Slowing Down

 Most of my posts here are an easy way to post my Project Quilting entries, but this time, I'm taking a moment to self- evaluate how I'm doing in the time of Quarantine.

The good news first:

•   My husband finally gave up on having our spatially challenged son to rebuild the stairs and did it himself. While it's still not safe enough for me to walk them, the structure is there and son can finish them. 
•   We have a plan for the house issues.
• The weather is nice enough for us to enjoy working in the yard, although I am struggling to reclaim certain planting areas and I need to make decisions soon regarding gardening. 
•  I have a new great-nephew, born this month and he's cute as a button. 
• I have enjoyed connecting with family on the phone or via zoom. 

 My concerns:

• I still don't know how my job can restart. While I am lucky enough to be getting unemployment, I am concerned that it will end before my job can restart. 
•  I believe that our government has given up on having a better plan for a response to the Virus and have decided that the deaths are viewed as "acceptable losses" rather than seeing them as US citizens dying needlessly. It will speak to their morals and our morals as a nation forever. 
•  My family has done a good job of social distancing, but as soon as we open up, we are all at risk. 

 So, while the bigger concerns have been swirling around, my day to day activities are how I deal with them. My days generally look like this: I wake up at 4:30 or 5:00 and make coffee, drink coffee and listen to the news while I wake up. I make my house for the day. I've had big quilt projects that I have been meaning to do but never seemed to have the time to do. At first, I was working extremely hard on them, often until 2 in the afternoon. Now that I've had 2 months home, I've done most of those and I'm slowly working on other things. Like, I've collected patriotic fabrics for a few years, so now I'll do one of those. Never high on my list, but here we are. 

 I work on those until 12 or 1 now and then I eat lunch and watch tv. I take a nap. I wake up in time for decide on what dinner will be (with wavering enthusiasm) and then we settle in for a movie of some sort which I may or may not sleep through. Then bed. 

  My hours are so messed up and my enthusiasm for projects have waned somewhat. I'm trying to keep myself busy with projects that are not all that important. I get a level of satisfaction when I've completed a quilt top, especially one I liked designing.

    But, I feel like speaking of the Virus needs to be said in an art quilt and I'm just not there yet. Perhaps because the story isn't finished and I've yet to come to terms with all of what it means. Who made good choices and bad ones? Who did ridiculous things during it and how did it affect us all? Can I live with the choices I've made? What will my choices be going forward? How do I represent my feeling on the insanity I witness? At some point, it will come about. I'm just now starting to allow my thoughts to come. 

  I've gone through so much of my fabric stash, which is a good thing. After this patriotic one, perhaps I'll work on a Fall and then a Halloween one. I have quite a bit of fabric collected for those. I just have to decide what patterns to try for those. I'm just keeping on keeping on.