool.

I'm spending most of my days doing dishes because the rest of the day I'm cooking. Went to make a new chocolate banana cranberry bread loaf and made one extra cookie on the side. I think it was the best cookie I've ever eaten.

I'm slowly understanding the value of pj's all day if I don't have plans to garden or go out.  One day, I even refused myself breakfast until I exercised.  I still start everyday in gym clothes, hoping to work out but I disappoint myself often.

Today was a turning point. I took out the shovel, carefully removed all of the very thick ice on the deck and located summer. And then I asked myself when I'm sitting on the front step which is so warm, how can 7 degrees outside be so warm yet 19 in my house shivers me to the bone? 

How can I plan meals with nothing in the fridge or food cupboard and eat better than when I have bought $400 worth of food and I eat cheese and crackers only?

I now go to bed by 10pm, and I have, more often than not, afternoon naps that range from 1 to 3 hours, cocooned in my thermal semi-weighted, oh so cozy blanket, dead to the world. This is what I wake up to and it's one of my favourite things in my house.  I am loving this vacation time, I mean pandemic isolation.