And, indeed, yesterday was the day of dreams . . . not just for me but for everyone I could see. I spent nearly all of it outside, either planting in the garden, or digging dandelion greens, or hanging laundry, or just sitting at a table in the driveway, drinking tea and reading a novel. Meanwhile, the neighborhood kids worked out a quarantine-safe way to play together, which involved riding their bikes down the sidewalk over a series of plywood "jumps" (which is in quotation marks because the jumps were really just flat pieces of plywood that made a funny noise when ridden over). So all day long five elementary-age kids whirred back and forth--clomp, crackle, clomp--over the "jumps"; and meanwhile the rest of us worked in gardens, read books on porches, tore off siding, petted cats, poured concrete in back yards, strolled by with dogs and/or cigarettes, pushed strollers, hobbled along with canes, careened by on roller skates, or lay flat on our backs in the sunshine.

Tom and Paul will be sore today, after all of that concrete lugging, mixing, shoveling, smoothing. But now the job is done, and the block will sit untouched in the backyard for a couple of weeks until Tom decides the mix has cured enough to risk removing the wooden forms. We still won't be able to start a fire in it for at least another month. But maybe, just maybe, on the Fourth of July, we will sit outside by our own fire pit, listening to baseball. Maybe. I have more confidence in the fire pit than I do in the baseball.

Today will be another 60-degree day, but cloudier. I have a lot of housework to do, but the windows will be open, and that makes everything sweeter. For dinner: zucchini fritters and dandelion salad. Maybe an apple pie.

I did manage to apply for unemployment on Friday, after 6 hours of torture (website crashes, no info saved, stupid questions not designed for gig workers, and a broken benefits calculator that automatically told every self-employed person who made it through the site: "You qualify for $0 benefits"). It was awful, but I expected it to be awful. I suppose it's possible they'll send me a few dollars, though I'm not holding my breath.