There’s an old Chinese curse, “May You Live in Interesting Times.” Do you reckon the uneasy union of a Covid pandemic and a presidential election are interesting enough to qualify?

Sadly, the answer is yes. Together they’re the stuff of nightmares.

I always thought living a healthy life—with good food, lots of exercise, no cigarettes, and one glass of wine with dinner--would go a long way towards keeping me and my family safe through this medically interesting time. I never dreamt that age itself, regardless of life choices or underlying issues, could make us vulnerable to the virus.

Apparently, ageing does just that. It’s called immunosenescence, the gradual decline, over time, of our bodies’ immune response. Having done the right thing all my adult life, my immune system becomes senile? Doesn’t seem fair, does it?

My husband and I are in our 70’s, well past the age to bop around town during a pandemic. We wear our masks outside, keep 6 feet away from virtually everyone, and stay out of bars. We also spend most of our time at home.

So what do we do to stay sane while keeping safe?

Ron has worked at home for years, and not going out is mostly fine with him. He misses dinner at restaurants, though, and we’re both sick to death of my cooking. He also tries to walk 5 miles a day.

I’m not so diligent. I try to get out for at least a short walk every day, but when the weather’s bad I stay home.

Ron is good at entertaining himself. When there’s nothing else to do, he studies. He attends two remote German conversation classes a week and reads German detective novels in his spare time. I admire him fiercely but have no wish to follow his lead.

The truth is simple: I’m too lazy to work that hard.

There’s a limit, though, to how many junky novels I can read in a week. When the pages start to blur and my eyes cross, I grab a notebook and do some work of my own.

For two years after Charley’s Horse was published, I wrote emails and Facebook posts, and that was about it. My creative juices were all used up.

I looked to other writers for help, and their message was always the same: Keep a daily journal. Stop typing. Write in longhand.

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, especially the handwritten part, but I had nowhere else to turn. So I tried the stream-of-consciousness longhand thing, writing whatever came into my head.

It didn’t go well, but it did go somewhere.

After two very long months, journaling morphed into silly short stories, then stories that were longer and not silly at all. Almost without my noticing, I’d started to write Dog Days, the second Secret Lake adventure.

Compared to Charley’s Horse, where I knew the story before I started, writing Dog Days has been a Magical Mystery Tour. Lots of fun, great music, and an unknown destination. I can’t wait to find out how the story ends.

Enough about me.

How are you enduring the long days of this pandemic? What’s your recipe for staying sane? If you write, how do you do it? Do you keep to a set schedule? Journal every morning? Channel Jane Austen’s ghost?

How’s that going?

Please post your responses—or anything else you’d like to say--in the Comments Box below.

‘Till soon,

(I’ll tackle the election some other time.)