MarineScallop of Bliss

I made myself somewhat useful today. I got up too early, as it was getting light. It was after sunrise, but the glowing disc had not yet cleared the treeline. I made my own cup of tea, because I didn't want to wake up the Sparrowhawk, girded myself up and went to the early morning Old People's Time at the grocery store. There were hardly any people there, and most of them had masks, as did I. They've put one-way markers in the lanes. I counted up the days and realized I had not been to the grocery store for THREE WEEKS. That's pretty amazing. I think I planned well to be able to survive that long! There was still no TP, flour, rice, or beans. They had a few jars of rapid-rise yeast, so I bought one of those. It works the same as regular yeast. I decided to buy a couple of mixes--a cake and brownies--to help save my flour for bread until it's available again. For some reason, mixes were abundant even though flour was not. Then while I was buying more butter, I bought a can of biscuits and a can of cinnamon rolls. They aren't really very good, but one can eat processed food occasionally, for the novelty. Then I found they had some of the locally made whole grain bread that we actually like, and got a loaf of that to put in the freezer just in case. I resupplied everything else we needed--don't want to bore you with my grocery list in toto.

When I got home I did the usual routine of dumping my mask and outer clothing, leaving the non-perishables to sit for a couple of days, and taking everything that had to go in the freezer or refrigerator to the sink and washing it. I washed my face and hands. I did not go and shower immediately, because while I was in the store, Raptor had pinged my phone. I called him back. The Nipper informed me that Raptor wanted to read some of his schoolwork to me. He did a pretty good job of reading "Back of the Bus" to me. He read the beginning of a one-page handout on "Rosa Parks: A Hero for Our Time," but got tired, so I had the Nipper take a picture of it and send it to me so we could read it together. Then he was supposed to read me "Brave Girl," but he was really tired at that point. We talked about it, and then the Nipper came back and suggested he say goodbye to me nicely and work on the study questions later. It was great to see his precious face, and also his mom and dad, working so hard with their earphones on in the background.

After that I took a shower, washed my mask, and got something to eat. Then I wrote a card for the Duchess and walked it over to the mailbox on the other side of the neighborhood. I did something to my knee, and it's been hurting--part of the reason I woke up early--so I was walking pretty slowly. It was a beautiful day. The buds on the Norway maple tree by my window are finally opening, and so are the buds on every other Norway maple tree all over the neighborhood, as if they all got the same memo. I worked on reading/writing stuff for a couple of hours. I had thought of going out to do yard work after supper, but it started to rain. I'm just as happy, because I was really too tired. We watched another episode of the 1983 BBC "Mansfield Park" instead. It's pretty good. The awful people are very well portrayed in their comic awfulness. Fanny is a bit of stiff, but then she was in the book too. The book works better, because Austen can tell you what is going on in Fanny's mind. In a film version, all she can do is widen her eyes and press her lips together. You know she's not happy, but you can't telepathically experience her delicately-expressed disappointment and disturbance at the endless shenanigans around her.