Seeking Wee Normalities

As these days crawl along, I'm seeking solace in the wee things that are still somewhat normal (the old normal, not the new one).

This morning, for example, I balanced my checking account--and I was right, to the penny! Of course, it's a lot easier nowadays. I use Quicken--and have done so since it was a DOS program (and that alone will date me). Mid-90s. (Here's what Wikipedia has to say about DOS.) Basically, it was Microsoft's pre-Windows Disc Operating System: MS-DOS.

Anyway, balancing on Quicken, as I said, is a lot easier than what I used to have to do, back in checkbook days (I use a checkbook now only about a half-dozen times a year--if that).

Among my end-of-the-week Friday night routines when I was teaching was to write checks for the week and--once a month--to compare my checkbook balance with the bank's. And that was not always fun--especially in my early years when a few cents made all the difference between a sigh of relief and an overdraft notice.

I've written here before that my first take-home salary from the Aurora Middle School (1966-67) was $168.42, paid on the 1st and 15th of each month. Such a number--such a pathetic number--did not leave a lot of room for Error. And I am not kidding--not at all--when I say that by the end of each pay period my balance was virtually always less than one dollar. (The bank must have loved me.)

But those days (for now?) are over, and Quicken accomplishes in seconds what it used to take a half-hour (or more) to do.

Let's see ... what else?

Our daily newspapers are still arriving. We subscribe to three (we are really Old School in this regard). We take the Cleveland Plain Dealer (for whom, in balmier days--for them ... and me--I used to write op-eds and book reviews), the Akron Beacon-Journal (which has been in Joyce's life since her very beginning--and our son was a reporter there for a decade), and the New York Times, whose Arts section I devour like Snickers bars).

Now here's the weird thing: I actually read all three of those papers online--and only when I see something "clippable" (something about a writer I like--or a play I used to teach--or ...), do I even open the "physical" paper and snip away, then put the clipping in one of our bulging file cabinets.

Makes no sense. Yet it does:

If I stop doing it, I'll die. Simple as that.

Okay, one more thing ... I'm still baking sourdough bread almost every Sunday (some weeks I have such a backlog of loaves that I use the sourdough for something else--waffles, muffins, pizza, etc.). My starter will turn 34 this summer. Bought it in Skagway, Alaska, in 1986.

My Facebook friends are sadly aware of this baking habit of mine because I invariably post a bread pic. Here's yesterday's ...

There are other routine things that I do to try to keep myself sane during these sanity-bashing days of ours. But you get the idea. It all descends to this: Persevere--do the things you love--the things you need--to the extent that such things are possible during a lock-down.

Depression lurks in the shadows, waiting, but Routine and Passion are two of his most potent enemies. Embrace them.