19 Minutes a Day

 October 31, 2020 Halloween has arrived. The house is decorated, the candy is bought, the social distancing guidelines reviewed!  Today Leon is at work. He landed a part-time gig doing construction projects for a Norwegian man named Tor and not Thor. He's unsure of what exactly the work entails but was vouched for my his new school bestie. I'm pumped for him to learn and it's also nice to get a few extra bucks.  Last night we bought me a dehydrator. I've been pretty fortunate with my mushroom foraging adventures and had a collection of chaga and reishi I needed to dry. Given that we have officially given ourselves permission to settle down, it's finally ok for me to acquire things I've always wanted like a dehydrator. I spent the morning looking up recipes for various dehydrated snacks and mushroom tinctures.  I got the dehydrator from Cabelas. A story that has become a family favorite. We've yet to buy any camo but Leon is gathering an excellent collection ...

 October 30/2020 I'm writing this from the cottage in my mind. I've had to time travel to complete this particular post. Time traveling is an easier task than living with the regret of missing a day three days into my "write on this blog every day for 19 minutes challenge" Yesterday we went to the cottage for the night. It's "the cottage" for us but it's a beautiful home on a Lake to our friend's Zack and Nichole. Before they even realized we were moving here they purchased it rather quickly and then had to leave it for the year while they go finish up their lives in Manitoba. She's a school teacher and he works remotely at Shopify.  Back to the cottage. It's an a-frame majestic structure with a wrap-around balcony, double garage, and a boathouse. You can walk down over a stumpy path and reach the dock. The dock sits on a huge tree-lined lake. It's about an hour away from our house but it's an hour deep into the country. The road ...

It's nearly Halloween. What a weird year. What is Halloween gonna look like during a pandemic? We live in Dartmouth Nova Scotia now, one of the few places in the world where the virus is mostly contained. As a resident of the "Atlantic Bubble" we are also assured that no visitors are allowed in without quarantining.  Halloween is on. That's what I'm saying. Children are free to trick-or-treat but with a few restrictions. For the kids: No more than 10 people in a "crew" stay 6 feet away from kids you aren't with do not sing or shout for candy? gently knock instead of using doorbells do not take treats in a situation where everyone has to reach into the container sanitize your hands regularly For the Adults (giving out candy): sit on your porch if possible to greet kids regularly clean and disinfect door handles and knobs regularly wash hands  try to have only one person give out treats use tongs or utensils to hand out treats??!? do not ask trick or t...

 19 minutes a day. Given that this is the first post I guess I should set some context. Hi, I'm Lisa and I'll be writing shit here for 19 minutes every day. Sometimes I may talk about the pandemic and existential fear, sometimes I may talk about the ghost that showed up in my dream with a blond mustache. I'm not sure what my purpose or direction is yet but perhaps we'll all find it along the way.  Where were you when the pandemic began? That's probably going to be a popular question when we all get older. I never thought I'd live through a pandemic. I had some false sense of security believing that we were past those days. "Only old-timey people had to deal with that crap" my brain would assure me.  My brain was wrong. A truly rare thing I do say. I was in Serbia when it started. My husband and I had a weird year and while still riding out some heartache and uncertainty we decided to spend 6 months in Serbia. After all, we were technically homeless, j...