covid notes 37

It is already September, and I haven’t addressed July or August in any real way, so I will say that in July we participated in small socially distanced gatherings with friends, because we had to, but maybe there were too many, and that thought freaks me out, and my back went out after I opened the garage door, which brought on weeks of issues, and one day I drove 40 minutes each way to get Thai takeout, and Tim made his first tomato galette (he subsequently made four more), and one day I had canoe date with Tim at Glen Lake after not having taken the boat out at all last summer, and there was another blog zoom date with all the bloggers (even Helen!), and we went biking on our rail trail, which suddenly has become complicated (stay tuned!), and we looked for more birds, and there have been Mom complications, and a family friend died; and in August my sciatica saga continued, and I was a judge for the final round of a writing competition, which added significantly to my work load, and we pulled back from socializing a bit, which was good but led to some serious feelings of isolation, and I had to take my car in for maintenance and wait for it, only for an hour, and the few other people in the waiting room were masked too so I assume I was OK, and one day Tim and I went to an exhibit of paintings at the museum (the one I work for), which really was delightful and civilized and we had the place to ourselves, and then there was a day when we went to two small outdoor concerts (more on that later, perhaps), and we had a quiet 34th legal anniversary (but duck risotto and a good bottle of wine!), and then I got news of the sudden death of a dear college friend (Saturday), and I’m reeling a bit from that and still hoping for more detail.