Rabbit rabbit

 

Their greenness is a kind of grief

Alas and alack, I knew this day would come:

HORROR OF HORRORS

How am I going to blurb this "word"? Ah, but there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. Right?

In other news, various birds and dogs, it's Calendar Spring, and tiny crocuses are poking up through dry brown leaves and dirty snow. It seems as though the yellow ones were tastier, since I've only espied purple and white so far.

And now for some things I collected for you on the internets:

I suspect Japan is the best place on Earth.

Hamster content.

More hamster content (not ham).

Everyone needs a wee baking raccoon tattoo.

And a sausage dog named Nigel.

People also ask.

Recommendations for a long winter

Wordle's a word now, spell checker.

I simply must insist that you try Wordle if you haven't yet. You can only play it once a day, and it just takes a few minutes, so it can't...become a problem.

You could try baking a chocolate babka too, if you have some friends or neighbors to share it with. 

Stitch with yellow thread. Buy a new journal. Drink peppermint tea instead of nine more cups of coffee. Wear mittens instead of gloves. Watch good movies. Get a soft sleep mask. Light candles. Apply extra lotion. Go outside, no matter the situation out there. Read a real book. Make fish tacos, then the next night make "fish tacos" with whatever you can find in your fridge (tofu, potatoes, carrots, beans, whatever). Think about making soup. 

Behind the clouds the sun is still shining

 

Mise en place

November's getting down to business out there today. I'm trying my best to keep it hygge in here on a Friday work day, the day my brain 100% believes is the weekend.

My life goal is to be a good iced bun.

I love you, Great British Bake Off/Baking Show

Lizzie 2021

Okay, forward through a rainy work day and into the weekend (full disclosure: the weekend is usually also a work day, plus extra sleeping in and watering plants and puttering in the yard, but I'm actually visiting Holly tomorrow so it's going to be a very weekendy weekend)!

Vaxes and snaxes

I would have had to wait til December to get my booster shot at the Intermed clinic where I got the first two jabs, so I went to Walgreens. I know vaccines at the drug store are not a new thing, but I still find it pretty bizarre. The 15-year-old pharmacist who gave me the shot was so speedy and unceremonious about it. He said, "Do you want a Bandaid, or...?" the same way they ask if you need a bag when you buy one thing at the grocery store. "Nah," I said, just like I do at the grocery store. "You're good to go," he said, and it wasn't until I was halfway home that I remembered they're supposed to make you wait 15 minutes in case of anaphylaxis.*

I made a delicious gingery pumpkin cake, topped it with barely sweetened cream whipped with mascarpone. 

(Olivia Newton-John voice): I honestly love you.

*this was yesterday — I am fine!

rabbit. rabbit.

Biscuit biscuit.

Palimpsest

Okay, hear me out: Sicilian twins playing Coldplay on violins.

Here's a capybara getting a massage from a chicken.

And...we're down two appliances in this pandemic. At least it's the dishwasher and the microwave and not the stove and the refrigerator UNLESS I JUST JINXED MYSELF!

I keep writing this blorg post, a few words a day, and each day things get stranger, my friends. We were without running water for one day, one brief strange day of using those crinkly plastic bottles of water (city-supplied, thanks Portland!) to wash our hands and rinse our toothbrushes, and scooping buckets from the tub into the toilet to flush. Since I wrote the above, we've replaced the microwave, but the dishwasher will have to wait awhile, since a person can purchase a new dishwasher, but a person has to haul it from the sidewalk into the house on their own these days. Mark and I keep fearfully pressing our ears to the refrigerator: is it making a weird noise?

And while washing dishes by hand is a stress-relieving activity for a couple of us (Edna and me), we need the refrigerator, which is so full it feels like Christmastime. 

