Day 16: Substantial silver linings

P'tite decided she wanted to sleep in my closet last night, in a nest she had made herself out of cushions from the sofa, a bean bag, and blankets, happily surrounded by stacks of her books and wearing a set of headphones unconnected to any jack in the existing mundane universe, but apparently streaming wonderful sounds from the mothership in the parallel universe she actually comes from. I woke up early and decided to go to the Monterey Market while she was still dozy and (I hoped) the lines were less awful, as we were overdue for a megashop. (I love that it is now the responsible thing to do to leave your child unattended at home while you go to the grocery store...)
The line was both awful (I arrived at opening time and there were already fifteen people ahead of me, dutifully spaced six feet apart - Berkeleyites are SO conscientious - plus I'd failed to take into account the first half hour of opening times being reserved for the 60+ crowd) AND totally worth it: once I actually got in, I whizzed around a gloriously empty Monterey Market and was back less than an hour after I'd left home with $350 worth of groceries, which I would never have believed possible given the preCOVID Piccadilly-Circus style gridlock which chronically constipates the aisles of the MM. (They had everything on our list except for AP flour, which suggests that more than one family is dealing with quarantine boredom by baking; we're going to survive coronavirus only to die of diabetic complications.) I hope they continue the policy of limiting number of people inside the shop at any one time postCOVID because overall it is totally faster, but sadly, I suspect they will not. Lines look great outside posh nightclubs, but uncomfortably Soviet outside grocery stores.
I recently got sent an article by the astronaut Mark Kelly - who should know - suggesting that routines are very important when you're stuck for long periods of time in confined quarters, but here's a word in favour of not planning: we made a list of the stuff that absolutely had to get done (seedlings, piano practice, exercise), p'tite put arbitrary times next to them, and then she went into Lego ecstatic flow state on the living room floor for the next four hours while I went into gold chalk paint ecstatic flow state on the dining room table (needs varnishing, and the chairs & middle table leaves still need ('need' is used loosely) painting, but first phase of Mission: Dragon Dining Experience is now complete):

An hour of ABBA Just Dance videos (she is always Benny, I pick Agnetha or Bjorn) qualified as our exercise for the day, followed up by a couple of hours in the garden (late-afternoon sun, seeds & weeds & overenthusiastic akebia vines), a ginger cake in honour of Grandpa's birthday (celebrated remotely via Zoom), a hot bath, the Oxford Children's History (plus fart jokes) read aloud while snuggled on the sofa under a blanket, then blissful bed at 8:30 for both of us. A similarly peaceful and unstructured day would have been unthinkable pre-social distancing, but like the line outside the Monterey Market, sometimes you need a crisis to show you there's a better way of doing things.
Oh! and my COVID19 test from last week came back negative...