It's been four months...

...since I became The Widow, and it's time to review.

Am I managing OK? Mostly, yes, although I do get angry and sad when no-one is looking sometimes.

Can I see the future clearly? Not yet.
It's been rather hard to "own" the house and the garden, although I am beginning to find my way around both. With some heavy labouring help (before the Big Pause) I have the vegetable garden arranged, and each day I dig a little more and shift compost. I have lots of beans and peas and such to plant, but sadly, my plan for more fruit bushes must wait till next year, as I can't get any atm and it will be too late by next week.

The house is still rather cluttered and disordered, and I spend far too much time looking for things that I must have put "somewhere sensible" - need to organise my sensibles better.

My mind is disordered too. I get up when I get up, unless I have to do something early, and this is good. I go to bed when I'm ready, it's not like that was ever a problem. I do remember  conversation with the Lovely Man, a few years ago, where he noted that he still felt the need to stay up late (as this was grown-up stuff), but was feeling the need to lie down, too. I'm afraid I just gave him an old-fashioned look and went to bed..

I like bed. It's warm (my oil may be here tomorrow, hooray!) and the room has bookshelves with lots of to-reads, and the sun comes in in the morning and wakes me gently. On the other hand, it's lonely.

And it will take weeks to warm the house through again. Open fires and wood-stove time, still. I walked up the lane twice yesterday and brought back wood for a week's fires, just need to cut it up.

And business (or businesses, there are more than one) - how am I doing with those?

The sewing machine stuff is a bit dried-up, but I expect it will come back. Meantime I really need to make myself understand that it is what I do, and get on with the endless sorting, stocktaking, cataloguing, counting, photographing and uploading that mean sales. It's hard to get interested lately.

(As an aside, it's the small stuff that really messes me up - as I write, the cat has just thrown up all of her breakfast on the kitchen floor. I'm not good with cat-vomit, it was always a job that John did.  Oh, well...)

The sewing side is on hold - I have ideas but no motivation, am just making stuff to keep the machine warm. HB's blocks are soothing and not-too-important, and I can't do anything with them except make, and encourage people to join her Block-of-the-Month thing.

And at the moment I'm not spending too much. Haven't been shopping for a week, I'm going to attempt this tomorrow as I really need milk and fresh vegetables. I have enough protein in the freezer to last another month.

As to the future? I am beginning to think there may not be a future, and that the world has been changed forever. This will definitely be a recession decade, perhaps that's OK for someone keeping old machines on the road, but not so good for everyone else. So many of the little businesses I use will not recover, may not re-open. The High Streets of the country, already somewhat diminished and charity-shopped, will be like ghost towns for a very long time. And those who do benefit may not, in the long term, be nearly so well-off as they think..

Let Us Consider The Current Crisis

Maybe the world has gone a bit mad - I went to Tesco's yesterday, the shelves were bare of pasta, tomatoes, toilet rolls, biscuits, flour, potatoes.  Oh! Oh!, disaster.. Now, nothing I wanted was missing - is it me? OK, lots of those things (flour, potatoes) were not on my shopping list, and I have a couple of packets of toilet rolls, same as always, but there seemed to be plenty of lovely food. Green veg, onions, cold and raw meat, fish, all manner of stuff in and out of tins.. Hmmm. Is everyone going to eat pasta with a boring sauce? or throw all this madness away in 6 months time?

Class went ahead today. There were 6 of us, so HB made a very very small profit. We put out a handwash bowl and sat somewhat apart, but everyone was glad to get together. How much mental health will be damaged by isolation? How many suicides? How many sadnesses.

So, I suspect this will all peter out in a few weeks; my hope is that we can make something good from the bad - social distancing is the wrong words, should be physical distancing. We need to communicate - send emails, postcards, texts, keep the isolated in the loop. And share - patterns, recipes, love and common-sense. If the world learns to keep the colds and flus away from the vulnerable, to wash their hands and to apply common decency to all we do, all to the good.. Look at the Italians - singing on balconies!

And, no commuting drive, time to sit in front of the fire together, fuss your cats. I’m attempting to get the house sorted, the bike ridden, and the garden gardened, all in small increments…

And lots of ironing

And to communicate...

Cat is happy...

Yes, that's my hat underneath her