Scare!

Sheba and I went for an early morning walk yesterday, and then we went into the village for groceries and some electrical supplies at the hardware store. We went to the grocery store first. As soon as I went in, I started coughing due to an irritating tickle in my throat. 

As I moved through the store, I could not stop coughing for more than about thirty seconds, and I often had to remove my mask to blow my nose in a place where I was alone. When a staff member came to speak to me, I could barely speak without coughing.

She asked me to leave my cart and come outside where she asked me, very politely, about my cough. As soon as we got outside, however, my cough stopped, and I told her I’d been fine until we went into the store and I pointed out that I felt better once outdoors.

I stayed outdoors and she fetched my cart, got the last couple of things I wanted and checked out my groceries. I gave her my debit card to touch pay and she brought me my groceries to take home. 

I felt like a pariah. I scared people with my five-minute cough. And I got quite worried about myself, too. When I got home, I realized what had happened. I’d used a spray cleaner to clean the car yesterday and some cleaner soaked into my mask. Damn!

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The time spent in the studio was sublime. I’m going through every box and jar and throwing out things I’ll never uses—to GIRO for recycling or the garbage. I’m sorting and labeling things and cleaning all the surfaces. And … I have new shelving coming for the great many containers of doodads I have. When I’m done, I’ll get to the curtains. 

Today I plan to do a much better job of bird-proofing the windows of the studio. I found some opaque sheet plastic and so I’ll take the bubble wrap off the windows today and put nice clean cut-to-size film in its place. I feel the death of every bird too deeply to leave the glass of the windows exposed.

Once that’s done, it’s back to work organizing the studio and working on the curtain.