Well, really more like four or five. But I’m getting there. Oh, so slowly, though. Some of that is inefficiency: I should have splurged for the wide brush and the long handle for the roller, and I didn’t. And dragging the ladder around is a pain, made worse by all the things in the middle of the floor turning the space into a teeny-tiny obstacle course.

Some of it, though, is simply physics. Or would it be chemistry? The primer dries only as fast as it dries, and trying to rush just makes drips that will need to be sanded away before I can start with the real paint. And the only thing that’s worse than that orange for the coverage is the bright green. I’m still not reconciled to living with it, but if I’d known how much time I would spend grumbling under my breath before it was gone, I might have rethought. Fortunately for me, at this point it’s too late.

This morning I reminded myself to practice happiness as I painted. The first step in practicing happiness is always to take a deep, mindful breath. But my deep breath smelled like paint fumes, of course. The second step is to think of something I’m grateful for. That’s easy right now, of course, because the world is a terrifying mess, but being grateful not to have bad things happening to me or those I love (to the best of my knowledge) is not a good kind of gratitude. It doesn’t make me happy, it makes me anxious.

My third step in my happiness practice is to check my physical well-being: is there something I could do to be more comfortable, to feel better? A snack, a sweater, a better arrangement of pillows? A cup of tea, a more pleasant scent from my essential oil diffuser, music more appropriate for my mood? Given that I was painting, the answer was basically no. A cup of tea would have been lovely, but I wasn’t going to take a break for it.

The fourth step in my happiness practice is to look for something delightful. Maybe it’s something purely beautiful, like the rhododendrons that are flowering all over the place, or maybe it’s charming, like the chickens or the sleeping cats. In a national forest, it’s remarkably easy to find something to appreciate. But in this case, I was staring at a wall and I’d been staring at the exact same wall for four mornings in a row. It didn’t give me a lot of scope to find delight.

At that point, I had to laugh at myself. I have never failed quite so thoroughly in my happiness practice. Fortunately, laughing at myself improved my mood and I started working on reframing my task, from an incredibly tedious repetition of yesterday’s chore to a careful investment in my long-term future. I started imagining what the Tiniest House would be like when I’d been living in it for a few months, a year, many years? The longest I’ve ever lived in one place is seven years: my average is a lot closer to two or three. But I pictured myself twenty years in the future, still living there. My imaginary Future Me was being very grateful to imaginary Past Me for creating such a pretty space, which made current Present Me a lot more tolerant of my efforts.

All that said, tomorrow I will be back at it. I’m not excited, but it’s going to be really nice someday very, very soon.

When I was in Arcata, a year — or maybe a lifetime? — ago, Suzanne’s stepson, J, was living in her backyard, in a building known as the Tiniest House. It is — was? — maybe the former garage, sorta remodeled for habitability. I say “maybe” because it doesn’t really look like a garage to me. If there was a garage door, it’s long-gone, replaced by a wall, and the ceiling is sloped, with skylights.

But I say “sorta” because while it has a bathroom, it didn’t (apparently) have hot water. While it has nice laminate flooring, they mistakenly installed the flooring without putting a moisture guard between it and the ground, so the floor needs to be redone. While there is a tiny kitchen area, they’d stopped construction midway through the job, so the countertop is unfinished and the cabinets have no doors, with the plumbing open to the room. There was no heat and the electricity was unchanged since maybe the 1950s?

Although J was managing fine, and had been for years, he was also talking about moving out. I claimed first dibs, if and when he did. It was theoretical. Maybe a plan for when I got tired of traveling, a few years in the future. Maybe a plan for when Suzanne retired, several years in the future. Maybe a plan for when one of us or both of us had enough money to really fix up the place as it needed.

Or, you know, maybe a plan for when the world is having a major pandemic and I’m trying to live in a street. That could be the right time, too.

So, yeah, plans for fixing up the Tiniest House have been occupying much of my attention and internet time recently. We started with the electricity: it’s now been inspected and confirmed safe by an actual electrician and an electrical wall heater has been installed. In the quest to figure out what exactly was wrong with the plumbing in order to talk to a plumber about it, we discovered that the plumbing is fine, hot water included. On our every-other-week CostCo run, I discovered that CostCo had mattresses on sale, so started my home-spending by buying a mattress.

