Hanging Out with My Grands During the Covid 19

A Letter to My Grandchildren

A Typical Day at Home during the “Stay at Home” Covid 19

I’m going to go through what would be a typical day during these days of Covid 19 so that I can remember when it’s all over, and so that you, my grandchildren,  and perhaps my great grands will know what it has been like.

I still like to get up at about the same time each day 7:00 to 8:30 depending upon when I when to bed.

Feed Maggie, take meds, let Maggie out, put in “ears” (hearing aids), drops in eye, get dressed.

Eat breakfast usually cereal, oatmeal, or yogurt or sometimes toast with peanut butter or guacamole

Run dishwasher (if full), wash clothes (if needed), straighten up kitchen, plug-in cell phone to charge it

Think about what I’ll prepare for dinner (lunch is just yogurt, or a sandwich, or soup, or something light) Sometimes this involves my checking to see what’s in the pantry and freezer and what needs to be used first.  Prepare anything that needs to be done in advance.

Check my email, answer mail, make telephone calls to family, especially my sister, and friends (I try to call PJ every other day) By this time it will be at least 10:30 or 11:00.

Work on some indoor or outdoor projects depending on weather and my inclinations for the day.  I much prefer doing something outside.  Weed my garden, trim shrubbery, sweep off patios, Because I have lymphedema in my left arm (breast cancer in 1990) I am not supposed to do heavy yard work and I have a yardman that comes about once a month.  Indoor projects will be housecleaning chores.  I miss Bea our wonderful person who kept our house immaculate. (Bea retired before this Covid 19 arrived, and my friend Boguska had been helping me with cleaning occasionally. I am in need of a regular cleaning service and that is one of the first things I shall do when this is all over.) Sometimes I get a real inspiration and tackle cleaning out a closet or straightening the pantry or the freezer, and of course, eventually, the fridge has to be cleaned. I have discovered that I really detest housework, except cooking.

I read what little there is in the N & O and then do some reading in general.  I find that I am now reading the New Yorker each week from cover to cover, and I usually have a book in progress that I am reading. I am currently rereading E.O. Wilson’s book Naturalist, his autobiography. Wilson was a friend of Dan’s when they both served on NSF panels in Washington. I remember Dan telling me about a joke that Wilson once told.  “A man is traveling and at the airport, he sees a hole in the wall with a sign that says ‘Your wife away from home’ The man decides to try it out, and ouch he gets a button sewn on his penis.”  Did I just share this joke? Why yes I did. Blush, blush.

Then I also do some writing either in the morning or in the afternoon.  Right now I am writing in the morning and it is 11:00.  Since I started writing letters to you, that keeps me doing something that I enjoy, in fact, writing you is really getting me through this cabin fever.  It’s fun for me to have to think hard and jog my memory about things.  There are certain things that have stuck in my mind for years, thankfully I can recall most of them. I am lucky that way and am glad that I have an opportunity to get some of them in print before I become demented.

Lunch will be something light between 12:00 and 2:00. 

I usually have a cup of hot tea either midmorning or early afternoon.  Dan introduced me to drinking hot tea, and I can have my tea and remember him.  It sure would be wonderful to have Dan with me during these days though.  I wonder if we would have begun bickering if we were cooped up together for days and days?  Maybe a little, but I’m sure not for long.

The afternoon consists of chores, doing my exercise, reading, or writing or sometimes playing WWF although I’ve taken a break from that for a while.  Maybe calling friends. I always take Maggie for a walk in the afternoon unless the weather is very bad, and she goes in and out during the day to play in the fenced backyard. By 4:00 I start getting things ready for supper, by 6:00 I will have supper ready.  These days I eat while I watch Judy Woodruff on PBS news for an hour.  This is the only news I try to watch or hear.  The news is so disheartening!!

 During the week Patrick comes over at 7:00 and we watch Jeopardy together and we play along.  He usually beats me because he is so well-read and he watches a lot of the History Channel, and he has a much better memory and is faster off the mark in answering that I am.  He is really good.  I told him he should take the test to try to get on Jeopardy himself, but he would be too shy to go. Interestingly I never was fond of Jeopardy until this “stay at home.” Then we may watch something else if there is something worthwhile like Vivian Howard.

