“I’m hunkering down,” Rebecca told me.

I know what she means. My friend Rebecca just returned from a road trip she made after a lot of careful consideration. First, her mother was sick. Then, she fell and broke her hip. Rebecca’s mother is 90 and she did not seem to be getting better. Rebecca decided she needed to go visit her.

Rebecca and her daughter drove across three states for the visit. Rebecca said it was a wonderful trip and she bonded with her daughter as never before. Her mother is doing a little better now.

“She’s still 90. But she knows I love her,” Rebecca said. That was the purpose of the trip, after all.

I was a little jealous of Rebecca, I’ll admit. My husband, Peter, and I have gone exactly nowhere -- unless a trip to the dentist counts. Even going to the dentist was kind of exciting. It felt like some sort of exotic escape, not simply an occasion to have the plaque chipped off my teeth. I suspect I talked too much to the dental hygienist, who had a job to do that was not made easier by my chatting.

But I won’t be going back to the dentist for a while and, like Rebecca, I’m hunkering down. Peter and I still visit his sister, Lori, who is fighting cancer, so we are being particularly careful. It’s getting cold, people are moving indoors, and there doesn’t seem to be much reason to expect anything will change anytime soon. I think my whole notion of what constitutes a special occasion is shifting.

Another friend, Yvonne, comes by with her dog, Remington, at least once a week. She used to just stop when she was walking by and, if I saw her, I’d come out and give Remington a treat and we’d catch up. Now she rings the doorbell.

“Remington!” I holler at the top of my lungs.

Remington goes crazy with excitement and I come out and sit on my front steps and chat with Yvonne. Sometimes Peter joins us. He tosses goldfish crackers to Remington who, since the start of the pandemic, has really improved his catching skills and now routinely catches six out of six goldfish that Peter tosses.

“Great job!” Peter tells the exuberant dog. “I think you’re ready for the circus!” Remington is proud, I can tell.

Yvonne and I will chat for up to a half an hour, or whenever Remington gets too bored and impatient to stand another minute, and she always promises to come back soon. I don’t remember get-togethers like this being so important before. But they are terribly important when we are all hunkering down.

I hear a lot of people talk about how we will remember the times we are living through now. Some of the predictions are far-reaching and world-altering and industry-changing and they could be right.

But I think I will remember playing games with Remington, and looking forward to Yvonne’s next visit, and reading to Lori on her deck, and watching the moon rise with Peter -- with nowhere to go, and a fading memory of where we would go if we could.

We are all hunkering down now and, while I’m sure the world will get larger and more exciting again, right now it is quiet and small, and I am learning to appreciate the small and quiet things.

I called up my mom, whom I haven’t seen in almost a year. “Nothing happening here!” I tell her.

“Nothing happening here either!” she responds. And that seems to be OK.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

Today I will get Blue again.

Blue is the anxious Italian mastiff that I dog-sit on Wednesdays while his owner, Bill, works in the office. The new procedure is that I walk down to Bill’s house, fetch Blue, and bring him back to my home. This seems to work better than having Bill drop him off. When Bill does that, Blue hangs onto Bill’s legs and tries to avoid coming in my house like a petulant 4-year-old trying to avoid day care -- which is exactly what he is.

When I go to Blue’s house, Bill has already left, but he’s not been gone so long that Blue is tempted to eat any of the furniture.

The first time I went there, I was a little concerned. Blue is a very large dog with massive jaws and a loud bark. I didn’t want to open Bill’s door if Blue thought I was an intruder.

So, as soon as I got into Blue’s backyard, I started singing, “Blue! Oh, Blue!” in my most endearing singsong voice. By the time I got to the door, Blue was waiting, tail wagging. When I reached for his leash, Blue was over the moon. “She’s come to rescue me!”

I went from evil babysitter to emancipator just like that.

Once Blue gets to my house, it’s a nonevent. Blue lies on his bed and sleeps most of the day. His eyes flicker open when I walk around the room and every so often, he sighs loudly. I imagine he’s letting me know that I’m a little dull, but my company is better than nothing.

