Friday, February 14

Valentine's Day is day 21 in quarantine, but day 1 for anything I do today. Living is about managing risks, and today feels like it's full of them.

Xiaolin gets breakfast in bed.

I make Xiaolin breakfast in bed: pancakes and coffee. Her shoulder is starting to feel better. It's a sunny day, and we tidy up, take care of our plants on the balcony and move our trees around the living room to get more sun. I go outside three times, which is unprecedented. The first time, we go out with a couple of chairs to sit on the parking garage roof. We see some people leaving the school with a coupon, which we don't have since no one seems to realize we are the only occupants of the "foreign teacher's dormitory" building on campus. It's ok, we don't want to go anywhere, anyway.
After a couple of hours of fresh air and sunshine, we go pick up Xiaolin's shoulder medication in a tiny automatic mailbox on campus. We decide to order food, made by unvetted strangers, delivered to our house. It feels dangerous and romantic in a star-crossed lovers kind of way. Xiaolin wants to order KFC. I am a vegetarian; still, I suppose it's more of a preference than a rule; after all, I've eaten giant spiders and scorpions in Asia in the past, and I'm feeling sentimental.

Grandpa Wood and Great Grandpa Pappy Wood, Canadian Sports Hall of Famer.

So I pick it up when it arrives at the gate, and later head out again because Xiaolin's baba sends us another package as we are preparing for another online class; the first one with a new group for her tutoring school. He's grown a duck, on his rooftop garden, baked it, and shipped it across town for us as a little gift.

The new video class is just getting started, I've got my phone and laptop set up, and I sit down on the couch. It takes a minute to realize the sofa is wet. Without being weird, as six ten-year-olds and their families watch me introduce myself, I realize I'm sitting in dog pee because my old dog Ben Ben is angry I went out three times on a sunny day and can't figure out why I'm not walking him anymore. I wish I could tell him it's for his own safety. Stoicism is teaching screaming children in a puddle of dog pee without complaint until you can keep them busy enough to sneak away and change your clothes (and wash the couch cover on a break). We finish the class with a song.

Ukulele and English class makes for happy kids.

I still give Benben a good rub after class, the boy is getting something old.
The duck is fatty but delicious. We watch Tom Hanks in The Terminal and laugh at how outlandish his own quarantine is.