And now I’m painting, because I am pretty sure I can live in a space that’s 108 square feet. But I am pretty sure I cannot live in a space that’s bright orange and green.

Isolation offers a lot of time for self-reflection. In the grand scheme of things, self-reflection is pretty close to infinitely more worthwhile than reading the news, following social media, or watching the death toll tick up on the Washington Post map tracker, but I’m sick of it nonetheless. The line between insight and insult is too easy for me to cross.

Yesterday Suzanne and I took the dogs to the park after dinner and while we were there, she said, “That dinner was so good.” Then she laughed and said, “Is that the fourth time I’ve said that?” Yep.

It made me laugh, though, because dinner was grilled cheese sandwiches and soup. So exciting, yes? Admittedly, the grilled cheese sandwiches were made with caramelized onions, and the soup was sweet potato with ginger, smoked paprika, brown rice and spinach, so, yeah, it was good. And the relevance is that whenever the level of self-insult rises too high, at least I can remind myself that I taught myself to cook. Making a fantastic grilled cheese sandwich is not the world’s least accomplishment.

The weather is warming up in Arcata — which means it was 48 instead of 44 when I left to go on my morning walk with Zelda, and that it might hit 62 this afternoon. I am not complaining, though, because I know how hot it is in Florida and how miserable we would be if we were living there in the van while it was 95 degrees.

Zelda actually really loves this weather. She’s always eager to walk. I keep threatening her with a harness because she wants to run and I don’t like being dragged. Yes, my 18-pound, 15-year old dog is dragging me down the street. That’s good news.

I have no other news. I’m social-isolating like a good pandemic survivor, but Arcata in general seems to be starting to relax. Maybe it’s the weather; maybe it’s that there’ve been no new cases in Humboldt County for the past six days. I’m judging the relaxation by the number of people wandering by the van during the day and the number of people I see out when I’m walking the dog. I passed seven people on my walk yesterday, feeling guilty every time for having forgotten to wear the mask that Carol kindly sent me. Masks are running about 50/50, I think.

Yesterday, I made the Washington Post’s maple-mustard chicken thighs with cabbage. The day before it was gluten-free pizza, made with pesto & goat cheese instead of tomato sauce. On Saturday, we had cornmeal-crusted rockfish with jalapeño tartar sauce. On Friday, I made meatloaf with sautéed mushrooms as the binding agent, and roasted sweet potatoes. The common ingredient? Mostly the oven. I don’t think an oven is an essential kitchen tool — I can survive without one — but I’ve been enjoying having it. (The rockfish was pan-fried, though.)

Suzanne and I are also planning lots of house projects. Her kitchen currently has multiple splotches of yellow paint on the walls, and I’m fairly sure we’ve selected the winner. Next step, primer. Tomorrow the electrician comes to update the electricity in the Tiniest of Tiny Houses, and we’ve been browsing electric wall heaters online. Also mattresses and beds. It feels weird in the midst of the worldwide pandemic to be nesting, but maybe that’s exactly the right time to be nesting.

In writing, I seem to be working on Cici 2 again, although not very efficiently. Departing the planet feels like the right choice, though. I’d like to get back into my other story, but it’s just so hard to drown out my own pandemic knowledge in order to let my characters have fun at Disney World. I’ve written some snippets, too, while trying to find a story. Here’s one I wrote last week, funnily enough several days before Jenny Crusie posted a chicken snippet on her blog. Do pandemics put chickens on the mind? Maybe…

I like chickens. 

They’re such honest animals. They’re out for whatever they can get. They’re not nice, they’re not friendly, they don’t need to be.Their survival is their highest priority. 

People use their name like it’s an insult. “You chicken.” It means you’re a coward, right? But it should mean that you’re a survivor, willing to do whatever it takes  — peck, claw, screech — to get yours. 

Okay, sure, they’re kinda stupid. Slight problem there. But still, when my brother called me a chicken, I just narrowed my eyes and glared at him. I’m not stupid like a chicken, I don’t need to fall for that. 