I like having an animal with me when I work. For several years I had a cat named Lucy. Lucy was with me during my divorce, when I lived alone and cried a lot, and we became very close. Lucy was deaf, which made a lot of folks pass her by at the animal shelter. I didn’t mind that Lucy couldn’t hear. I talked to her anyway, and when I wanted her attention from another room, I just flashed the lights and she came running.

Lucy was my constant companion but, like office mates everywhere, she could be troublesome.

I distinctly remember the morning I left my computer on overnight. I came downstairs and saw Lucy at my computer. She had managed to open Excel and had a document populated with strange symbols and numbers. She had opened Word and somehow made it so that if I opened any document in a file, every other document in that file also opened. Finally, she had a Google search going and was looking up the meaning of the word, “Itgy.” I am not making any of this up.

Of course, the last action is the easiest to explain. It is said that every cat has three names: a familiar name, a fancy name, and a secret name that only the cat knows. I could only conclude that by sneaking up on her as I had, I had uncovered Lucy’s secret name -- and it was Itgy.

Blue doesn’t seem likely to mess with my computer and, even if he’s sleeping most of the day, I can tell he likes having me talk to him. The truth is, I’d be talking whether he was there or not. But it’s good to have some company while I work.

Every so often, I write something that surprises me or that I like. I read it aloud and say, “Blue! What do you think?”

Blue heaves an enormous sigh. And he’s right. It still needs work.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

I get stomachaches. I get them with regularity and always have.

“It’s just gas!” my mother says, and, of course, she’s right.

My mother tells me I get stomachaches because I have the “Benson stomach,” by which she means that I have the same stomach she has, which is the same stomach her mother had, which my grandmother inherited from her mother -- who was a Benson.

It seems a little sad that the only time the Benson family comes to mind is when I have a stomachache. Seriously, I know almost nothing about the Bensons except that they were Swedish farmers prone to indigestion. It’s not much of a legacy.

Yesterday I had a doozy. It started during my hike. I had eaten nothing recently and eaten nothing different so there was no logical reason to suddenly get a bad stomachache shortly after I started my hike, which typically takes an hour and forty-five minutes.

“It will get better soon,” I said as I walked. It did not.

I got to the halfway point in my hike and somehow felt the stomachache should realize that I had hiked for nearly an hour and respond appropriately. It did not.

Whenever I get a stomachache, I remember stomachaches of the past. I distinctly remember my 16th birthday being ruined by a stomachache. I went to a restaurant famous for its spareribs. I haven’t eaten spareribs in years, but I can still remember how I was looking forward to those.

My family and I were served our spareribs and I had to leave the restaurant after what seemed like a single bite. I’m pretty sure my family packed up the meal and joined me almost immediately, but I still remember being in the backseat of the car with an awful stomachache on my 16th birthday, overwhelmed by the unfairness of life.

By now, I should know something about stomachaches. I know, once one starts, I must not eat anything. If I eat anything, I will make it much worse and it will last much longer.

In spite of knowing this all my life, I cannot tell you how many times I have sat down to eat, felt a stomachache coming on, and decided “just this once” I can eat a little more (usually really fast) and everything will be fine. Everything is never fine when I do this.

So, now I tell my husband, Peter, “I’m getting a stomachache. If I eat, I will suffer.” Somehow, saying it aloud to another person makes me more accountable. If I then go back into the kitchen and fill my plate, I am proving to Peter (and myself) what an idiot I am.

I can go for months without a stomachache. I can persuade myself that stomachaches were something that happened a long time ago and have nothing to do with me anymore. I start to think they will never happen again. It’s nice thinking this. It’s also not true.

But maybe dwelling on pain isn’t the best idea.

Surely, in my life, I can expect a lot worse than a stomachache to come my way. Intellectually, I know this, and yet I spend almost no time contemplating future pain. Maybe living in denial isn’t the worst thing I can do. It isn’t fun to anticipate pain and I’m not sure it’s useful.

Instead, I try to notice all the days I feel good and I try to be grateful. Yes, there will be more stomachaches because I come from a long line of gassy farmers. But today, I feel fine.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION