Busy Day, Busy Day

During most of this COVID-time, we have not done very much outside the house. Joyce does some work in the yard; I walk to the coffee shop twice (early morning, after lunch) to get a carryout--my caffeine fix. We go to the grocery store once a week to have our online order brought out to the trunk of our car. We do the Mickey D's drive-thru after supper to get Diet Cokes.

And, for the past few Fridays, after supper, we have driven down to Szalay's Farm & Market to do a swift purchase of a few things for the week.

We both have made medical visits. I've been to the dentist. And the barber (twice since February).

That's been about it.

But yesterday we had an unusually busy day for us. The weather report looked ominous for the evening, so we decided to go to Szalay's mid-morning instead of after supper. It was a beautiful drive down into the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and Szalay's had very few customers (all masked!); we got what we needed and zoomed away.

But first, from the car, I called the repair guy who has two of our antique clocks--one of which is very important to us: As I've written here before, it belonged to my great-grandfather Lanterman (Mom's maternal grandfather), then passed to Mom and Dad, then to us in 1978. And it has hung on our wall ever since--except for the (few) times it's been out for repair.

I was eager to get it back. It had stopped working a few months ago, but we were wary about going anywhere then, so we listened to the sounds of silence instead. And something seemed very wrong. I mean, we've heard its ticking, its cuckooing (hour and half-hour) for more than forty years. Joyce has called it "the heartbeat of the house"--which is perfect.

So, anyway, the clock guy said he was home and we could pick it up, so we drove about a half-hour to his place, picked up the clock (and the other one that had stopped), and headed home, stopping at a gas station to fill up our car for only the second time since February.

One of the clocks started right up and has been steady ever since. The cuckoo has not. It's run for a couple of hours a couple of times--then quit. I'll keep adjusting it as best I can until Monday, but if it's not working steadily by then, well ... back we go to the clock guy.

Damn.

Yesterday, we also did our usual after-supper run to Mickey D's--but stopped on the way at the local UPS Store to drop off an empty laser printer cartridge to be shipped back to the manufacturer (which provides free UPS returns so the company can refill and resell the empty ones).

Home then--and exhausted. We'd done so much.

And then I think about a typical day at Harmon Middle School, where I taught for decades--a place where I exerted more energy in the first-thing-in-the-morning homeroom period than I did all of yesterday--hell, than in all of this week--or month!

And I don't think I'll supply any of the words I thought of as I was comparing those two experiences--words that characterize the sort of energy I (no longer) have these days. It's frustrating--humbling--but oh so human.