“Go on, Kylie. You can do it.” He shoved my shoulder blade, just a little. Not such a hard shove that it was gonna knock me down or anything, but enough that if our mom had been watching — if our mom cared anymore — I could have complained and gotten him in trouble. 

But our mom wasn’t watching. She was sitting on the couch, staring at the television, her face as blank and dead as a zombie in one of the movies we weren’t supposed to watch. You could tell she couldn’t really see what she looking at. It was all just noise and flickering light to her. Maybe not even that. 

“I’m not going down there.” The open door was like a black hole, a portal to a netherworld of nightmare. 

“We need more beans. The beans are in the basement. Someone’s gotta get them and I gotta stir the eggs or they’ll burn.” 

“I can stir the eggs,” I suggested. 

“You’re not supposed to touch the stove.” 

I folded my arms across my chest, mutinous. 

“Go on,” Bradley snapped again. “Go on or you ain’t eating tonight.” He waved his wooden spatula at me threateningly, like maybe he was going to hit my head with it. 

I pointed at him. “Touch me with that and I will peck your eyeballs out.” 

He rolled the eyeballs in question. “Go. Get one of the bags of beans. And maybe a jar of peaches if there’s still a couple on the shelf.” 

I dropped my arms. Peaches? I liked peaches. A lot more than beans. 

And if I was a chicken — not the coward kind, but the survivor kind — I’d be willing to do a lot for peaches. I eyed the door again. 

It was dark down in the basement. Dark and smelly. But peaches… 

I held out my hand. “Gimme a knife.” 

“What? No.” Bradley stuck the spatula back in the eggs and stirred. 

“I want a weapon.” 

He sighed. “Here.” He grabbed a wooden spoon from the jar next to the stove and handed it to me, shaking his head. 

Fingers tight around the handle, I approached the doorway cautiously. 

Rereading it, I so want to know what’s waiting in the basement for her. Something must be!

I admit, I am one of the obnoxious people using the pandemic to learn a new skill. But if it’s comforting, I’m being terrible about the things I actually should be doing (you know, like marketing the book I released a few months ago or writing a new book). And I’m very much enjoying learning my new skill. It’s probably not quite as soothing as Animal Crossings would be, but it’s not far off.

In actual news, yesterday was my birthday and I managed to have a really nice day, despite the end of the world busily happening. Mostly because Suzanne rocked the “giving your friend a good birthday” skill. Also because R sent me a birthday text which at least reassured me that he was alive. (Does that sound bitter? I don’t mean it that way. My sense of litost has faded and mostly I’m just really sad that he feels the way he feels. But he’s an adult and even if he weren’t, we don’t get to control other people’s feelings.)

Back to the birthday fun: the cupcake store is closed, but is doing special orders, which meant I couldn’t get a single gluten-free cupcake, but I could get a dozen of them. Carpe diem! I’m sharing, but I’ve still eaten three. They’re grasshopper cupcakes, which are chocolate with a chocolate fondant layer, and then mint buttercream icing topped with chocolate chips and an Andes mint. Just writing about them makes me want to go eat a fourth.

But after yesterday’s first cupcake, we went to the beach. An isolated, northern California style beach — the closest we came to other human beings was well within the social distancing 6 feet and probably closer to the realistic 22 feet that airborne pathogens can spread from a cough or sneeze. We brought all three dogs and I let Zelda off leash, which I don’t usually do these days since she a) can’t hear and b) can be quite forgetful, including forgetting that she’s supposed to stay near her people. But it was a big empty beach with plenty of room for her to run around within my line of view. She had a lovely time. She’s so tired today that when I went in the house for lunch today I couldn’t even convince her to raise her head off the bed, much less accompany me, but I’m sure she would say it was worth it.

After a couple hours at the beach, we came back to the house and while I spent some time on the phone, Suzanne went and picked up take-out sushi that we had pre-ordered from a local restaurant. She built a fire in the backyard fire pit and we ate our delicious sushi fireside. Afterwards, I toasted Peeps over the fire and Suzanne toasted marshmallows, having decided after last year’s Peep-toasting that they were too dangerous. Caramelized sugar is hot enough to make for a painful burn.

