Conversation And Ultimate Coffee

Hello and welcome to the May edition of The Ultimate Coffee Date with Coco from Running With Perseverance and Deborah from Confessions of a Mother Runner, where we dish over coffee (or tea, if that is your preference) about all things running (and some non-running topics too).

If we were having coffee, I would tell you about the difficulty our clients from Meals on Wheels are having adjusting to new rules and protocols put in place since the Coronavirus crisis.

Bill and I volunteer for our local Meals on Wheels. He is the driver and I deliver the food.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, rather than handing meals to the recipients, clients are instructed to leave a cooler on their front porch, which volunteers wearing gloves and masks place their meals into.

Some of the people on our route looked forward each day to our interactions. I may have been the only human contact they had that day.

One client in particular, Gloria, a 95-year-old woman with a brilliant smile and a wicked sense of humor, liked to talk. When I delivered Gloria’s meal, my husband would jokingly ask me if he should take a nap while I went in. I never spent less than 10 minutes delivering her meal.

Most of our clients followed instructions and put the coolers out on their porches but a few refused to forego that human interaction, quite a quandary for me. I don’t want to disappoint them but I also don’t want to endanger myself, them, and all the clients after them in the delivery chain.

I finally decided to place the meals directly on the porch, ring the doorbell, and run back to the car if they didn’t have a cooler outside.

When I visited Gloria, I saw her standing at her door and my heart sank. I thought she expected me to come inside and visit like we usually did. Then I saw the cooler sitting on her porch.

She motioned for me to put the food in her cooler, and we had our usual chat, she on one side of her glass storm door and me on the other.

New rules, new ways of interacting.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you I really enjoyed some socially distanced hikes we have taken with our grandsons and son. Zoom calls are nice but not a substitute for seeing them in person.

We go to lightly-traveled paths, stay at least six feet apart, and explore. The boys either ride their bikes or travel on foot. The little guy likes to challenge me to races along the way. He always wins.

One of our favorite activities is throwing stuff (stones, sticks, etc.) in the river we hike beside.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you about my other grandson and the three chickens he is now raising, quite a responsibility for a four-year-old.

His father told me he named his chicks “Eyeball“, “Butt“, and “Fart“, which I thought was pretty typical for a four-year-old boy, but I was subsequently given updated information; those are their surnames.

Their full names are “Arthur Eyeball“, “Mountain Goat Butt“, and “Chupacabra Fart“.

Finally, if we were having coffee, I would tell you that as the weekend approaches I am getting more excited and more nervous about the big adventure I hope to undertake.

A group of friends is doing the same thing at the same time as me but we will not be physically together. We will stay in contact and encourage each other along the way.

I am hoping I can convince the hubs to do this with me, but if I can’t I will do it alone. He is not quite as crazy as I, so he may opt out.

I hope to have an amazing experience to describe for you next week.

Thank you for joining me for our Coffee Date. See you again at the beginning of June for more coffee and conversation.

 

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