Saturday, April 18th, during the COVID pandemic, found the Renkes/Gebhard household struggling with the in-between-times. After a fun Friday with Ashley’s birthday, taco night, and James Bond, we settled into bed for a long sleep. Except, we were both awake at 5:00 a.m. and not sure what to do. Christine watched the documentary on the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, and I went outside, in the dark, in my pajamas and breathed the cold, crisp air. With both Ursa Major and Minor standing guard out our front door, the North Star was staring back at me wondering the same thing: “So? What do you want?” I wasn’t sure what the answer was, so I went back to bed. By 7:00 a.m., I was up and eating cereal with a crossword puzzle in hand. The coffee pot startled me with its gurgling, and I shifted my body weight in the loveseat wondering what to do next. I’m five days away from heading to D.C. and the grandchildren – being the family caregiver on call, I fit the allowances to travel. We’re probably two weeks from some alleviation of restrictions for Michigan, so what do we do today? The yard is done. The house is clean. The pantry stocked. Pictures painted, flies tied, novels completed, I mean, really what? I can’t do anything with “The Penny” until my editor is done. I know! Today will be stew day. For me that’s at least two hours in the kitchen with Dean Martin, Julie London, Louis Armstrong, and Ella tagging along. Stew day means I need to get a couple things from Meijer’s, so there’s a trip. We’ll call Suzie and see if she needs some groceries, which she always does, then there’s cribbage, dominoes, and a martini. As the day progressed, Christine had some troubles with everything from working on computers to removing toenail polish and eviscerating the finish on the dining room table with a cotton swab filled with acetone. Don’t ask. The story is too long. Then she proceeded to kill the dried hydrangea arrangement I made three years ago. Again, don’t ask. We were at a point where we were drawing our olive skewers from our martinis and having a duel. She laughed herself right down to the table with a forehead plant, and I contemplated stealing the deal in the cribbage game – where she was kicking my ass. Game over, I walked out and stirred the stew, then came outside to write. The gardens are quiet, with a few day lilies and some hydrangeas poking through. The bird feeders are full of sunflower and thistle. We are stuck at the in-between-times! We are jousting with olive picks. I guess this was bound to happen. Day after day, cooped up together, only so much to do. Only so much to discuss. Please, if you read this and hear sirens wailing, I suspect during the dominoes tournament tonight, she’ll have skewered me with a double twelve.