It's so long ago, I can't recall the date, but I believe it was early enough in the pandemic's onset that it might have been April or May. A cross-Canada study was being undertaken, in the hope that enough people would sign up to participate for the researchers involved to be able to obtain a wide-ranging sample of people who had been exposed to the coronavirus and presumably exhibited no symptoms.

Anyone who was willing to sign up to take part could expect to receive a kit in the mail to take a blood sample and send the completed kit back to its source. I decided that I would participate, and when the kit arrived, punctured a thumb, obtained the requisite drop of blood, smearing it in, I believe, three designated places and after it dried, closed up the kit and returned it by mail whence it had come.

The kit contained everything necessary to complete the simple-enough process. A sterile wipe, a bandaid, a needle-like puncture tool. Clear and simple instructions were printed inside the kit with a step-by-step diagram. What could go wrong? Anyone who hates the sight of blood, the sight of a puncture, the sight of a tool to accomplish the puncture, the split-second-worth of pain, wouldn't have volunteered. I didn't mind.

Months passed and I heard nothing. Then came an email with a kind-of progress report, saying that updates would be posted from time to time. The study was never meant to inform people of their personal results, but rather to aid the researchers involved in the project to obtain the coronavirus picture reflecting on average  how it had affected the general public. But a few days ago I received an email that informed me my personal results were available at this time for me to see what the end result of my personal blood sample had elicited.

To be able to access the results I would have to input a code that had been included with the kit. A code specific to my personal sample and the results of it having been tested for covid data. Hmm, the code. Where on Earth would I have put it? I looked in a few likely places, but found nothing. There was an alternative available; my communication site was agreeable to supplying me with the code to unlock the results if I could answer some personal identifying questions.

Easy enough to do, and the code was forwarded on to me via email shortly afterward to be inputted into the document unlocking its private 'locked' status. And so I learned that at no time was it feasible from the analysis gleaned from my blood sample, that I had been exposed; no antibodies to COVID were present and it was highly unlikely I had ever been infected. And would I be interested in forwarding -- that having been settled -- a follow-up blood sample to determine presumably, whether my status had undergone a change in the interim? Well, I guess ... all in the name of science and research. And personal curiosity.

About a month or so after I'd sent in my sample, I had a very strange experience. One night I felt suddenly ill, nauseous, my stomach upset, accompanied by a headache. I was ill for hours with those symptoms, felt like retching but didn't, running a fever, feeling so wretched I had visions of hospitalization. It was all I could do to dissuade my husband from calling an ambulance. He sat beside me as I finally fell asleep hours later, the fever abated, the nausea left and so did the headache. Food poisoning? Who knows. Who consults doctors these days? I felt perfectly normal by morning.

Well, today's another day. I decided to bake a lemon cheesecake. I grated the rind and my husband squeezed the lemon for its juice. And then I set about, among other things, making and baking a cheesecake for dessert. We love our Friday-night desserts, and above all cheesecake, although there are other favourite dessert contenders.

And soon after I took the cheesecake out of my handy little countertop convection oven, we prepared to take Jackie and Jillie out for a romp through the woods. It's another icy day, but little wind and though the temperature nudged its way up to -7C only, we had a wide clear blue sky and blinding sun to warm up the atmosphere -- as much as was feasible. 

Still no snow. Every morning when we get up I look anxiously outside, hoping to see some new fallen snow. December without snow? You're kidding! But no, no snow. So the landscape continues to look a little dismal. Jackie and Jillie agitated continually throughout the morning hours to get out into the backyard where they sniffed and snuffled about assiduously. Rabbits have been around, we've seen their droppings, and their presence has obviously captivated our two pups.

Without a doubt they also smell them out in the ravine. They go from one tangent to another, anxious not to miss any possible olfactory messages; odours that intrigue, inform and attract them; their daily newspaper and gossip column as it were. We strode along briskly, didn't come across very many people out, but did see a woman with two tiny dogs. They were easily half the size of our small dogs, but neither wore any kind of winter coat. The woman was intrigued by the boots that J&J wore, and asked about them, but it seemed odd that such tiny animals taken out through a forest for an airing, weren't given some kind of protection against the cold.