It’s a crazy time right now. More than 100 million Americans are under orders to stay inside as the number of people infected with the Coronavirus grew to more than 80,000 as of the writing of this blog post. Living in New Jersey, we have been under orders to stay inside for about 2 weeks— I honestly can’t even remember exactly when it started; my brain feels a bit fuzzy. There’s a lot of sameness to the days, although I am beyond grateful that my family is currently healthy and getting along well. My daughter is home from college and attending her classes online, often from the couch. My husband, whose office is in Newark, is working from a spare bedroom. It’s all pretty peaceful except for when the two kittens decide to gang up on the older cat which results in a lot of hissing and growling. But even that is pretty mild. Truly, all is well. It’s just a little… dull. And if that’s the worst it gets, I am more than willing to continue to stay inside. During this time, I have been working on 4 leaded glass windows which will be installed in a historic house in Plainfield, NJ. Because they are to replace broken ones that the builder removed, they required no creativity on my part— I was given the design and asked to create them in clear glass. As they are made with lead came, they take a while to build. I have already been working on them for a few weeks and have a few more weeks to go. They are coming together nicely, they look how they are supposed to, they are just a little… dull. Life goes like this sometimes. As a distance runner, I experience this sameness during long runs too; it’s familiar to me and yet still a bit uncomfortable. But to get to where we need to go— the completion of these windows, the end of a run, the “flattening of the curve”— we keep on keeping on. Hope you and your loved ones are well! Stay in, stay safe.