I feel like I'm playing pandemic bingo, and I'm almost there:

• Made our own sourdough starter
• Made the whipped coffee
• Sewed a bunch of masks
• Started a 30-day ukulele class on YouTube
• Made the beneficial biscuits
• Made a comforting soup
• Got carryout from a local restaurant
• Had groceries delivered to our porch
• Donated three N95 masks (discovered in the basement) to a local hospital
• Made no-knead bread thrice
• Watched Tiger King
• Joined a family Zoom meeting
• Cried when a beloved celebrity died
• Canceled a haircut, a dentist appointment, a mammogram, a blood test, and a follow-up shingles vaccine
• Made baguettes
• Had bagels delivered to our porch
• Stood in line for 45 minutes to get into a grocery store

Things are about to enter a new strange phase as the DOT starts work this month on the roundabout project that involves our driveway. Today I gazed out the window, distracted from work, watching two guys with a...circular saw? Cut a line across the bottom of our driveway?

I went to Trader Joe's for the first time in weeks, and their system felt very organized and as safe as can be expected, with all the workers wearing (homemade) masks, and very few shoppers in the store at a time. It's like a dream, drifting around the grocery store peering over the top of my own homemade mask, my own breath like a little ghost caught in front of my mouth. I put a small container of heavy cream in my cart and then wove my way up and down the aisles before I realized it had a leak, and I'd left a long, winding Hansel-and-Gretel trail of white drops through the entire store. I pantomimed my apology to a worker. I don't know how he felt about it, since we were both wearing masks and it's hard to interpret mood through them. But in general, the TJ's folks were not their usual cheery selves.

The catastrophe of my personality

Sign of the times

So I suppose I should call this "Diversions Part II." Here are some of my all time favorite favorite wonderful/hilarious classics from the annals of the internets.

The guy "submitting a vocal audition to be the new backup singer for M83."

The talking dog who wants bacon.

Pearl the landlord.

Adorable French girl talks about animals.


And here are some beautiful/specific/inspiring/scary things:

"Quarantine teaches me what I’ve already been taught, but I’ll never learn — that there are so many other ways to be lonely besides the particular way I am lonely."

People from New York are fleeing to Maine — people with fucking summer houses here.

Samin and Hrishikesh have a podcast and it is just as sweet and funny and calming and amazing as I hoped it would be (I've listened to the first episode three times now).

Oh boy, I totally want this!

Rufus Wainwright is playing a song a day on his Instagram, and Yo-Yo Ma is posting songs of comfort on YouTube.


Edna and I are baking vegan cinnamon rolls today. Mark and I found an open beach this morning where we could walk the dogs in the brilliant sunshine at low tide, far from other humans and their dogs. Isaac and Mark are playing basketball today, just the two of them, and Mark spent some hours yesterday fixing an old turntable of Isaac's. Our neighbor's son, having just driven to Maine from LA, came to our door yesterday asking if we had any rope he could borrow, and it was like a horror movie. Mark basically said, "NO!" and shut the door, which if you know Mark...is really something.

"Now I am quietly waiting for 
the catastrophe of my personality 
to seem beautiful again, 
and interesting, and modern."

Diversions

You'd think this working at home thing would be a breeze around here, but my number one priority these past several days has been finding a way to focus and do any work at all, given the distractions, the generalized sense of anxiety in the air, the limitations real and imagined caused by near-quarantine, and the fact that there are now four humans attempting to do this in the same house at the same time.

Still, my second goal is...not to accomplish anything in particular, but to focus on some things. I am hoping to read many books, catch up on my pile of New Yorkers, binge some good TV, cook and bake many delicious foods, buy a ukulele and learn how to play it, go for the longest walks. I have a couple of suggestions for you!

• On SkillShare, you can take classes from experts on a nearly infinite number of subjects, from singing lessons to vegan baking to chair massage to how to do calligraphy. If you sign up for Erin Boyle's class, you can get two free months of SkillShare Premium (you can find this offer all over the place right now, this is just the one I actually clicked on). Even if you're not interested in minimalism, you can be like me and take a personal essay writing class with Roxane Gay or memoir writing with Mary Karr!
• Joe Pera Talks With You is so odd, so quiet and strangely charming, so deeply calming. I find it just as good at reducing stress as The Great British Baking Show et al.
• The YMCA has exercise classes and yoga classes online, as do lots of other places!
• I made a Pinterest board for COVID-19 cooking/baking, and I'm keeping track of what we've cooked and adding notes. So far, I have done the lion's share of the cooking around here, which I am (thus far) extremely happy to do, since I find it really soothing. We'll see how long I can keep it up (last night Edna exclaimed over my soup and no-knead bread: "This is like a really expensive farm-to-table restaurant!!")

