As of Saturday afternoon, we are in maybe 3/4s shutdown.  Tests are finally beginning on the Cape, but you need a doctor’s okay and an appointment to get one.  I’m self-isolating, no guests, not going out of the house except on our land.  I’m glad to do garden work and to do greenhouse chores. I cancelled my doctor’s appointment for an adjustment and am not having a birthday party and I’ll have to cancel Pesach. I ever cancelled my poetry group that meets here every last Wednesday in a month and have cancelled dates with friends.

That is upsetting as Pesach is my favorite holiday in the entire year.  Every year for the past 45years. I’ve conducted a seder and forty years ago, I began my ownHaggadah.  Of course, I’ve written PESACH FOR THE REST OF US: Making the Passover Seder your own, that Schocken published.  It has a lot of what we do every year, although I keep working on the Haggadah.  I had already begun updating it for this year, adding a new poem, cutting a too prosy section.  We’ll do a two-person seder.  It feels lame.  We had to do it once before, when Pesach was early and we got snowed in.  Couldn’t get out and nobody could get to us.

I will miss the library most.  I generally take out and read a book a week and sometimes two.  I still have one book out as they closed suddenly before I could return it.  I wasn’t finished anyhow.  I’m starting the Wolf Hall series.  They’re good fat books so even the first one should last me the rest of the week. There are some books that were sent me for blurbing that I never got to or didn’t have time for.  I’ll tackle those, way too much time passed for blurbing, but I can at least give them a read.

The cats are enjoying my being around all the time and Woody being here more than usual. He was going to the gym four times a week till it shut Monday.  He still goes to his office.  Although WOMR is closed, he can do interviews on the equipment he bought last summer when the station could not handle his interviews as they were installing new equipment. Since many other people workin the building where his office is in the village, I’ve given him surgical gloves I bought so he’ll be safer there.

I have started my tomato plants, one week the pasters and cherry tomatoes, last week, the main crops. They have all sprouted. The paste tomatoes have gone out to the greenhouse after a week in the bay window. The main crops are in the bay window now. Today I started pumpkins [two kinds], brussels sprouts, sweet majoram, and two kinds of cucumbers. 

I’m missing my poetry group already.  I love getting feedback on new work.  It’s helpful. Sometimes the comments are off base, but far more often, they see a flaw and often suggest where to go instead. I was expecting Melenie to come this weekend, but after three plane trips in two weeks, she was under the weather and we decided we’d have to postpone the visit.  Since she’s now working at home and so is her husband Jay, once another week has passed, we should be able to find a safe time to hang out.

I cleared the raised bed in front of the house last weekend and this week, I cleaned out the herb bed and thinned seedlings in the greenhouse.  Woody says that every spring, we do all the work we normally do and add on a farm. 

Everything also seems to be breaking down.  My printer died and we can’t get the new one on line. Outlook, my email program, has suddenly stopped working. Of course, I can’t call a techie to help.  Nothing is open anyhow.  Everything seems to be nuts.  The cats sense something is wrong and are nervous and off their food. They are being very clingy.

I read The Truants by Kae Weinberg and liked it. Now I’ve stared Hillary Mandell’s WOLF HALL.  That should keep me busy for a while and then I hope I can get the rest of the trilogy, but with the library closed, how can I?