Well, the cats like it. As far as they're concerned, the more we're at home to boss around, the better. Tybalt has gotten quite imperious about playing. When he utters sharp, commanding cries, and then jumps into B's living room chair and sits upright and alert, that means he expects me to turn up with a peacock feather or cat toy, PDQ. Since, being no longer a kitten, he tires out soon, we'll go through this routine several times in succession. If, instead, I head up the stairs, he gives me a reproachful look and then dashes up the stairs before I do, figuring that means the playing will be taking place up there instead. Often enough he's right.
Maia's preference is to sneak up behind and startle you with plaintive chirps which mean she's hungry. This often starts an hour or two before mealtime. And the amount of feline tramping around on the bed to get us up for that meal, if it's a day we're sleeping in, is pretty hefty. B. has renamed the cats Pestilence and Famine, respectively.
Though Tybalt is wont to play sous-chef and get in the way of everything while I'm cooking, and then climb up on me from the kitchen counter and insist on being held for a while, it's Maia who prefers to sneak up when you're not looking and start munching on any food that's inadvertently been left out. She didn't used to do anything of the sort before Tybalt was around: for all his pestering, he's given her new frontiers of cat behavior.
For our own part, it's peaceful. There's a reason we insisted on having a 3-bedroom home: hers, mine, and ours. She works in her room, I work in mine, and we don't bother each other. This is literal: B. is still working her regular paid job, just from home from her own computer. With breaks, it's a 10-hour day four days a week, and she might as well be at the factory. Meanwhile I'm in the middle of editing papers for the next issue of Tolkien Studies, so that's a job even if my reviewing job has completely disappeared. When we're not working, we live as we normally do, which was mostly indoors anyway. You'd see us both reading, or me reading and her practicing violin, or me cooking dinner followed by her washing dishes, sheltering or no.
Last month I went out to do groceries, which are really the only thing we need on this timescale that has to be gone out and acquired, more often than was ideal. Judging from the prospective statistics, it looks like April will be the cruelest month (or did somebody already say that?), so I'm trying to be much more restrictive about literally staying in. Our insanely noble nephew has volunteered to buy groceries for us, since services are completely backed up. We prepared a spreadsheet of our usual purchases, checked off the ones we need this week, and got the first delivery late last evening. (His local grocery is, unlike most, still open until 11 pm, and it's quite empty in the late.) I met them at the door, took the frozen and other perishables in for B to wipe down, and we're leaving the rest in the garage for a day to lower the risk of infection.
Other problem began several weeks ago when I got a notice from my e-mail provider, which also hosts my personal website, that the website registration would be expiring. It wasn't clear how to pay that, or whether it'd be automatic payment like their other services are, so I called them up and asked. They said it was taken care of. Well, it isn't. The website registration was up today and sure enough, the website is dead. And I can't phone them until Monday to try to get this handled again.
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