Isolation Day 14

Isolation Day 14 and it does look like we are headed towards Isolation Day 28 for sure and probably Isolation Day 56 before we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Having now reached Day 14 I have to admit Day 56 doesn't actually look that far away. We have mud season ahead here as the snow melts. Our backyard will be a sodden wasteland which we tend to view from the back patio for at least a couple of weeks. Our walks around the block can continue once a day and physical distancing has worked out fairly well. Younger people seem less in tune with that but I can also remember being their age and in a hurry to get where I was going. We can just stand aside (6 metres away) and let them pass as they hurry on to whatever they are doing. It is good actually for them to keep really busy. Inactivity isn't actually good for the mind.

I never did get back to looking at Chromosome One yesterday but will try to do that today. I did not like the way one of my sibling's results worked up. Four of us tested at 23 and Me and I am using those four results as my key and adding in the fifth one once I am satisfied with the four of us. The fifth one just doesn't seem to look correct and I do not have a sufficient number of matches to smooth it out. However, I did my usual checking of all the different databases and found a couple more results which might just be helpful. Will work away at that today. One new one is nearly 40 centimorgans for three of us and obviously on my paternal grandfather's side although I do not appear to have found that particular line but I still have several of my grandfather's aunts and uncles descendants to bring down to the present. But when I searched my database there was John Scuton Petty son of John Henry Petty and Sarah Anne Butt and my 3rd cousin twice removed. Matching on the Butt line means that he is a double 3rd cousin (and on my paternal grandfather's side as his mother was Maria Jane Knight whose mother was Louisa Butt. I shall have to look at that today but the individual who tested the line was only 20 years of age so I am not likely to find very much.

The puzzle is doing really well. The top is all finished now. It is a thousand pieces; we tend to enjoy that size. It is not so big that it sits for weeks but large enough to be a challenge that just keeps bringing us back again and again through the day.

The United States our next door neighbour has a staggering number of COVID-19 cases. The United States is in a position that I have never seen it in throughout my seventy four years of life. I am used to looking at our great neighbour to the South and admiring how efficiently they have handled a number of crises. But this time the Centre of Disease Control (CDC) just has not been able to control the situation in their usual efficient manner. Generally they appeared to have worked with a fairly free hand unfettered by government controls and they have done it very well. SARS they managed extremely efficiently. I prefer our Medical System here in Canada but they appeared to have made theirs work for them down there. My prayers are with them very much. I can hardly believe that New York is going through such a crisis.

On the home front, I now have both pairs of reading glasses out of play. My husband will try to put the arm back on today. That isn't getting repaired at the Glasses Shop for a while I suspect. 

We made a pound cake the other day (actually it probably weighed closer to three pounds as it is a large 12 inch tube pan. We cut it up into six pieces and freeze five of them. I love it buttered but that comes out of my childhood and English grandparents who buttered their cake to eat with their tea. I copied them as I really enjoy butter on my cake more than icing.

Last night we actually had shrimp for dinner, sweet potato and beans with raw vegetables and crusty bread dipped in an olive oil/spice mixture to start. Our meals are really quite interesting as we have oodles of time to plan them. We stocked up on frozen fish before the great Isolation began. But we also have frozen meat balls, frozen meat patties, frozen pork chops, frozen chicken thighs, frozen ham slices and my favourite eggs but fresh (three dozen in the refrigerator at the moment from a farm about ten kilometres away). I really do dislike freezing my meat; I never think it is quite as nice as fresh. We also bought a large bag of brown rice and although I really prefer white rice in rice pudding we make enough to have a rice pudding every time that we make rice.

We bought a couple of extra bags of flour, some yeast and other baking needs and have done all of our baking of cookies, cakes, etc since the beginning of February. Our new mixer has proven to be very handy. The arthritis in my hands has made it difficult for me to bake the last couple of years but together we are back working away on baking together. We are ready to make bread if need be but I suspect that probably will just be because we want to and not because our country has shut down so much that bread making isn't happening.

The weather is warming up here although still below freezing most nights. The snow is melting and probably early April will see the old piles of it gone. There can still be new snow but it doesn't last long especially once it is April. Easter will be quiet this year. It is Ed's birthday on the 16th and usually we have family to celebrate but not this year. Perhaps we will order food in from the Mandarin. Will think about that as we can always go to the Mandarin sometime down the road when the quarantine is lifted and life returns to normal. Eventually it will. When I was a child there were several quarantines of city blocks in London and they would last a little while and then the signs would come down again. This will be longer; the longest that I have ever seen in my life but it too will pass. In the meantime, we will all just hunker down and wait for the bright sun of the summer and make physical distancing work for us so that eventually we can all get back to work at whatever it is that we retired people do and the younger people can get on with their working lives.