I'm Just Visiting This Planet

How great to be able to post about summer plans, even though one set of plans was precipitated by my dad's death. A big part of our summer (unplanned for!) is cleaning out the house on Rhodes Street. My dad died on May 29th, at 99 years and 4 months (although I’ve been saying 99 ½). The picture below was taken on January 11, 2020, Dad's 98th birthday. We were at Jonathan's in New Hyde Park. Jonathan's was dad's favorite restaurant, and where we had the funeral lunch. We moved into the house on Rhodes Street in New Hyde Park in 1955 and although we cleaned it out a bit when mom died in 1998 there is still a ton of stuff, including furniture, that nobody wants.  My sister Gini, my brother-in-law Bob, Anne, and I have spent five full days working on this over the last six weeks. Two of those days included filling a dumpster with the help of our cousin Jack. The plan is one more day of work and then we’re hiring someone who specializes in cleaning out houses. Once it’s ...

 Note: This entry was inspired by my friend Butch Armstrong-you can read his post here  https://marshallbutcharmstrong.com/2021/02/23/what-have-i-done-a-walk-through-of-my-employment-history/ It's kind of fun to look back on our working lives, isn't it? Butch made me remember all of the parents who entrusted their kids to me when I babysat all through high school. In college, I typed papers for $$. Summers during college I worked at Unicard, a credit card company, where I looked through printouts of people's credit when they charged something. Back in the "old days" when you used your credit card, the merchant would call the company and they (me!) would check to make sure that you had enough credit to cover the purchase. That job convinced me that I never wanted to do that for a living! Student teaching during my senior year of college convinced me that I wasn't meant to be a high school math teacher. After graduating from college I applied to VISTA-remember V...

This has been some year. If anyone had told me in March that I’d still be staying at home in December I’d have either thought they were joking or thought they were crazy. When our trip to Santa Fe with Jane LaFazio and the Madeline Island School of the Arts was postponed from March 2020 until March 2021 I thought that we’d be fine. Ha! Always, I am reminded of that wonderful Yiddish saying, “Man (and woman) plans, God laughs.” And so here we are, still staying at home, worrying and praying for the over 3,000 Americans who are dying every day .That’s 9/11 every single day. And over 300,000 Americans dead  and over 1.6 million dead world wide, according to The New York Times. And some people in America can’t see past their own noses to put on a mask. How selfish! In some ways this is the perfect Christmas to remember John Lennon’s Happy Christmas (War is Over) song. Happy Christmas everyone!

I can't believe that we've been doing "this" for nearly nine months now. The last time I ate in a restaurant, inside, was March 3, 2020, at Lefteris Gyro in Tarrytown. I remember it, not only because it was the last time I ate inside at a restaurant, but because at the time it was so, well, ordinary. I am sooooo tired of thinking about food. I used to enjoy reading recipes, planning what we would cook, thinking about shopping. Now it's all just one big pain in the butt. Shopping means getting up at 6 AM to get to Whole Foods by 7 on Friday morning or DeCicco's by 7:30 pretty much any day. It means making sure to "follow the arrows" and not get too close to anyone. What fun! When we mentioned that we were tired of cooking Christina, who works at Fred's Auto Repair, suggested we try  Blue Apron . She and Fred were both pretty excited about it.  A plug for Fred's, where we have taken our cars since 2002. The only auto repair shop where I once ...

 Things are weird in the Corey-Knapp household. I just found a draft of a post I wrote in July but never published. Oh well, that's old news. We're going a little stir crazy. Oh, we've been out of the house. We've gotten haircuts, gone shopping, been to the dentist (both of us), and even a few doctor's appointments. Okay, more than a few--remember, we're old. But now that we're both retired we would like to be traveling, to somewhere other than Whole Foods. And now this (as John Oliver would say)-the election! I am stunned that so many people could vote for Trump after these past four years, especially after these past eight months. But I'm particularly stunned that people who call themselves Christians could vote for him. When I see signs like "Catholics for Trump" or learn that friends of mine think he's done great things for the economy, I realize that we live in two different Americas. A friend recently posted on Facebook "Well, ...

But I do know that I’m getting kind of tired of this. By this I mean: Grocery shopping every ten days or so because it has become so nerve-wracking. Zoom meetings-I am so over Zoom. Remembering my mask when I go out Trying to remember what “going out” was like You get the picture. And I’m starting to think that “this” is the “new normal.” At least the garden looks good, the garden we weren’t going to have because we were supposed to be traveling. I like this picture so much that I made it one of my “virtual backgrounds” for when I’m on Zoom on my iPad. Garden gate with Tibetan prayer flags How are you doing?