In abeyance of the quarantine--mostly.

I'm probably going to get killed for saying this, but I think this social isolation will break down over time no matter what the governors might say, as people venture out to do what they deem essential, taking calculated risks and precautions, just as we all have been doing from the beginning to get groceries. What is deemed "essential" will broaden over time.

I'm using this hiatus in order to renovate the store. During normal times, closing the store to put down flooring using professionals would probably have cost us tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales and expenses. If nothing else, the scheduling would be tricky--and it probably would have required completely emptying the store, which would have been a huge and expensive undertaking.

Well, the tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales is already there. So all I've got are the expenses. Plus, we can lay down the flooring in stages, moving a quarter of the store to one side at a time. It is simply the time to do this, despite the quarantine.

This is a unique situation. Both of my sons are available to help put down the flooring, which even if it doesn't save me money--I insist on paying them--is doing my sons some good while getting the job done. I can't remember a time when both of them could spend more than a couple of days with us at the same time.

Plus, the flooring people were extremely helpful, calling me back immediately, arranging for a measuring, going out of their way to ship the material in a timely manner. If you know anything about Bend, you know this is hard to do. Most commercial building companies in this area are busy, busy, busy--usually with much bigger projects than mine.

So everything is coming together really well.

On the other hand, I did meet with the flooring representative this morning, both of my sons will be interacting with us, and Sabrina is also helping--all of which isn't strictly kosher. We all tried to keep some distance, but it wasn't completely possible.

But I simply can't pass this opportunity to accomplish something while the world stops spinning. Up until now, I've been stricter to most people. I insisted to Linda that we don't interact with anyone for three weeks now. But she's already hinting that she wants to cleaners to come to our house while we're working on Friday, and so on. Her best friend came by in a car yesterday and they were chatting at a distance. After her friend left, I said, "I think you guys got closer than three feet."

The isolation starting to fray around the edges, especially because Oregon has done pretty well.

But in the back of my mind is the warning: Oregon has done pretty well because people have been in abeyance of the quarantine. Vigilance is hard to maintain.

And so it goes. It human nature.