Where have I been?  At home, of course.

I have just spent the first three months of this year / decade getting my yard cleaned up from last fall. While my energy is much better this year than it was last year, I find that everything takes more time than it used to. Some of this is because I’m moving slower, being careful how I move about, so I stay upright.

I’m so thankful for my lovely flowers all blooming now – a perfect place to be when I can’t be anywhere else. Having been here for 23 years, I’m watching each tree and plant put on its spring finery, one after the other, in perfect order, just as they have in previous years.

It occurred to me last week that perhaps our Father in heaven has grown tired of our noise and nonsense, and lowered the volume. I’m not suggesting that God is responsible for the virus, but like many of His creatures, He never lets an opportunity go to waste.

This idea came to me as I noticed last week that my house phone was silent after years of constant daily robo calls. The junk mail has mostly stopped. I don’t watch TV, so perhaps your home is not as quiet as mine.

And it’s not just in the U.S. that life had become frantic. Although we barely hear anything about the rest of the world, Israel can’t get a government together, Venezuela is a disaster, Great Britain is tied up in knots, and everywhere there is unrest and uncertainty.

After I got home from Florida last summer at the end of June, I’ve been mostly at home, so my days now are not much different than they have been the last nine months. When I considered travel for this year, none of the gatherings I might attend were in places I wanted to go. I registered for a weekend with the basket makers in Visalia, but we’ll do it next year instead of this month.

I spent August and September cutting back a wall of ivy that I had neglected for too many years. I reorganized closets and drawers, donating clothes and household linens I no longer used.

I have a whole set of new routines that take up my time. Near the end of 2019, my dentist told me I had a gum infection. I have had crummy teeth since I was six years old. Seventy years later, I only have front teeth left and the uppers and lowers don’t come together in a useful way, which limits what I’m able to eat.

My dentist, bless her, is trying to make things better. She removed the tooth which was the source of the infection, and has installed braces on my lower teeth. Braces are different now than they were when I was fifteen. I’m spending a huge amount of time putting on wax to minimize pain on my lip, removing wax, cleaning up residue from the wax, and threading floss between the wires.

I’ve been using gummy vitamins for several years now. After the arch wire slipped out of the bracket on the end tooth, I decided I shouldn’t eat them, at least not whole, so now I’m cutting them up in teeny, tiny pieces every day with the kitchen scissors.

When I’m not in the yard or dealing with my teeth, I’ve been reorganizing the sea shells that I have collected for over fifty years. I’ve started reading those books that I keep saying, “I’ll get to someday”.

I had planned to work in my studio this winter when it rained, but it didn’t rain. So, I’m still trying to balance the yard time with the art making time, and so far, the yard is winning. The one thing I’m missing is meeting with my mixed media friends twice a month.

Individually and collectively we have been given an opportunity to reflect on what our lives have become, what we truly value now, and how we might want to make some adjustments. Let’s not waste it.