Good morning! Actually, I had been awake for about half an hour before I took this picture. Made some coffee and tea, knit a bit until it was light enough to read (yes, we’re outside on the porch already).

This is after breakfast and after cleaning the kitchen, making the second pot of coffee for the day. Yes, we drink a lot of coffee.

I did a bit of cleaning (trying to keep up with my daily chores at least) and a load of laundry. It still feels so good to be able to hang it outside each time.

Work, work, work. Editing a novel by an author I’ve been working with before. I was actually looking forward to it, because I like her books, but this is a sad one. Still, it’s work, need to do it. I sent out a few emails and then I listened to the press conference for a while.

I’m finally getting fed up with the news. This morning the first time I checked was 9.30 (!). And I stopped watching the press conference shortly after it was announced that there are no new cases. The rest was a lot of:  “Stay home!” from the government and “Yes, but I have to…” from everyone else. So fed up with that!

We had lunch and I finished the first round of editing on the sad book. It did have a happy ending, so I guess all’s well that ends well.

I needed more tea! (T. drinks lots of coffee, I drink two cups of coffee and two pots of tea).

So on top of things… Got the laundry off the line and put it away immediately. If I don’t, it sits in the basket for weeks.
After that chore, I decided to call it a day. I wanted to finish my book.

Uh, first I had to feed the cat, of course. He makes sure I don’t forget.

Finished! The second half was a bit disappointing. Not that the story wasn’t good, but I hoped for more about that clay Bible. You know, a bit of biblical controversy, some new ideas about how things could have been. But they were nothing but a stage setting for the rest of the story. It actually was a tale about past (WWII) crimes, evil people and revenge. The end was… sad, mostly.

I switched to this book for a while. It’s by a Catholic Priest who lived on Curacao in the late ’60s, early ’70s. He spoke a lot with the locals and wrote down everything they told them, to preserve their culture. No explanations, no thoughts about the backgrounds, he just documented it. His early series of books was reprinted in newer books, sorted into subjects. This one is about religion, superstition and rituals. Very interesting, but I have to read it bit by bit because it’s just too much to read in one sitting.

Uh, yes. My mama told me never to stack glasses. Ahem… One of them broke. And that’s sad since we only had two of these.

Today’s ingredients: minced meat, half a cauliflower, can of green beans, can of red beans, taco seasoning.

It doesn’t look like much, but it tasted very good!

Watering my plants. Today it was exactly one year since we officially registered ourselves as residents on Curacao. These plants are descendants of the plants I had to throw away in The Netherlands. When we arrived here a year ago, I had a few small cuttings in my suitcase.

This is how they looked a year ago.

And this is now. They grew quite well. I’m not going to write about everything else that happened during that year. There was some good stuff (this house!), but also a lot of sadness. But such is life.

Today’s sunset was hard to capture on camera. The sun was red, really deep red. Very special.

(random iguana picture)

Yesterday I went grocery shopping. When I (finally!) got home I realised that I visited three supermarket where things were all very different. So now I have something to blog about for Carole’s Three on Thursday 😉

1. I started at Van den Tweel. That’s an hour drive for us, over the Juliana bridge, to the other side of town. It’s a supermarket that’s rooted in a Dutch chain and therefor very populair with Dutch people. I go there for bread (they have one type that my body can handle), rice cakes and anti mosquito spray (natural, low DEET that still works). In this supermarket I saw what I expected to see after our Corona measures were issued. Not very busy, people keeping their distance, hand sanitizer at the entrance, cashiers wearing gloves. There was enough food on the shelves, luckily, but they were out of rice cakes.

2. Then I went to Centrum. This is my go-to supermarket and I get the bulk of my stuff there. It’s the one closest to us and they have the best products (for what I need). Shoppers are a mix of local people and Dutch and Americans from the big gated resort close by.
Here, much to my surprise, it was business as usual. I saw some Dutch and American people standing close to each other, talking about how silly it all was. People were not keeping their distance at all. There was hand sanitizer, but nobody used it. Cashiers were wearing cloves, but the boys that help you pack were not. Shelves were filled like normal. They were out off eggs though.

3. I really needed eggs, so my next stop was Esperamos. Not my favorite supermarket, but also not too far from Centrum, so the best option to find eggs without driving all over the island. I had to park my car at the edge of the parking lot. I had to wait for my turn at the hand sanitizer. And the lines at the checkout were crazy!
I actually checked my phone to see if there was some disturbing news, but this was before the press conference*. There was still a lot of food on the shelves, but they were also almost out of eggs. Weird, since eggs are local. And why would you stockpile eggs? You can’t keep them that long. Anyway. I got my normal amount of eggs (I always shop for two weeks at a time), but they were all in boxes of 6, so I couldn’t get the fast lane, because I had too many items (I also bought a few rolls of rice cakes). So I waited and observed.
Lots of full carts. That’s not normal, because locals tend to shop for smaller amounts at supermarkets and get the big stuff at Costuless and Goisco (comparable to Costco I think). I saw a couple that had two carts and there were two overflowing carts standing in the middle without an owner. I guess he or she was filling up the third one.
Since I had a lot of time to think I realised that it was probably also busy because restaurants are closed and lots people are home from work. They tend to eat out a lot and get their food on their way to work/home or in their breaks. There is still take-out, but I guess more people are cooking their own food now.
Even though people were sanitizing there hands, nobody was keeping their distance, except one man who was constantly telling people to back off. Nobody talked about Corona, but I think it was on everybody’s mind. I just wish they would be more careful about protecting themselves.
It felt like an alternative reality. So strange. I was glad to go home where things were quite normal. We are used to being home and work from the porch most of the time anyway.

* Since the first case was reported on Friday we have press conferences daily at 11.30. On this day they started out by reporting there still were only three cases and the first one was still in IC, but stable. After a few minutes though, word came in that he died.

When I’m too busy to write real blog posts, it’s always a good time to focus on the little things that make me happy. So that’s what you get today.

Three things that made me smile this week:

1. Parrots! They fly over our house often, but they hardly ever sit down close enough to take pictures of them. I do love the thought that these are ‘everyday birds’ here.

2. Rainbows. We see a lot of those lately too. Well yes, that also means we have a lot of rain, but hey, we need rain for the garden. And I love seeing rainbows! This was actually a double, but the camera didn’t pick up the fainter one.

3. This cat and his shenanigans. Such a quirky mixture between a domesticated house cat and a wild stray.

Linking up with Carole’s Three on Thursday