Good morning, friends – how are you holding up?  Everyone still healthy?  I hope so.  We’re hanging in there over here, doing our best.  The kids don’t really understand that they can’t just go running into the next-door neighbors’ house like they’ve been accustomed to doing.  And it’s not just them – it feels like half the neighborhood has recently discovered the bike path.  Anyway – another weekend in isolation here; I know you get it.  On Saturday we decided to have a big cleaning day – look at us go!  The house was starting to show the effects of several weeks of everyone being home 24/7.  I cleaned the downstairs bathroom and folded laundry, but my big project was the kitchen.  It got a full-on deep clean, and it is staying this way, dammit.  (A clean kitchen is essential to my well-being, and I almost never have one.)  In the afternoon, we escaped for a walk on the bike path.  Steve and I spent the walk dodging people who were not following social distancing guidelines; Peanut danced and skipped down the path, blissfully unaware of anyone else, belting out a song about nature and her “windblown and wild” hair; and Nugget followed in her footsteps, touching every stair railing and helpfully shouting out polite words like “POOP!” and “FART!”

Sunday was my big adventure day – are you ready for this?  I went to the grocery store.  And I wore a bandana face mask that I made with the help of YouTube videos.  (Still not convinced that does anything, but the CDC is now recommending that everyone wear “cloth face coverings” so I dutifully put it on.  More useful, I think: I also wore a pair of Steve’s disposable dishwashing gloves.)  Came home to find that the kids had strategically dismantled all of my hard work from Saturday.  The couch had been torn apart to make a “fort” and the kitchen was trashed… again.  So I rolled up my sleeves and cleaned it… again.  And as soon as it was sparkling, Peanut asked if we could bake a Victoria sponge.  And that’s our afternoon sorted.  As usual, the kids “helped” for a few minutes and then disappeared, leaving me to finish the baking project on my own; Steve was trying to work, and getting frustrated by the interruptions, so we ended up on the back patio, the kids digging in the sandbox and me sipping tea and attempting to read while listening to my stand mixer attempt to make whipped cream out of whole milk and yogurt (fail) and we ultimately ended up with something resembling a Victoria sponge.  I cut slices for the kids, waited until they weren’t looking, and passed half the cake over the back fence to our neighbor Robert (who deserves all the cake, because he is the person responsible for bringing our beloved Zoya into our lives).  Ended the weekend in our favorite way – FaceTiming with loved ones (first Grandma, and then Uncle Dan and Aunt Danielle immediately after).  And that, my friends, is a long writeup of a weekend in which we really did very little, so please accept my apologies.

Reading.  Pretty busy reading week around here.  I continue to surprise myself, because I’ve lost my commute reading time and am terribly distracted in the evenings, but still seem to knock out several books per week.  Not sure how that’s happening, but I’m not mad about it.  Over the early part of the week I blitzed through Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont – my first Elizabeth Taylor (the Important British Writer one, not the Hollywood Starlet one) then picked up Heidi, a childhood favorite I’d never revisited as an adult.  It was as cozy as I remembered, and as fresh as the Alpine air.  I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Switzerland after finishing Heidi, so I stayed there a bit longer through the Switzerland issue of Lodestars Anthology.  (The travel cravings are strong.)  Finally, I spent the weekend in Elizabeth von Arnim’s German garden – re-reading Elizabeth and Her German Garden on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, then turning to The Solitary Summer on Sunday night.  Whew!

Watching.  A bit of this, a bit of that!  A little Star Wars here and there – Nugget was watching the original trilogy over the weekend and I tuned in for some of my favorite, Return of the Jedi.  On Saturday evening, Steve and I were craving nature, so we fired up the Rock the Park episode about the San Juan Islands – ugh, I miss the Salish Sea so much!  And we finished off the weekend on Sunday night with the first episode of season three of The Crown.

Listening.  Podcasts, just podcasts.  Some good escapist listening with The 46 of 46 Podcast – an hour and a half of geeking out about hiking gear.  (I want snowshoes!)  And for company on my runs, an episode of The Vegetarian Zen Podcast about healthy coping strategies in uncertain times (so needed) and The Crunchy Cocktail Hour about greening your bathroom products.

Moving.  Bringing back this category, because one of those healthy coping strategies I’ve been putting into place – and one that I hope to stick with after things go back to “normal” is making sure that I get my time for movement.  I made it out for three runs and several walks last week, and hit up two online barre3 classes.  Felt good to take that time for myself.

Making.  Lots of home cooking again this week.  In addition to regular food prep tasks, I served up an elaborate dinner of vegan sausages, sauteed cabbage, and mashed potatoes.  Yum.  And of course there was the Victoria sponge on Sunday, which came out pretty well if not perfect.  (In place of the whipped cream, I used clotted cream and it worked out fairly well.)

Blogging.  Bookish week coming for you – my March reading round-up on Wednesday (buckle in, it’s a long one) and then another Poetry Friday post on Friday.  Check in with me then!

Loving.  Another baby is in the world!  My friend Connie welcomed her little guy over the weekend.  He’s adorable and I am hating this pandemic even more, because I so want to go over to her house and cuddle him.  I’m settling for pictures for now.

Asking.  What are you reading this week?