I decided I was going to print out the first 52 entries in my Mondays with Morie blog posts and while going back and making corrections and whatnot, I’m also reading what I wrote so many months ago.

One of the biggest things that struck me was that back in the early spring, I was complaining about things being closed down and I had written about how chagrined? pissed? flummoxed? I was about schools being closed for several weeks. Wow, if I’d only had a crystal ball, or George Orwell to tell me to look ahead to the future and count my blessings.

I’ve gotten to the point where I will only listen to the news with my finger on the mute button of the remote control. I did that before when we were inundated with Black Lives Matter and then again when the election commercials were non-stop because I find that hearing nothing but negative comments just raises my anxiety level. Can you imagine being a copywriter during an election year when all you can do is write copy that disparaged someone else? Why not tell people the good things your candidate has done, what they want to accomplish, and more importantly, how they intended to do what they are promising? But, I digress…

Now that the election is over (even if The Donald won’t concede, we know it’s all over but the crying), all we hear about is the pandemic. It’s non-stop. Numbers of positive cases, number of hospitalizations, number of persons on ventilators, number of deaths.  We must wear masks, we must social distance, we must limit our contacts, we must not go out unless it is absolutely necessary, we shouldn’t sing, shout or drink during our limited Christmas festivities. Wow, just crossed the line with that one. 

I’ve tried to keep myself more positive and do things that make me feel fulfilled and useful and still a part of this upside-down, topsy-turvy world we are living in. Things that will keep the angry monster at bay that rears its ugly head at times that I don’t even feel it coming on. To help with that, I decided to make a memory quilt for my grandson for Christmas. He’s all grown up now and will be leaving for boot camp in January. I look at him and can’t believe it. Where has time gone?

Making a quilt is a long process, from choosing the fabric, to cutting the fabric, to sewing the blocks, to assembling the quilt top. And for me (because I’m too cheap to pay a professional quilter, and I do enjoy free-motion machine quilting), making the quilt sandwich (quilt top, batting, and backing), pinning the backing, quilting the top, and then finally sewing on the binding. Whew. But in the end, you have something useful that someone can treasure for a long time, that you can feel good about and in the end, helps keep the anxiety monster at bay.

So, you realize I haven’t mentioned my husband. Well, he’s trucking along doing his physical therapy twice a week, and currently, he’s off on his annual deer hunting trip. I don’t think this pandemic has affected him very much.

I know it hasn’t affected him as much as it has me. Thank goodness, though, for Amazon.