You could do it right now? Or you could go looking for a crochet hook. If you don’t want to teach yourself (more) Russian this month, you might make a scarf instead. Scarves use up a lot of time. Can’t crochet? I’m pretty sure you can find videos to teach you brain surgery out there somewhere — Don’t try this at home! — while tips for doing weird things to yarn are everywhere.
A stranger in Omaha is just waiting to show you how to make your own doilies, the doilies you never even knew you needed. I’ll recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdLjTVruXvI to get started. I don’t know if this woman lives in Omaha, but she does provide useful tips for placing your online hook and yarn order. My only area of disagreement: skip that recommendation for a light, solid color yarn. I prefer variegated yarns. For one thing, they hide minor flaws in that first scarf extremely well. Solids tend to show where the stitch slipped.
Perhaps you want to try the search “free French books online.” Italian anyone? Free children’s content is especially easy to find.
I’d recommend paying for the right book, though. Do you have a special book you have read and reread in English? Getting its counterpart in a language you want to review gives you a head start at retrieving all those long lost words you buried deep in your gray matter. You probably remember that special book well enough so that the text will give you clues to help you translate as you go along. If you are lucky, your book’s in a popular series. Harry Potter has been translated into more than 70 languages. Stephen King books have strong international popularity as well and can be found in Azerbaijan, Norwegian, Turkish and a long list of other tongues.
Stuck at home? I suggest a nice hot cup of tea and Le Hobbit, Der Kleine Hobbit, or 호빗 (Hobit), possibly with your English copy of The Hobbit alongside you. Maybe slice up some apples and cheese to go with your tea? Or raid the chocolate drawer? Treat yourself anyway.
My friends easily recognize Ginger the Wheaten Terrier, and my kids will still know her decades from now when they enter assisted living facilities or join the urban planning staff on the Mars Colony. Ginger has carved her place in Turnerdom.
The classroom in that remodeled McHenry middle school supply room is trickier. About fifty people might recognize that one, and only a couple of them are part of my social media network. The Parkland School connections are tenuous now.
My brother has been sending me old pictures from our family’s past and various souls in those pics will likely forever remain mysterious.
I recognize my dad on the left, my grandma next to dad, my grandpa next to her, and that might be my Aunt DeLois in front of grandpa. But who are the strangers on the right? They are suspected of being “Galbreaths.”
I have boxes and boxes of pictures. Already, some elementary school names have slipped away from me. I was never good with names.
Readers! Do you have similar picture boxes? This is a great time to open up the boxes and start writing names on the backs of those pictures. It may also be time to cull the boxes. All those pictures of grassy hills and pretty nice mountains? Do you need twenty pictures of a pretty nice mountain that you’re almost sure were taken on that driving trip through Colorado. Unless it was Uncle Lester’s birthday in in West Virginia…
My brother-in-law recently remarked that he had disposed of his scenery pictures. “All that stuff is online if I want to look at it,” he said.
I am not sure I entirely agree. Memory is triggered by pictures and absent those pictures, I might never think of that classroom in McHenry, which I loved despite the fact that it was an interior room with no heating, or cooling, and a shortage of outlets. I remember that white, cinderblock room and those kids with love. But some of my mountain pics can definitely go.
I don’t know about you, reader, but having paid to have those pictures developed, I tended to keep them. They had cost me maybe fifteen cents apiece! Or more! O.K., my picture hoarding may have been irrational, but the fact remains that I have taken a lot of lousy pictures in my life and no one will be the worse for me transferring them to the Underdog waste paper basket beside me. I have demonstrated that I can take dark, fuzzy pictures of strangers beside random, tall buildings in unknown cities. Now maybe it’s time I demonstrate that I can throw those pics away. I mean, honestly, with all the resources of the FBI, I doubt we could identify a number of these shapeless forms.
Biojar suggestion: If you are wondering what to do., maybe it’s a good day to pull down the picture boxes?
Cleaning closets becomes an adventure as we get older. Reading this book, I know it goes back decades. The name on the above page belonged to the mother of my stepmother-in-law, an Irishwoman who shared a love of Manhattans with my late father-in-law. She passed on many years ago now.
I am aggressively recycling, but I kept this book out of the discard pile. How long will I be mostly stuck in this house? I don’t know, but it might be long enough to make a few searches and phone calls. What became of these people, the ones who fell out of my life as I shifted over to electronic devices?
The biojar suggestion for the day: Do you have one of these old books? Or another source of names? Why not cross a few bridges across time ? I suggest we punch in a few numbers and try to track down those good parts of the past that slipped away in the too-busy times that followed writing in our little books.
For a mere $29.99 apiece, two gray pots filled with mysterious flowers and leafy things flanked the entryway in front for one spring and summer.
This post is for the bored who are thinking of taking up gardening as they sit home for maybe the first extended period in years. Don’t do it yet. The first year I was here I did not understand. March was lovely, warm and soft with all the signs of spring buds and gardens to come. I planted. Then the April snows arrived. The season in Illinois does not start until late April for good reason.
If you are itching to get started, you could put out pots (or old pans or whatever will hold water) in the garage or attic. YouTube will help you with technique. But I thought I’d issue a warning based in my memory of watching the snowflakes settling onto the greenery on a white day only a stone’s throw from May.
I have plenty of books, a few weeks worth of jigsaw puzzles, a good dog, a feisty cat, electronics and art. I have yarn, crochet hooks, and closets that need cleaning. My husband and I have a long list of TV we keep intending to watch. I can do this. We can all do this.
Advantages to sequestering: today’s culture bombards itself with shiny shiny screenshots all the time. Maybe some of us can use a few weeks to go to ground. Here are a few questions to occupy the time:
What do I enjoy about my usual, daily life?
What do I not enjoy?
When will I acknowledge that it may be time to give away the size six clothing?
Do I need to simplify my life? What do I have to do to make that happen?
How am I going to manage my retirement? Retirement has a way of smacking people up the side of the head. It’s far away and purely hypothetical until suddenly — bamm! You’re done. No need to go to the dry cleaners or pay for XM radio in the car. What can you do to get ready?
What bad habits should I stop? Should I simply delete those games? What apps should I remove from my phone? This time of isolation is a perfect time to investigate your devices. Exactly what is lurking inside your phone?
Other possible uses for time that will make you or others happy later: Scan or label those pictures in the picture boxes. Consider scrapbooking. Delete your ancient email. Start writing your memoir. Dispose of useless paper clutter. Sort your books to find future donations. Take an online course or create one. Start a blog. Experiment with the aging spices in your cupboard as you make new soups.
Seizing the silver lining out here. Hugs to my readers. We can do this.
