COVID appears to be hungry for sustained notoriety, unwilling to surrender its hard-won place in the panoply of natural disasters plaguing humanity. It has no intention, it seems obvious, in vacating its majestic throne, harrowing and terrorizing humanity. And Omicron, its grandchild, has been meticulously groomed to ensure its enhanced infectiousness carries on its predecessors' tradition.

 

So, now that we've seen a waning of the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, and enjoyed a bit of relaxed normalcy, we're jolted back to the reality that this pathogen is craftier, more cunning that mere humans might have attributed to an unseen menace. March break is over. It's been several weeks that Ontario and other provinces relaxed their COVID-protective mandates.

 

What do we hear? Why is it a surprise? We have, after all, seen this scenario played out over the past two years and more, quite a few exasperating times. But, there it is. The health authorities that gave us ample warning that our politicians were a little too keen to be restored to the good graces of the electorate by lifting almost all precautions against COVID infections, must be feeling pretty smug in that 'I-told-you-so' way that we humans cannot resist.

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Infection numbers on the rise. Wastewater tests have shown that for over a week in preliminary warnings that we'd seen be wobbling back to square one. And here we are! Welcome back to more acute measures in avoidance of COVID....

 

We decided to have pizza for dinner last night. I had made the dough and left it to rise in the late afternoon. Making pizza is a shared enterprise in this family. Irving slices and dices the vegetables and the pepperoni, cuts up the anchovies and arranges them over the dough and the tomato paste, herbs and seasonings I've sprinkled over, and Parmesan/Mozzarella I've shredded onto it all. Then, the colourful, finishing touch of the vegetables.

 

Many years ago, when my-then microwave oven gave up the ghost, Irving came home one day with a much-larger replacement. This one had an intriguing-looking 'pizza drawer'. Which we began  using instead of our conventional oven. Pizza bakes faster at a higher temperature in the oven. It takes fully 35 minutes for our pizzas to reach the desired doneness in the pizza drawer, but we're pleased with the results. Just have to wait a little longer....

 

Although when we came down for breakfast this morning the thermometer read -10C under a sunny sky, by the time we were ready to get Jackie and Jillie out to the ravine for an afternoon hike through the forest, it read 1.4C. So I was hopeful that conditions on the trails would be improved over yesterday. I actually felt quite trepidatious when we set out yesterday, knowing how icy the trails would be.

We've both suffered falls over the years in the ravine. And the last one I had in there, on a spur trail with a bad upward angle caused a lot of physical damage. Damage that has become permanent, and which acts up from time to time. I definitely don't want a repeat. It was the awkward way I slipped, twisting and slamming my right side against a tree trunk. I could hear and feel my right shoulder responding to the wrench. It took months before I had reasonable mobility in that arm, and full mobility remains restrained. The aches and pains transferred to my underarms and my chest wall. Not at all pleasant. And from time to time the aches reassert their presence.

 

We soon discovered that for the most part there was no improvement in the trails. Those parts that were super-icy yesterday remained that way today, although in other areas the ice had become rotten enough to give us secure footage. Even Jackie and Jillie were slipping on the ice in some places, and they don't appreciate that feeling of insecurity. Enough so that they will seek out more secure-in-appearance areas, bypassing the glossy-ice areas where they can.

We managed to avoid slipping, and had a pleasant, albeit shorter circuit through the trails this afternoon. By then the sun had mostly withdrawn. The forecast is for 14C tomorrow; unimaginable, given today's relative cold. Overnight we're expecting freezing rain, and tomorrow, plain rain. Both the higher temperature and the rain will help the forest cast off the remaining snowpack, so that's good news.