We sat by the fire and chatted until the sun went down and the colorful solar lanterns lit up and the fire turned to coals, then embers, then ashes. All three dogs stayed close and Tank, the supposedly feral black cat, came and sat in my lap and purred at me for a while. Fortunately, I had my lovely cloth face mask around my neck still (thank you, Carol!) so I put it back on and managed to escape without too much of an allergic reaction.

In between the beach and the fire, I checked my email and I had the loveliest email from a reader about A Precarious Magic. It was such icing on the cake of a nice day. I know I haven’t done a good job of marketing A Precarious Magic — my March goal was to rewrite the blurb, and I didn’t even manage to do that — but the book business in general has been so bad for me in the last year that I’ve really questioned why I bother. But L wrote, “your books never fail to make my days better.” That’s worth writing for. I read Suzanne the entire email and she told me to print it, frame it, and hang it on my wall, and if I had a wall, I actually might. Vans don’t really have a lot of wall space, though. 🙂

I’m not going to admit how many of the days since I started my daily drawing project have not included a daily drawing. Too many. Daily drawing has turned out to be more like, “drawing when the moon is right and I’m not traveling and the pandemic news isn’t completely overwhelming and stressful.”

But I’ve persisted, because persisting is something I’m good at, and every day is another chance to start again. And I’m actually so delighted with today’s daily drawing that I wanted to save it. Yes, I made a sphere!

I know this is probably not exciting to anyone else. I should admit that I even cheated by starting with a circle shape using Affinity Photo’s ellipsis tool. I think my next one will have to start with a hand-drawn circle, because I’ve learned that hand-drawn circles are both really hard and a basic skill that artists in training are supposed to practice a lot. But that’s not the point. I’m pleased with my sphere because believe it or not, quite a lot of learning went into creating that shape with its highlights and reflected light and shadow and smudging. Yay, me! Shine on, self.

In other news, Arcata is quiet and peaceful and I’m still feeling very relieved to be safely here. I’m trying to stay mostly isolated — the best physical distancing I can manage! — but Suzanne is essential personnel, so she’s out and about all the time. I think it’ll be a few more days before I’m 100% sure that I didn’t bring her any germs, but so far there’s no sign I gave her anything. She’s fairly gloomy about her chance of escaping entirely, though, because Humboldt County is up to 39 cases, with definite community spread, and some of her co-workers have been sick. Still, the longer she stays healthy, the better. I’m doing my part by including lots of vegetables in our meals. I can’t do much about my general feeling of helplessness, but broccoli and brussels sprouts have to help, right?

On her day off, we went to CostCo and stocked up. The freezer is full! So I’ve been cooking a lot, which I like. Last night, I sautéed sous vide pork chops, topped them with a lemon-mint pan sauce and garnished them with slices of lemon and tiny leaves of mint. They tasted great and looked quite pretty. Alas, I didn’t think to take a picture. The night before it was cod and pea pods in a spicy sauce over noodles made with brown rice and millet. The day before that it was baked cod filets sprinkled with parmesan, plus roasted sweet potatoes and broccoli. I’m pretty sure I could actually bake rocks for Suzanne and she would just add some chili-garlic sauce and say they were delicious, but I’ve been finding it very comforting to be cooking. Tonight it’s going to be, I hope, baked chicken thighs with lemon, olives, brussels sprouts, tomatoes, and goat cheese. And probably some rice to soak up the sauce, which I expect to be delicious.

First, though, I should write some more words. I suspect every writer in the middle of a project is having the same problem I’m having: how does the pandemic affect the characters? Do I pretend it never happened? Does my story take place in a pre-pandemic world? Or an alternate universe with no pandemic? I haven’t figured out my answer yet, but I suspect it’s got to be one of the latter two, because my characters are in Disney World and it’s going to be a long time before any of us view Disney with equanimity. But actually, if Akira and Zane got together in 2011, Baby Helen would have been born in 2012, so the year in this story should actually be 2013. Simpler times, and my problem is solved! Which doesn’t mean that it’s going to get any easier to write, I suppose, but at least it means I can let go of that one issue… so onward I go.

Stay safe and wash your hands!