covid's beautiful days anyway

A man I greatly admired and loved like a brother used to say, as he lived matter of factly, seemingly casually, into and through his terminal illness, "Every day is a beautiful day." With limited success I try to emulate his bright spirit as I make my way along in these strange days of life! Bill once lay out in the pond during a lightning storm while everyone else took shelter, my kind of Why not, I dare you, Who gives a &#%$@, and It's a beautiful day.

For one thing, coming along as my fourth Great Disturber in immediate succession from May 2018 to now, the covid19 pandemic has been a fright, so I've taken care. But covid has not been much of a trial, isolation, sheltering in place and all that, because I'm reserved in company with others, not an extrovert, little given to what Redd Foxx on the tv series "Sanford and Son" used to mean when he said to gathered company, "Let's have some polite chit chat." I'm good with staying home and gazing out the window at wildlife and water traffic, south across the Bay over Shell "Island" into the Gulf, north out over downtown StAndrews where I grew up working in a fish house culture and absorbing fisherman's language.

A positive side of covid continues to be learning new things, including about church, new ways to go to church, different and I think better ways to do worship in a liturgical church, especially skipping over parts of it. Also about eating out, except for once with my brother and family, we've not been out to eat since Feb or March 2020. Fully vaccinated, we may soon, but Why Do when Hunt's Oyster Bar is in my line of sight from the window of my office study den where I'm sitting as I write this morning, and instead of sitting outside on their benches waiting the endless wait to get a table at Hunt's, it's easier to make the phone call and twenty minutes later go down and pick up the fried oysters, fried shrimp, fried grouper, French fries, fried okra and Cole slaw, and bring it back up to 7H for dinner. Why Do of course is the trays of ice cold oysters on the half shell.

Dinner in 7H is the noontime meal, like when I was a boy and we used to go home for dinner even from Cove School back in another lifetime. Supper was the evening meal. "Lunch" was an effected, Yankee word for dinner, "luncheon" would have been unspeakably pretentious. In my business the several years after I retired from the Navy over forty-three years ago, I spent a lot of time with Australians and several weeks each year in Australia, and when I was invited to colleagues' homes for supper, it was "tea". Anyway, breakfast, dinner and supper, and Friday I picked up enough at Hunt's for dinner and supper. Supper leftovers: five shrimp and six oysters:

plus still leftover fried oysters and fried shrimp for breakfast this morning. See, this never happened before covid, which is what this wandering muse was about. Covid is bad, but when life deals you lemons ... , and Every Day Is a Beautiful Day if you pause and realize how short life is anyway - -

- - at eighty-five waking up mornings and thinking "Hey! I showed up again today! Thank you, God!!"

Coffee black and a morsel of dark chocolate mornings, sometimes instead a coffee with powdered cream beat with a tiny whisk, black coffee later.

The company is always good here. Linda has been growing delicious sweet little red tomatoes in the sun and salt air on 7H porch. The satsumas are coming along but may not go orange until late summer.

Unfortunately, weighing every morning, I've lost no weight during covid, but mercifully, apparently unlike many, have not put on weight either. Alcohol? One drink a week, a martini after church Sundays, or a finger of Islay Scotch and an ice cube in a dirty glass if I'm eating raw oysters from a pint container. Anymore, a 3 or 4 oz glass of red wine couple times a month, unless a friend stops by the office and we kill a bottle of red; a beer maybe twice a year unless there's a pitcher of Landshark sitting on the table in front of me at Hunt's.

Films, movies? Mostly via my laptop, Youtube or Amazon, several times a week, most often WW2 era films, never Hollywood, but English, German, Russian, recently a Hungarian film of panic, conscience and tragedy, the day a Jewish man and his son return to a village that had betrayed them to death during the German occupation and greedily seized their property, it was well done, poignant, ironic, a hard look in the mirror for those who were so shaken that they'd been caught and called to account when the two Jews got off the train. For the two Jews, after the Holocaust, all that was left of loved ones to bury in the cemetery grave that they opened were a shawl, a child's shoe and a toy truck, the pathos was wrenching; as was the contempt for the townspeople with their antisemitism, which is stalking Europe as always, but coming shamelessly out of the closet. Usually documentary type over drama though. But also Poirot. Carol Burnett. The Honeymooners until I researched and found out what a loser Jackie Gleason was as a human being. Reading? Stuff for Sunday School prep, a few books mostly Tass has brought me. Enjoying my new subscription to The New Yorker and wishing I were there to eat where "Table for Two" takes me. Loving no television, enjoying nothing political and so trying to avoid blogging daily anymore lest I digress to offend. Enjoying online long distance grocery shopping, and the freezer shows it.

See, I'm talking about covid, which so far has been peaceful in 7H, wishing you long years.

Saturday of Mothers Day Weekend, waiting anxiously for loved ones, and praying traveling mercies for you and everyone you love.

Besides loved ones and oysters on the half-shell, what do I miss? Springtime watching the #1 camera looking down on the osprey nest at Boulder County Fairgrounds, Longmont, Colorado.

RSF&PTL