Pandemic Potpourri

These are the beautiful hand made masks, sent to us by some good friends, for when we go to the grocery store and so on. I cannot sew, and have no idea how to follow a pattern, and don’t have (and have never used) a sewing machine. And I’m the one Ted and Maya come to when they need a button sewn on or something, so of course this task was a lot more than I could handle. Aren’t they lovely? I like how the patterns are all different so we can tell which belongs to who, and that they are hand made by friends.

How are you all doing? Hanging in there? We’re all still gainfully employed and working from home. Working from home means that in order to motivate myself to get dressed and put on make up, I generally go to the store every day on my lunch hour. Obviously not anymore. We can’t really shop for a month at a time, there is no room in our little townhouse for that much food. But we can go once a week, and we are trying for that. Today I felt like I hit the jackpot, because I got toilet paper AND the only brand of milk that Ted’s stomach can handle AND ingredients for our Easter brunch. I forgot to get some flowers for our table, but I suspect we will live without. Or maybe I’ll cut the lilies that are in pots outside and put them on the table, if they’re not wilted by then. We’ll see.

Ted is low carb these days, and I found a recipe for eggs Benedict that you make using artichoke bottoms instead of English muffins. It also calls for pancetta, but I’m going to skip that and use some crab. Except Maya doesn’t like artichokes, so I will make hers on an English muffin, and she is mostly vegetarian these days, so no crab for her. The recipe calls for scrambled eggs instead of poached, and while I love poached eggs, scrambled does seem easier. If you make it with artichoke bottoms instead of English muffins, and crab instead of Canadian bacon, and scrambled eggs instead of poached, is it still Benedict? I don’t know. Should be tasty, though.

Maya’s birthday was a couple of weeks ago. Her birthday party was postponed, but she had 2 virtual parties (one with her friends, one with my Portland family) over Zoom. She talked on the phone with local family, and we had gifts and carrot cake, and Ethiopian take out for dinner. She forced us to watch not 1, but 2 High School Musical movies on Disney+. Thank goodness her birthday comes only once a year. Ted’s birthday is coming up (same day as yours, Nance!) and I suspect it will also be just the 3 of us, with gifts and a movie he wants to see and maybe some takeout for dinner. We’ll have a real party with the local family at some point, just not sure when.

We’re getting takeout once a week, calling it ‘Takeout Tuesdays’ to try to support the local restaurants that we like. Some have been casual, some have been fancy, This Tuesday was French food from a fancy place we like. This coming Tuesday I think will be pizza or pasta (salad for Ted) from a local pizza place, because the owner is an amazing member of our community and I want to support him. He has school and sport fundraisers at his restaurants OFTEN, and now is feeding 3 shifts of hospital workers at 2 hospitals, without a Go Fund Me. Amazing. I prefer to go and pickup food rather than using a delivery service, for two reasons. 1. That’s one fewer person touching our takeout. 2. All of my money goes to the restaurant. Not to thwart the delivery people of their income, but my goal is to keep these restaurants in business as best I can, not keep door dash or Uber eats in business.

I’ve been listening to far too much news for my own good. It feels so vital and important, but it stresses me the hell out. So I’m backing off of that, for the moment. I do sometimes listen to the headlines while walking Mulder in the morning, but then I switch over to my audio book (“Mrs. Everything”, by Jennifer Weiner) and listen to that for the rest of the walk. I listen to the News Hour on NPR at 3pm. And that’s it. I’m sleeping a little better, though if I wake up thinking too much, I just repeat the mantra to myself, “In…out…” as I breathe, and I can generally get back to sleep that way. Last week had me up a few nights too many, so I am glad to find this extremely simple solution.

Speaking of reading, letting go of the news has also helped me focus a bit more, and I am getting into my book. I’m reading, “Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernadine Evaristo, winner of the Booker Prize in 2019. I wasn’t concentrating at the beginning, so I may need to start over when I’m finished. It’s really a group of intertwined novellas, so there are many different stories with different characters, but they (mostly) know each other. It was difficult for awhile, I would only read at bedtime, and just a page or two before falling asleep, and I wasn’t remembering anything. Maybe that’s a problem with drinking wine before bed, or maybe stress and concentration, or maybe I just shouldn’t read while horizontal. Perhaps all 3. My next book might be a comfort read, as Nance discussed on her blog post.

Update on Neva, her son tested negative for COVID-19. Not sure what he had, but he was sick, and is now (THANKFULLY) much better. He has bad lungs anyway, so the symptoms were somewhat similar. Her other son, the one that works at Tesla, has been let go. They fought shutting down longer than they should have, and when they finally complied with the shelter in place order and sent people home, they paid their salaries, which I’ll admit was a shock to me. But now they have let people go so they can apply for unemployment. At least, Neva’s son. He was a temp worker. Others are being furloughed or having pay cuts.

What else…well, I scored a box of my Great Aunt’s favorite chocolates at the grocery store today. (See’s Nuts and Chews). I usually buy them for her at a stand alone store, but those are all closed right now. I was going to buy her some online, but the factories are closed too. My favorite local grocery stores has some See’s chocolates for Easter, obviously made before COVID shut the factories down, and I scoured the display for Nuts and Chews, the only kind she likes, and couldn’t find them. Only assorted chocolates. Sighed, gave up, decided that would have to wait until things get closer to normal again. Got in line to check out, and discovered a box RIGHT THERE with my name on it. Well, no, my name wasn’t on it. But I looked around at the other check out lines, and none of them had Nuts and Chews, only mine, so I was thrilled. There were two boxes, and the woman behind me was just as happy as I was to find them. Aunt Flo’s 96th birthday is coming up in 2 weeks, so I will put them in the mail for her, with promises for lunch at Red Lobster soon(ish).

Maya and I are watching Season 2 of ‘My Brilliant Friend’ on HBO, which we really like. I splurged and bought all four seasons of ‘Thirtysomething’ on DVD, and Ted and I have been watching that. We’re almost finished with the series. Between DVDs and streaming services, there’s really no shortage of things to watch during quarantine. Ted and I watched a movie the other night on Kanopy, a free streaming service that pairs with your local library. Pretty cool, they specialize in Independent and older films. We watched a movie called ‘Margot at the Wedding’, with Nichole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Jack Black. It was OK, not great, but interesting to see something different.

I hope you are well. Take good care. That’s an order.