What else? I have a pile of books, but if I make it through them I'll probably check out the New York Public Library, which has 300,000 free books you can download (as well as the ebook offerings at my local library). We have been too sleepy to watch movies the last few nights, but we've got plans to view all kinds of good ones this weekend. The sun is due to come out any day now (I mean this literally). 

Thanks, neighbor.

Love in the time of COVID-19

(Updated to add links)

Oh I keep meaning to write something here, but I find myself scribbling in a journal instead (literally, scribbling little sketches of stuff, i.e. dogs, as well as writing words and lists and so on). Here's what's been happening in my house/life:

• Isaac and Edna are here, in limbo as they wait to learn how online instruction will work for the remainder of their semesters. It's a bizarre, sad way for Isaac's undergraduate career to end.
• We've been watching movies:
• Knives Out
• Jojo Rabbit
• And TV:
• The Plot Against America
• High Fidelity
• Better Call Saul
• Homeland
• Even after searching the stores for flour in a frenzy, once Mark had come home, victorious, with a bag from Whole Foods, it took me a few days to decide what I wanted to bake and to actually start baking. Here's what we've made so far:
• Socca, eaten with two friend eggs on top (chickpea flour required)
• Vegan pumpkin pecan bread
• No-knead bread (this is rising right now, and if it works out we'll eat it with this soup tonight)
• Isaac whipped up some focaccia last night, topped with rosemary and flaky salt

It was a more innocent time.

Good things:

• Bare footprints in the sand on the beach 
• A V of Canadian geese flying north overhead
• Clover in her new bed, looking like she's asleep in the arms of a stuffed animal
• The calming properties of a piece of buttered toast
• A video of a man playing Moonlight Sonata on a piano for an elderly elephant's listening pleasure

And finally, notes on getting a massage, which I jotted down over a week ago, which now feels like the distant past (when will we be able to do things like get a haircut or a massage again?):

It sure is weird right now, at this moment in history, to be doing something that involves a stranger putting their hands all over your body. 

Early

I keep waking up earlier and earlier--maybe my body's way of preparing me to spring forward? Or maybe it's this stupid cough that I can't seem to shake, which wakes me up approximately every four hours. If my life were a movie, I would definitely be dying of tuberculosis soon.

In a curious role switch, instead of being stared at by Theo, I've been gazed at by Gus all morning. WHY WE'RE UP SO EARLY? WHAT FUN THING ARE WE DOING NOW? He usually sleeps in.

I can't recommend The Great British Baking Show/Bake Off highly enough, by the way. It is the best-natured reality show I've ever watched, with sweet bakers competing nicely, decent, thoughtful judges, and goofy, kind hosts. All of them, of course, British and thus charming. I'm going to attempt a cake they made one week, a many-layered thing cooked under the broiler ("grill" in UK-speak), almost like a pile of crêpes covered with jam and iced in chocolate.

I Almost Wish We Were Butterflies

I baked a lemon poundcake for a party at my friend Mama D's house. It was lovely and lemony. Both the poundcake and the party.

I bought this honey because of the bear on the label, but let me tell you, this stuff is really good. Creamy and light, so delicious in my tea and on my toast.

Oh, I've been at the beach with my best friend these last few mornings. Just look at Minnow's face--he has forgotten the nightly fireworks terrors and can breathe deeply. I want to live at the beach. I don't think I'd wish for anything, ever again, if I could smell saltwater every day.

‎"I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days..." -- John Keats

Tea for One

I made scones. Dear friend, I wish you were here to share them with me, because then I wouldn't have eaten so many.*


*Two and a half. And in reality, Isaac came home and joined me, and he loved them, despite the involvement of coconut and almonds.