Day Twelve
DAY TWELVE
Groundhog Monday. I get ready for my piano lesson, signing in to Jitsi and placing the laptop on the stepladder so that the piano keys are in the picture. I warm up a bit playing the scales I've been learning and going over my pieces. At the usual time nothing more happens. I practice on and eventually decide that we're not going to have a lesson today, or if we are my teacher will phone on the landline or cellphone. I bring the laptop back upstairs and get on with putting the kitchen blind back up, drilling new holes, finding the right screws, brushing the blind down and rolling it up. It's pleasing to get it installed though when I step back I see it's a little wonky. I adjust the brackets a bit.
Going back to the computer I see my piano teacher has emailed me twice, and on my cellphone are texts and even a facebook message. And here I was waiting for a call! Too many forms of communication! I phone her and she says she logged in but nothing happened (later I realise she must have come in just after I packed it all up.) We set things up again for a late lesson which is helpful although my fingers trip over themselves and I can't play the pieces for her the way I was doing before. The teacher gives her best but she has a lot on her mind – her father is completing radiation treatment in Christchurch and will fly back alone in a few days to stay with her. She wants to be extra safe because his immune system will be severely compromised.
I head off to the supermarket, first swinging by the Quaker Meeting House where our accidentally resident friend (staying in the guest room because the van he usually lives in went in for repairs and didn't come out before lockdown) has put some apples and pears from another friend into the letterbox for me. I leave him a clean bathmat.
At Countdown I'm pleased to find there's no queue, the doorman waving me in with a smile. I take very little time to get my veges and some things for my friend. I thought I was frugal but shopping once a week and staying out of cafes is very good for the budget! I add some chocolate hot cross buns for a treat. I chat to the checkout lad, commenting that his hands in rubber gloves must look a bit wrinkly at the end of the day. He agrees and asks how my day is going, the normality of the question taking me a bit by surprise. These little interactions are pleasing for me.
When I bring her groceries round my friend and I chat through her window and she holds up a smart pair of socks she has knitted. She's proud of being able to do all the shaping and although I've never knitted socks I've read in books such as Anne of Green Gables and Little Women that turning the heel is diabolical! I'm impressed. I haven't started knitting yet, being a bit too restless to sit for long.
My afternoon exercise is a run down to the football field and round it before coming back the same way. It's clouding over and cooling down but the rain I was hoping for doesn't develop. Before I shower I pull out the spent bean plants from the garden and notice the flower seeds I planted on Day One are coming up, the poppies which I thought were too dusty to come to much green and thick in their row. How satisfying!
The afternoon ends with a call with my daughter, catching up on the news and hearing the little sounds of the baby as she wakes for a feed. We agree it's hard not to be able to visit but we're doing well at keeping in touch and I will get there as soon as it's possible to travel.