We’re in for another procession of gray days. No real sun until Tuesday, the weatherman says.

Yesterday I could not get up to the roof or exercise on my bike. When I wasn’t conferring with people via zoom or phone, I was up to my elbows updating and/or correcting the website. By 6:00 pm, I longed for mindlessness. For our dinner I made tomato bruschetta and unwrapped a brie.

My evening indulgence a couple of times a week since the quarantine began is a glass of port, sipped from a 2-ounce, Bristol-blue cobalt port glass that’s part of a set I inherited from one grandparent or another. A glass of port at the end of the night seems to have been a tradition in the early-to-mid 20th century, since both sides of my family did it. I can remember my dad’s father, Dick, (The nouveau-riche Texas/Alabama side) having a beautiful crystal decanter of Sandeman’s tawny port on his sideboard. My mom’s mother, Mollie, (The oldveau-riche Tennessee side) would, with great ceremony, be handed a glass of port by my grandfather every evening after dinner. Last night after I poured my own glass I saw Mollie looking back at me from the sideboard mirror, and I raised it to my/her reflection.

Neither Michael nor I are big drinkers, but we do have a couple of unopened boutique bottles we bought last autumn from the Lost Spirit’s distillery in Los Angeles — Abomination malt whiskey, and Carousel brandy. We agree they’ll be opened in celebration of something, but whether that will be the lifting of the quarantine or the results of the next election is still up for debate. It would be great to actually share them with friends, as in tapping glasses in the living room.

Last night, as we were folding the clothes he hauled up from the laundromat, Michael said he wanted to do another load of laundry today, and I put my foot down and said no. I’ll wash what needs washing myself here, in the apartment. I found some detailed instructions online about the best way to do this, and my current plan is to fill the bathtub with warm water and detergent, dump our jeans into it, and allow them to soak for awhile, occasionally swishing them around and squeezing. I remember a friend of mine in college putting her dirty clothes in a tub with detergent and hot water, and then taking off her sandals and prancing around on them to “When Electricity Came to Arkansas” like an old-fashioned wine-maker crushing grapes. She said she got the idea from Stephen King’s The Stand. Don’t know if I’ll go that far at my age.