Disjointed, disgruntled and, therefore, full of Digressions.

 

I wrote this over several days - it is quite a ragbag of thoughts unfinished.

And then my darling daughter posted this ... the blossoms are apple.

It is February the sixteenth, a winter day in Lanark Highlands. And here we are, sheltering at home. Or, we are most of the time. As of the today we are due to come out of lockdown and go to ‘green’ status. The husband and I cheated however, by having friends in to dinner on Sunday and hosting our ED and her family on Monday. I do not feel the least guilty about this as we should have been allowed out of lockdown last week like the counties north and south of us. The fact that we are going to green status should make that clear.

 It was really nice to talk to someone face to face and share a meal. The weirdest thing about lockdown, for my part, seems to be the way time stretches and contracts. A morning can disappear while I do a Sudoku and read the papers. An afternoon can be absorbed by a self-indulgent nap. But January lasted forever. There were months and months of it, seemingly. With only a few very hurried trips to the pharmacy or grocery store to break it.

 All of Canada is waiting for vaccination and some of us are being very snarky about it. The orders that our government put in last fall may not be honoured and the federal government, specifically the Prime Minister, is being blamed for it, especially in the more ‘conservative’ press. That we are not at the front of the queue does not surprise me. We do not have any facility that can manufacture vaccines and the countries that do are quite overwhelmed. Not to mention, favouring home consumption first. Big surprise that. Not.

 Well, that was then. It is now the second last day of February and we were blessed (humph) today with a fine fall of nice new wet snow to go on top of the nice old deep snow. As they said in the days of sail, ‘No bottom with this line’. As one of my daughter’s friends posted who had tried to snowshoe in it, it was deep and very difficult to walk in. Their dog let them break trail. We had a dog that liked to ride on the back of our snowshoes. I feel for the syrup producers who are on the verge of tapping and will have to cope with this. Unless, of course, it sets up. Every snowshoer’s dream.

 Canada now has a third vaccine approved. Not that this will stop the cacophony of complaints about slow roll-out. I figure we are lucky to have vaccines at all and do not see that the date at which 75 and up (that’s me) will be on the roster is unreasonable at April 15^th. There are a lot, a very great lot, of people in vulnerable positions, essential workers of all kinds, who need the shot a lot more than I do, including the harried young people stocking the grocery shelves and handing me my prescription drugs. I can wait. Even if we do cheat a bit.

 Next week I have an appointment to get my back assessed, a pool therapy class if the assessment is good, and book club and discussion group meetings that might take place in person – masked and distanced, but unZoomed. It would be nice to be looking forward to things staying that open, but I figure we have one more lock-down at least to go judging by what else is happening in the world. Now if I could look forward to a restaurant meal, that would be Nirvana.

We have ...this. Plus, since I snapped this shot from the front door without checking to see if the camera lens had opened fully, more snow. The bent tree on the far right is an apple tree. It does not have blossoms.