Catching Up

Since I have been keeping a confinement diary, I will summarize what has happened in the past three days. The answer is not much! Between fighting a recurring bad headache and watching CNN for hours as votes trickle in from the remaining toss-up states, I’ve been in a state of suspension and inertia. Today I feel much better. My headache, that usually stems from neck pain, has subsided, and the states that Biden needs to get to 300 have flipped in his favor. Because we need a resounding, unchallengeable victory! It’s the best way to assure that the outcome won’t change and we can all sleep better at night.

As for what’s happening here, the weather has turned colder but sunnier. Today André and I plan to walk all the way down the steep hill to the river and then to Truffaut‘s in Boulogne that sells a special kind of dry cat food. Then we have to schlep back up the same steep, winding road that takes us back to Bellevue. We hope to officially get away with a shopping trip that is really exercise but will not be under an hour and will definitely be more than 1 kilometer from home.

Andre’ has been doing the grocery shopping but we have been sharing the cooking. I have been fighting my tendency to eat sweets when feeling this level of duress and frustration we have probably all been feeling recently in some form or another. My success rate is about %40/60 in favor of peanuts, dark chocolate, and jars of apricot preserves. Other than CNN, we watched the entire 4th season of 10 Pour Cent - a very popular French series that airs on Netflix.. It might as well have been Greek for me. Dispute hearing aids and subtitles (in French), I had to piece the visuals together to even vaguely follow the plot. It made me question what I’m doing here if I am unable to understand spoken French on TV. News shows are better, but there is a lot I miss. Do they just speak that much faster, or is my brain no longer able to keep up?

The photo that decided to land in the middle of this blog is the view from our eastern balcony. One very lovely feature of this apartment is that there are windows and balconies on all four sides.