When I started this blog a year ago, my goal was to preserve a record of daily life during an extraordinary time. I based the idea on the Mass Observation journals ordinary people kept during WWII in Britain. In his…
observer
The Miraculous Normal
We returned to the Rockingham County Fairgrounds for our second shot last Saturday, but this time there were no long lines. We walked in, they checked our names, we moved the next room, we each sat down at one of…
Good News
The news on the virus is getting very complicated to sort out. Once you are vaccinated, what can you do and with whom and when? What can we expect with new variants? A New York Times story today said there…
What is Normal?
The pandemic and the previous administration have been braided together so tightly that it is impossible to talk about one without talking about the other. Our knowledge of the virus, its effect on every aspect of our daily lives, our…
Carrying On
Our first post was on March 26, 2020. It is almost our blog's first year birthday. A year of recording our life during the pandemic: the spikes, the dips, the small pleasures and frustrations, the politics, the information and misinformation.…

I Got the Jab!
I feel like I just won the lottery. Yesterday morning I opened my email and discovered an invitation to go that afternoon to get my first shot of the vaccine. I panicked that maybe I had missed the window to…
Where Are We?
Just to take stock, this is where we are today, Jan. 15, 2021. Covid-19 cases are up 27% across the country in the last 14 days and deaths up 39% according to the New York Times. We are being warned…
My Head is Jangling
My head is jangling from the events of last week. Who could believe so many monumental developments could be crammed into one week: Trump’s phone call trying to change election results in Georgia, the election itself, the determination by so…
Thank You Letters
A friend, David Brown, wrote in his blog this week about a practice he has taken up this year of writing one thank you letter a week to someone who has had an impact on his life: "I turned sixty-five…

Simple Celebration
“How do you cook beef tenderloin for two?” my son called to ask. “We got a package of three short ribs and shared them,” my daughter reported. I cooked a small package of lamb chops for my husband and me. …