Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Going out...

 February 26, 2025


The computer monitor that I’ve been using for the past several years is the largest monitor I have ever owned. The bottom edge measures about 26 inches across, and the side edge about 16 inches high. Additionally, the monitor is slightly concave. I sit about a foot and a half back from it, and it stands on my desk in front of my full-sized office window. There are about three inches between the bottom edge of the monitor and my desk, which allows me, when I bend over slightly, to see a tiny little sliver of about two inches through that window to the outside world. Of course, there is a lot of window above the monitor, but that just lets me see the sky and a few of the branches of our walnut tree—through the necessary springtime sunscreen of a bamboo curtain.

I tell you all this because yesterday for the first time in about two and a half weeks enough snow had melted from the bottom of the window that I could in fact see the roof of my car and the lower part of the post that holds the “no parking” sign on the other side of our street.

And I am very hopeful that later today I will finally be able to leave my house, go down the porch steps, to the walkway, then go from the walkway down the sidewalk to the neighbor’s driveway so I can get onto the street and walk to my car. Yes, I have been housebound since February 7th. Although, to be honest, on the Monday of that week I couldn’t get out and about either. Here is where I thank the driver of the snowplow on that day for loading up our sidewalk. I really shouldn’t complain. They’re usually very careful not to do that.

This is the first winter ever where I have been restricted in my movements for more than a couple of days. Oh, there has been the odd day when I haven’t wanted to venture out in recent years past due to the wind, the cold or the precipitation. But this is the first time when I really couldn’t. We ended up with a lot of ice on our steps, and then snow on top of the ice, to the extent that the steps down from the porch were dicey to use the entire time. And I will admit that since my daughter was very worried that I would fall and hurt myself, I agreed to stay put.

I am sure that you can imagine that at this point, I’m more than a little antsy to just get out.

Fortunately, during this weeks-long confinement, we’ve not been without anything. Our daughter has still gone to work on all but that first really bad snowfall day. And once out, she is able to stop to get whatever we might be running low on, or just plain want, on her way home. I usually try not to ask her to do this, because I am aware that she works hard and by the end of her day she’s tired and just wants to get home. Under normal circumstances, I go out during the day to whichever local store to get whatever we want/need, so she doesn’t have to.

Of course, these last weeks have not been normal. And I will confess that it may have been a tad passive aggressive on my part to notify her of several more things we have been running out of over the last few days. But honestly, when I can’t get out to get those few items myself, someone else has to do it, and unfortunately for her, that’s her.

Yesterday, quite a bit of the snow that we received during those two huge stormy days melted. Our daughter has done a good job of driving back and forth over the patch of road at the curb where we park—running the snow that had been left there down, as it were, for ease of movement.

We’re heading out, David and I, in a half hour or so. We’ll go to one of our two grocery stores here in town—the one we used to use all the time before the prices soared. We have a small list, because in winter, we can’t use our grocery wagon, so what we buy we carry up the steps and into the house. And since we’re going to be out anyway, we’ll make a stop on the way home at his favorite eatery for lunch.

And be grateful to finally have a change of scenery.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury


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