How quickly life changes

Today was supposed to be the start of our road trip to Gettysburg, Charleston, Savannah, Nashville then onto Lafayette, Indiana to see the kids on the way home. However, as we are all aware, life took a complete detour not just here in Canada but around the world. As of today, there are more than 373 thousand cases of COVID-19 worldwide and 16,319 deaths, and growing exponentially. Not only are we not able to travel, but we are not to leave our house unless absolutely essential.

Day 1 of our trip, the leg from Ancaster, Ontario to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania should have been pretty simple had we been able to go. Crossing the Canada/US border is relatively straightforward, although often irritating as customs officials feel the need to ask totally pointless questions and make arbitrary decisions (once my official government issued ID was not adequate to prove I actually resided in Ontario, but my Chapters bookstore receipt was …) but it is such a commonplace thing to do that we rarely even think twice. However, as of last Friday the unprecedented step was taken to close the border to all but essential travel, something unheard of where the majority of Canadian live close to the border, and we cross routinely for work or pleasure and there is a constant flow of goods.

Instead of loading up the car for our trip, we are loading up our pantry, medicine cabinet and Kindles, and checking on pet supplies and the liquor cabinet. Grocery stores, pharmacies and liquor stores remain open and restaurants provide take-out, but we have seen things change day by day so are doing our best to be prepared.

We are fortunate in having returned from our travels in early February so are not required to self-isolate, but are remaining in as much as possible. Luckily we both like to read, and are able to load up our Kindles or download ebooks from the library, and may have a few books around the house that haven’t been read yet. Ok, more than a few … We also have cable TV and Netflix, and have subscribed to BritBox for a while to give us more choices of things to watch especially as we can’t pick up DVDs at the library now. And it is interesting to see that more events are popping up on Facebook, such as Alan Doyle had a ‘live concert’ today in support of Kids Help Line, and Louise Penny, a favourite author, is having a session Wednesday afternoon. Maybe events like these have been happening before, but I haven’t been aware or participated in the past.

It is also time to dig out jigsaw puzzles like we did at Christmas. This time I have a rollout storage pad so we can still use the dining table if needed without rushing to finish the puzzle first. The puzzle to work on now is, appropriately enough, cats and books! This will be fun and keep us amused for a while. Hopefully our house won’t look quite like this at the end, whenever the end might be. So far we only have 2 cats, probably more books than this but not all in one room. That would be silly!