Ena I went out for walk/run yesterday. I run, she walks. We went over to the Burke-Gilman trail that runs along Lake Washington. I ran 5 miles and she walked 3 (I would guess). She went north towards Bothell. I went south towards Magnussen Park. We met back up along the trail near the car.

On the drive home I thought, “this is the kind of night where I would say, ‘Let’s go to Ray’s Boathouse tonight'”. Ena would have said, ‘That sounds marvelous'”. But I didn’t say that because we are still staying very safe. Instead, we came home and made dinner for the umpteenth time. We talked about how this is the kind of night when we would have gone out. We talked about how we weren’t going out then though.

The 41 Bus was ahead of us. This is the bus that we would walk to for a quick hop downtown on the weekend or durning the day on a weekday vacation. It is a great bus. It goes south of us about a mile and half then it gets on I5 and heads straight downtown. But we aren’t riding busses or going downtown.

There are more jets overhead now. It was eerily quiet in March and April without jets or seaplanes. But now, we hear a few seaplanes and hear more jets. We were planning on a long weekend by seaplane up to Victoria, BC. However, that trip is out, as is travel by plane for probably 9 more months.

All those things that we did spontaneously – “Let’s go out tonight!”, “Let’s go downtown today”, “Let’s go to San Francisco” – are now outside our stay-safe options. Instead, meals are planned out well in advance to minimize shopping trips. Where we walk and run is limited to the places where we know we can easily social-distance during our outings. We do, occasionally get take-out from a restaurant, but that is rare.

Everything is planned and controlled to reduce our chances of catching COVID-19. There really is very little that is spontaneous in our lives anymore. I really miss the spontaneous outings, the people watching, and the travel. I have grown tired of the small safe circle we have drawn in order to stay safe. I truly do not want to catch COVID-19 and I really don’t want Ena to catch it. So, we stay inside our safe routine.

Someday, we will be spontaneous again, I hope.