Don’t tell me there’s nothing to do
“Countin’ flowers on the wall
That don’t bother me at all
Playin’ solitaire till dawn with a deck of fifty-one
Smokin’ cigarettes and watchin’ captain kangaroo
Now don’t tell me I’ve nothin’ to do
When the Statler Brothers sang that song back in 1966 they probably never envisioned the arrival of a pandemic like the one we’re going through now. Still, it has to rank right up there if we were to pick a theme song for the COVID-19 disaster.
The newspapers, magazines and radio/televison broadcasts are full of accounts of people bemoaning the fact that they are tired of being locked up, that the kids are running them ragged and that they miss their friends and work-mates. Young people whine about not going to the beach and not being able to hang out in their favourite bar and the elderly miss everyone.
At the same time there are just as many examples of the imaginative ways in which people have managed to stay connected. People have also developed new interests and taken up a variety of hobbies. Gardens are flourishing and vegetable plots have sprouted like never before.
Personally I have no problem. Things are just about the same at Casa Clough, Why, just the other day, with the aid of my trusty tape measure, I found out that our home is fifty-seven feet wide and twenty six feet deep. While I was at it I realized that there are just two steps from the kitchen up to the mud room but there are eleven steps from the kitchen down to the basement.
Another interesting thing that I noticed is that we have three ceiling fans – two of which have three blades while the one in the living room has five blades. Speaking of odd disparities, I realized I had never counted the tiles in front of our two fire places. It turns out that there are just sixty-four in front of the living room hearth but there are one hundred and ten in front of the fire place in the den. Who’d of thought?
Once I got into a counting mode there was no stopping me. It turns out that we have seventeen lamps. We also have fifty-four framed pieces of art or photography hanging on the various walls of our happy abode. The biggest tabulating task came with the books. All in all, paper back and hard back included, we have one thousand and eighty-six, give or take a volume. That’s down from the two thousand or so we had before I started down-sizing a couple of years ago.
Since the pandemic started about seven months ago, there always seems to be something new to keep me busy. Take the shower for instance. I took some time out of my busy day to notice that when the hot water is turned on for the hand-held sprayer it takes just five seconds to arrive. On the other hand, when you turn on the over head sprayer it takes a full eleven seconds to come out hot. How come? The water comes from the same source and the two nozzles are barely inches different in length. Then there’s my electric tooth brush. I never realized that it runs for precisely two minutes before it gives a little stutter beat indicating how long you’ve been brushing.
Nope, the Statler Brothers were right. There’s always somethin’ to do. Now if I could only find re-runs of Captain Kangaroo on cable.