Jason Mask

Yesterday was a day, but we got through it. Thank you, for all of the messages of condolence. They really helped. Life goes on and we shall carry on too.

Speaking of carrying on, they’re back. The water company that is. After being off for more than a week, the water company resumed their work. Last week they were off because of the rain and this week they were off because of the plague, but today they returned with a bang and then another bang and another. Did I mention that this all started before seven? A modern descendent of the classic Mike Mulligan style steam shovel was pile driving the pavement, right outside our house. There wasn’t just the noise, but the whole house was shaking, as each pile drive broke up the street in front of the house.

After being off so long, the construction workers attacked their work with more than their accustomed vigor. I eventually ventured outside. Today is garbage day and with yesterday’s rain, I hadn’t yet put any of our carts out to the curb. I had to time my placement of the carts with the swinging bucket of the steam shovel. It was busy dumping asphalt into a dump truck that was waiting on our side of the street. With each swing of the shovel’s bucket, chunks of asphalt went flying everywhere. In the end, I only put out one cart. The others didn’t seem worth it.

Anne has temporarily suspended her regular knitting and quilting projects to begin making face masks. A call has gone out to anyone who has a sewing machine and knows how to use it. She has plenty of decorative material, has found patterns online and has begun sewing her heart out. Before this epidemic really got going here in America, I bought a package of twenty commercial face masks. We will be looking at layering these with Anne’s home made ones. Anne also got the idea of checking out the basement. Over the years, with plenty of past painting projects, there are way too many nearly empty old paint cans down there, but we also found a few other face masks. Unused and in their original packaging they still look pretty good, even if they are of unknown age. Among this lot were a few of that holy grail of face masks, the N95 kind. We will triage them and then be distributing most of them in the days to come.

We also found this Jason style Halloween mask that somehow got mixed in with the regular kind. Dave got this mask and last wore it when he was still young enough to go trick-or-treating. That ought to give you an idea of how old the other masks are. We went out with a friend, who was dressed in a business suit, with tie and brief case. He was going as Dave’s lawyer. Dave wore the hockey mask, a Blues jersey and a pair of roller blades, which we wore as he scrambled up-and-down all of the front steps in this neighborhood. With his lawyer in tow, Dave was going as the lawsuit yet to happen. They made for a truly scary pair.