Amidst all the anxiety, frustration, fear of the unknown and of what tomorrow will bring and general crappiness that started last year with our new Pandemic Reality, there has been one happy thing that’s stood out for me- my nightly conversations with my friend Bev.
Each night, after I’ve spent the day either doing stuff or not, going for a run or doing weights in the bedroom, making something for dinner that might even be something new, sitting on my couch reading too much bad news or sitting on my couch playing endless video games or just sitting on my couch, it’s been comforting and enjoyable to have a conversation with Bev.
In the Before Times Bev and I talked on the phone but of course I actually got to see her sometimes and she was always a vital part of having people over for dinner because she’d arrive early and help me with whatever overzealous meal I’d planned and then always underestimated how much time it’d take to finish.
I haven’t seen Bev in person for over a year now, except when I dropped things off at her house a few times and she’d wave from her window. But like I said, it’s been great to talk on the phone with her almost every night. We discuss the Positivity Rate here in Springfield, in her zip code and mine, in the country, and whatever critical things we’d learned from the news, coronavirus-wise and otherwise.
But then we’d veer off into many other directions. Last night I asked her how much she’d slept because she barely sleeps at all, staying up really late and getting up too early. She said she’d woken up early and started cleaning stuff, including vacuuming her mattress.
Seriously?
Mattress-vacuuming?
Is this really a thing?
Yes it is. I assume it’s part of most people’s cleaning process, vacuuming up all the dust mites lurking down there in the mattress. I know I’ve mentioned more than once that I’m not so great at maintaining any level of cleanliness in the house. And I also know there must be quite a few secret, critical components to everybody’s cleaning routine. But these are mostly a mystery to me and I feel like I’ve done a lot when I clean the bathrooms and vacuum the floors with an occasional bit of random dusting here and there.
I do change the sheets, probably not often enough, but I have never, ever even contemplated vacuuming the mattress. Who knew? Not me.
Bev said she read online that you can also rub baking soda into a mattress and let it sit there for a while and then vacuum it up. Oh brother. Surely there are legions of dust mites lurking in my mattress not to mention all over the house.
Up til the dust mite topic we’d been headed in a good direction; I told her about how I got an unbelievably killer deal on a new iphone, a deal so great that I’ve never seen such a deal and my new red iphone 12 is arriving sometime today. I was hopeful that by ending our conversation on a happy note I might get to sleep relatively quickly. But then when things veered off dust-mitedly I worried that I’d be kept up, thinking about the mites swarming all over my body while I slept.
Turns out I guess I don’t really care that much. I slept fine and today I might spend some time reading about the evilness of dust mites, but on the other hand maybe I won’t.
One other thing we touched on last night – I asked Bev about a story she’d told me about a squirrel in her yard that carried dog bones up into her tree. She’d told me this funny tale before, about seeing a squirrel carrying a huge bone into the tree but last night she sent me the photos.
That is, indeed, a huge bone.
A close-up. So funny, and such a determined little squirrel. It looks like a rawhide bone; I didn’t know squirrels ate rawhide. Maybe it just dragged it up there for protection, to bonk predators over the head with?
Do squirrels eat rawhide? What serious damage do dust mites do? Are the number of positive Covid-19 cases still rising here in Springfield?
All of these answers could be quickly found here online but instead I’m just going to wait for my phone to arrive. We’re also going for a bike ride today because it’s going to be warmer; it snowed two days ago which was ridiculous and then it was pretty chilly yesterday. It’s going to be 80 next week.
I have a few more April photos but then after that there will be some truly dazzling, iphone 12 photos which I’ll be eager to share.
Ok then, I hope you’re maintaining some sanity wherever you may be.
Grace Hughes, formerly Smith