Reality check: Day 4 of self-isolation

 
The Lord of the Rings production picked up pace today with two requests for reading. I acquiesced, but only gave a small rendition of Frodo’s flatulent farewell to Bag End and The Shire in the first instance. I’d stopped with 2 pages to go in Chapter 3 yesterday, and Ottawacker Jr. wasn’t going to be fobbed off with a shortened story today. So the breakfast communing from stair to kitchen was lengthened by half an hour.
 
It was in the lunchtime session that things really took off though. Out came the full story reading kit: two cushions from the sofa; pillow from the armchair; blanket from under one of the cats (“sorry Charlie, my need is greater than yours”); water bottle (in case of sudden craving or appearance of trolls); chocolate cookie (made by godmother in Victoria, B.C., and shipped over specially – even allegedly contains nuts so a story-reading member of the family will not be tempted to eat it late at night).
 
And off we went. It is really gratifying to see how much he gets into it. He actually picks me up on words when I slip up – “Grandalf gimly” instead of “Gandalf grimly”, “Frudo” instead of “Frodo”. Even here I have to be on my toes. But he does actually like it. This might be an age at which I am a good father, instead of one who plays balloon football with him in the kitchen and gets him to break a tooth (the gap – that’s my fault); leaves him on the sofa while I go to get a camera and hear a dull thud ten seconds later; and teaches him that farting is funny. Actually, farting is funny, I don’t regret that. He toyed with sleep a couple of times as they met the elves in the woods (see extra picture), but he stayed the course in the end.
 
Anyway, probably time to recognize that this is a piece of cake for me. I get to stay in the basement and leave poor Mrs. Ottawacker to do the hard stuff, like telework, cook, clean, take Ottawacker Jr. for a walk, etc. All I have to do is kill time.
 
In other news, I rearranged the basement to create more of a writing space for myself – looking out of the basement towards the window rather than hunched towards a wall – and got a couple of nice phone calls from friends. This really is a time for reconnecting – I am becoming increasingly conscious of the fact that this is not a two-week change, it is permanent; and that we are actually all in this together.