I usually spend an hour or two in the evenings paying bills, updating my Quicken accounts, and trying to get my study in order.  My study is definitely not in order right now.  Maybe more reading or more writing or more calling friends.  Oh, I forgot, I do spend time on Facebook (too much time) and Instagram and usually take some photos of whatever during the day. 

Shower and bedtime between 10:00 and 12:00.  If 10:00 I usually have time to read in bed or sometimes I do watch Brian Williams from 11:00 to 12:00. 

This is kind of a stream of consciousness (I think. Omg that makes me think of James Joyce and Ulysses which I could never finish.  I should get that out and try again) or just what was going through my mind this morning.

Love you, GrandPat xoxoxo

April 15, 2020 (And I have already sent in my income taxes. Yeah.)

Grandpat Misbehaved in Second Grade

Dear Grands,  The last letter I wrote about school I was finishing first grade.  Now here is what I can remember about my second and third grades. 

Aerobics with Miss Nina in the Second Grade

Second grade found me in the room of Mrs. Nina Toms, known affectionately as Miss Nina, although she was a Mrs. Nina.  What stands out most of my memory of second grade was what perfect posture Miss Nina had.  She always stood up very straight and urged us to do so as well.  In fact, every day we did a regimen of a sort of calisthenics where she had us stand up and go through different exercises.  One exercise required that we stand up on our toes and reach for the ceiling, and we would take deep breaths and exhale.  She was way ahead of her time in that respect.  Second graders doing aerobics in 1944-45, perhaps unprecedented!  This was in addition to our recess which was held outdoors.  There should be more of this in the classrooms of second graders today IMHO.

She was a rather strict teacher, and if someone misbehaved she would make them go to the blackboard and draw a circle a bit higher than their head on the board, and then the naughty child would have to stand on tiptoes and keep his nose in the circle.  Maybe that was why she had us doing exercises every day. I watched jealously as I saw my classmates, mainly boys, going to the board for this “activity”. I was usually a very obedient and polite child, but once I thought it might be fun to have to plant my nose in a circle on the blackboard.  So I deliberately did something for which I was chastised, and bingo I was up at the blackboard with my nose in a circle.  I would sometimes try to look around and face the class while still standing on tiptoes, but without my nose in the circle, obviously.  I giggled quietly and tried to get my classmates to giggle too.  I had to be quick, because as soon as I saw Miss Nina turning around towards me, back in the circle went my nose. I have to tell you standing on tiptoes and keeping your nose in a circle was not easy.  I didn’t misbehave again. 

Third Grade and Changing Classes: Not students but teachers

My first cousin, Virginia Greene, who was eighteen years older than I became one of my third-grade teachers.  I guess you would say she was my “homeroom teacher.”  She was a talented musician in voice and piano and had recently graduated from Meredith College and had studied at the Julliard School of Music in New York City.  Her father was my father’s oldest brother, and his family lived across the railroad tracks from our house, but in the summers when she was home I could sometimes hear Virginia going through her warm-ups for singing.  “Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah”, and then a key higher “Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah” and so on.  Then she would burst into song that carried beautifully through the air to where I was outside climbing trees or chasing butterflies.  Music was never a talent of mine. 

I had to call her Miss Greene, which seemed unnatural to me, since I had always called her Virginia.  She was actually hired as the music teacher for the school.  So off she would go to some other class to teach them music while their teacher would come to our room to teach us some subject.  I can’t remember all the teachers and what subjects they taught, but I remember the math teacher, I think a Mrs. Brown.  We were learning our multiplication tables and she would divide the class into two teams for arithmetic “baseball”.  The first person would go to “bat” and they would be given an arithmetic problem,  like 5 x 4.  If the student got it right she would move to first base, and this would continue until there were three misses (or outs) and the home scores would be tallied.  During that arithmetic class, we also learned to count money using play money we had made.  A “store” was set up in the room where we would be pretending to buy things.  Students had to take their turns as clerks and shoppers. 

In the spring of that year near the end of the school term, all the classes participated in a program out on the playground that parents could attend.  We third graders were Chinese and our Mamas made us little pajamas that resembled kimonos, and we had some kind of black   “rat” in our hair to resemble a Chinese hairstyle.  We performed some kind of dance and song.  

Love, GrandPat

April 7, 2020