Day 61: It’s Too Soon

I’m disappointed. I really wanted to meet that dog, Dusty, but I guess she got adopted because she’s no longer on the website. Why hasn’t a single one of the rescue agencies gotten back to me?

This is interesting, from the May 10 issue of The New York Times: According to historians, pandemics typically have two types of endings: the medical, which occurs when the incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear about the disease wanes.

I dreamed last night that a good buddy tried to get close and hug me, and I was mortified. Whenever I hear about areas of the country that are starting to reopen, I hear myself saying, It’s too soon. Bars, barbers, malls: it’s too soon. In Butte County where Eleni lives, unmasked people have started flooding the stores and congregating in large groups again. Too soon. I imagine the first thing I’ll feel comfortable doing, at some point, is visiting with a selected Important Person or two inside a house, but I have no idea when random individuals won’t seem a threat any more. The only human contact that doesn’t make me nervous now is seeing a carefully chosen friend outside, one-on-one and from a goodly distance. Which I got to do today.

With increasing anxiety over their well-being, I continue my watch over my blooming flowers, keeping that back door open from dawn to dusk so I can monitor what’s going on out there. Twice while I was on the phone to Small this morning, a squirrel leapt up onto the porch and got within three feet of the planter before I stormed out the screen door and scared it off. They have denuded my peach tree of all its tiny fruit, so now they’re on the hunt for more to destroy. Small and I decided it was time to resurrect my weapon, which now sits loaded and at the ready.

The flaw in my strategy is that the beasts wait to strike until I’m not at my post. I need reinforcements: an around-the-clock rotation of troops. The other flaw is that my squirt gun leaks, so will likely have drained to empty by my hour of need.

I’m in need of a new book: something well-written, clever, engaging and illuminating, and not too serious or dense. I’ve been scanning the contents of my bookcase for possibilities. I pulled one off the shelf that seemed promising, but decided against it because I didn’t like the looks of the author. What kind of name is “Jincy” anyway? Since I don’t remember a word of it, maybe I’ll reread Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. Does anyone have other suggestions?