I have not had my hair cut since January 20.

That’s 130 days ago.

A long time.

Playing a logistical game of cat and mouse, I reasoned that a Friday afternoon, after a week of Island barber shops being open, would mean a lighter line at Ray’s Place.

I was right: there was nobody was waiting outside when I arrived. Or at least until I was steps away, when the universe intervened in my luck and saw two men arrive just before me.

I’m currently standing on Social Distancing Sticker № 3 in the chair-free waiting room. I should be having my hair cut in less than 15 minutes. I’m very excited.

Postscript: it was 10 minutes; Rhonda cut my hair with enthusiasm, same as it ever was. Feels great.

Karine Polwart in today’s edition of her email newsletter:

My home, like some of yours too, I’m sure, has become a place of industry these past two months. I’m a writer, so my kitchen has long been a working environment (and I don’t just mean the dishes and the laundry). But my home has never before been a place of performance, a place into which strangers are invited to peer. To be frank, it requires a whole lot more hoovering and tidying than I can ordinarily be bothered with. And then there’s the need for careful curation. I mean, how clever and idiosyncratic are my books? How manky is that carpet? Where am I going to stash all these non-minimalist piles of guff out of camera view? And how is anyone else, distantly appraising my home, supposed to know that so much of the stuff in this or that shot, represents memories, kindnesses, gifts and losses, rather than any innate aesthetic sensibility I’d want to stake my identity on?

Ocht, who cares, really, given what’s upon us? It’s vanity. Still, it’s oddly unsettling on an intimate, personal level.

We’ve gone through a similar version of the same thing this week: Oliver’s workers have been supporting him based out of our house rather than from Stars for Life, which is turned our home from being a private hideout into a more public workspace. Meaning that I need to be more attentive about dishes left on the table, socks left on the floor, and toilets left without fresh hand towels. To say nothing of losing a place to escape when the exegencies of work become too much.

Not quite the same as opening our home to YouTube, but a change nonetheless.

Provincial Credit Union and a street artist confront the same issue.

You had to see this coming: Oliver and I walked the 1.3 km to Dairy Queen tonight after supper so as to throw off the shackles of my childhood and have Dilly Bars for dessert.

And to engage in investigative journalism: are Charlottetown Dilly Bars made in-store and have the curl, or are they curl-free and made in some far-off factory?

No curl.

And, truth be told, not worth the walk.

The Dilly Bar of my childhood imagination was a dense thicket of fudgey goodneess. The Dilly Bar of University Avenue was a hunk of milk-flavoured ice wrapped in the thinnest and least satisfying sheen of chocolate possible.

My parents were wise to keep them from us.

Being at war with Japanese Knotweed, and having no semblance of a green thumb, I’ve feared that at least some of the shoots I’ve been digging up haven’t been Japanese Knotweed at all but rather, well, regular everyday non-invasive species.

This was confirmed for me today by my friendly and helpful neighbour, who told me I’d dug up the Hostas.

I’ll get better at this.

(With apologies to Fred J. Eaglesmith and Chuck Angus)

On Prince Edward Island, if you want to go to the shore you don’t have to think about it too much: you just drive until you can’t drive any longer. I decided I needed to get out of town to clear my head this morning, so I did exactly that, driving out the Union Road, across to Suffolk, and then out to Tracadie.

This was the view from the road to Tracadie Harbour:

And here was the view along the beach once I’d parked and walked out onto the shore:

While it wasn’t foggy at all onshore, offshore it was thick enough that at times you could barely see the dunes across the water.

From the opening titles of Louis Malle’s Black Moon.

Six years after the boulder was carved, it occurred to someone that maybe the “Quebec Garden” should be marked in both English and French, so an aftermarket add-on was installed.

From the Dairy Queen FAQ:

How come my Dilly Bar doesn’t have a curl in the middle?

Some Dilly bars are made by the staff of DQ stores and those have a curl. Others are manufactured for those DQ restaurants that do not have the space or the staff to make their own. Those Dilly Bars are packaged in clear plastic and do not have a curl.

The manufacturing equipment is not able to duplicate the trademark curl on our Dilly Bars. There are positives, however, to the manufacturing process. We can offer our Dilly Bars in additional flavours, including Mint and no sugar added.

I have no idea what the “curl in the middle” of a Dilly bar is, as I was never allowed a Dilly bar at Dairy Queen. But it’s nice to know we still need humans to put it there.

(There was a Dairy Queen across the street from my high school; its parking lot was the place where fights were held: “Jimmy is fighting Danny in the Dairy Queen parking lot after school, pass it on!”)

Three day old homemade waffles, heated up in the toaster, covered with tangerines and fresh mint (from Heart Beet Organics) and drizzled with melted 90% Lindt chocolate.

Bonus pandemic pro tip: sprigs of fresh herbs wrapped in damp paper towel and sealed in a Ziploc bag in the fridge keep fresh much longer than ye olde “stick in a glass of water in the fridge” method.