I think X and I are getting along better than ever during quarantine.  I think the basic reason is because we have to.

It used to be I’d spend a lot of the workweek here alone, trying to make things neat and tidy, annoyed at things that he left untidy or that just will never be tidy while he lives here.  I’d also be simultaneously annoyed when he wouldn’t come home till late, not caring about me; and annoyed when he DID come home before late, wrecking my solitude.

Now he’s just always there.  I don’t have to adjust between being alone and not being alone, and I can just plain give up on tidiness.  The dining room is an example.  It’s his home office now, and his computer and stuff are there on one end of the table.  No picture-perfect dining room with a vase of tulips in the center of the table for me.  So I don’t even try.  So I end up less frustrated.

Also he is less tired and more happy.  Less tired from not commuting.  Happier, I don’t know why; being less tired, for one, but also, I think he kind of thrives on uncertain crises just like this one.  He knows he can’t do anything about it, so he just whistles through the shitstorm as best he can.

Beatrice, best goat in the world, looking stunning.

I’m still tracking Vermont COVID-19 stats, but I’m retiring the stay-at-home spreadsheet as it no longer inspires me.

We continue to crush it.  But the curve will not literally flatten.  Even if it’s just one or two, there always seem to be new cases.

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger

Well this was a juicy yarn! The story of what happens to a four-way collection of friendships and marriages when a new school for “gifted” children prepares to open in a small Colorado city.

Semi-spoilers ahead!

“Semi” because you can surely see it coming. But I didn’t much mind that the big reveal was my least favorite plot hinge – secret parentage!! OMG!! Who you thought was your daddy ain’t your daddy! Because it wasn’t really the point of anything. The point was how the competition and blind ambition to have each character’s children acknowledged as “gifted” tore apart friendships and marriages.

I thought Rose’s blow-up at the book’s climax was almost cartoonish, unfortunately. Her character was something of a cipher. She never really felt like a neuroscientist to me. And I thought she was unduly mean to her husband, mainly at the end; but infidelity is another plot device, like unknown parentage, that kind of leaves me uninterested. But I shouldn’t quibble about how realistic a portray of a scientist Rose was; I’m always bitching that I want more STEM characters in novels; SO tired of protagonists who, suprirse!, are novelists… actually, more often they are thinly disguised as some other kind of artist. I’m glad Holsinger went out and did a bit of research as to what a neurological doctor’s day might be like.

I was definitely nailed to this book; thumbs up. ( )

This quarantine thing is really working well for me.  I really have next to nothing to complain about.

And Vermont in general, and Chittenden in particular, BTW, is totally SQUASHING it.