Memorial Day

According to the calendar, summer doesn’t begin for another month. But let’s be real, this weekend in the US is always the unofficial start of summer. If you think about it, we have as much daylight now as we will at the end of July – we are still building towards the longest day of the year. So there is plenty of light to extend the day’s activities. We had a hot spell this weekend so it did actually feel like summer.

Dogs can be really perceptive when they want to. They must devote some part of their brain to programming the daily routine for a “normal” day because they always seem to know when it is the weekend. Or a Monday holiday like today. In our case probably because my wife didn’t go to her office. So that meant we had nothing better to do but take him for a walk. Which we did. Although he is getting older and it was hot so he’s been sleeping most of the day since then.

We decided to order a brunch just because she wasn’t working. Still have not made a trip to a restaurant even though more of them are open. So we are relying on the delivery systems which we also used for dinner tonight. I have to admit that I’m not a fan of the whole leave the food on the porch so there is no human contact thing. I hate that we have to act like we’re afraid of every other human being. Can’t let them penetrate the safety bubble. I do always try to get the food and thank them as they are walking back to their car. It isn’t much but it seems like the nice thing to do.

Also planted more flowers yesterday. Think I’ve filled in all the available spaces which is good because the little greenhouse was short on supply. Memorial Day is on the back end of annual planting season. There is one greenhouse we really like but couldn’t get to them this year. They didn’t want to open up so they were doing a thing where you picked your flowers online and then they had curbside pickup. And we both agree that you have to look at the flowers you want to plant. They did recently open the greenhouse but were going to limit access to comply with all the requirements. So we skipped them this year. Hopefully, next year is a little more normal.

These aren’t ours but we have a new batch of baby raccoons around the house. This year, we’ve made the decision to stop feeding them because we’ve just raised too many generations of critters that sit under our bird feeders waiting for handouts. Have seen the adult taking the babies down into the woods to forage which is a good thing.

We do have more things open although the city is behind the rest of the state. Restaurants were given the approval to open – with appropriate restrictions for proper social distancing. But most “non-essential” stores remain closed. Called up the hair salons on the website and all the ones within the city were closed – the ones outside were open. Again, this type of policy makes no sense. It is not like we have a guarded border around the city. People from here can easily cross over and go shopping or get a haircut. Seems like all you are doing is hurting businesses within the city. But that’s why I’m not in public office. Still haven’t gotten a hair cut yet. I’m going to have to to wear a baseball cap on my lesson on Wednesday just to keep the hair from flying all over the place.

Other than getting flowers, I haven’t really taken advantage of our new “freedoms”. I guess I’m just not sure I want to do things half way. I want to just go into a store without a mask and not have to worry about being a social pariah. Yes, I wear the mask to the grocery store and I deal with the restrictive feeling and the fact that it fogs up my glasses so I can’t see very well and the really fun part when my nose starts to run from the allergies. I can’t wait to rip that thing off in the parking lot.

And I’ve kind of gotten used to the low key life at home. I’ve read a lot of books. And now that the weather is warmer, I can pull a chair out on the back deck or front porch and just sit in the shade and read. Without the stupid mask!