Heading into winter

Hiya! It's November, it rains all the time, covid cases are skyrocketing, and it gets dark by 5pm. We're trying to hold onto some kind of hopefulness.  

Dog #7 got adopted, miraculously, in spite of being a weird, exuberant and bitey giant. 

Dog #8 has been in the house two days. She's a nice but fearful elderly lady. She smells very, very bad, but we're waiting on a bath until her terror eases up. So far she's afraid of going in the house, going out of the house, brooms, baskets, jackets hung on chairs, noises, movement behind her when she's eating or drinking, and the mudroom. She has big patches of scabby bare skin on her back, similar to Dog #4, but she seems to be healthy otherwise, and without obvious major behavioral issues (SO FAR)...

I enjoyed working on the porch a few golden afternoons in October, and now we do our socializing out there, too, even though it's cold and dark and rainy. We have a lot of blankets. We drink a lot of tea.

We may already have cabin fever. We got a big box recently, and everybody in the house has spent some time sitting in it, as a kind of den. The other day I came downstairs and found the girls sitting in it together, playing Mario Kart. 

We still have jobs and school. The girls seem to be in the rhythm of remote schooling, in so far as that's possible. Weird covid traditions and routines are getting us through. We order takeout or delivery for dinner every Thursday night. We watch The Great British Baking Show every Friday night. Skipper in particular finds great consolation in her routines, mostly around screentime - running every other morning, watching Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah videos over her breakfast (everything bagel with cream cheese), watching her TV show of the moment after dinner (she's been through Parks and Recreation, The Good Place, MASH, Brooklyn 99 and 30 Rock - currently seeking a new one, so let us know if you have suggestions). Duchess has been reading more lately, thanks to librarians at her school and the county library who will put together book bundles if you give them a little information about yourself.  She's really enjoying working on the school newspaper, and being pretty impressively tenacious in finding bits of joy here and there. Cook and I mostly watch the news unspooling on our phones and, like Dog #8, try to not be paralyzed by terror. (And fine, we read some fiction, too.) We both felt an unexpectedly deep sense of relief after the election, and are trying to eke that out as we look ahead...