COVID19: Math Isn't That Hard

The marina is open for business, and if the traffic we've seen up and down the hill today is any indication, business is kinda booming. Who knows if anyone is taking precautions or carrying a mask "just in case" or considering who might be infected with the virus and not know it?

The event is an in-water boat show with reps from different mid-state dealerships and vendors of boat- and lake-life stuff. I think there are set-ups of wakeboards, tow-lines, towers, and the like, but we haven't seen some of the usual biggies for the annual event - the Monster Energy Drink RV didn't arrive like it normally does, and we didn't see the Budweiser truck with "tappers" on the side go down and stay. All the beer trucks have come back out after delivering.

Maybe it's smaller this year, but the crowd today is as big as ever for the boat show. The field across from our yard is parked full of giant boat trailers and the kind of pickup trucks that cost more than a small house in these parts. Folks loaded-in with boats all day, then there was a "dinnertime lull" we've observed during all the "special event weekends" at the marina. The live music, a guy named Randy Houser, was taking the stage at 8:00, so announced the Facebook page, so the second loading-in started at 7:00'ish and is winding down a little bit now.

After the traffic we've seen the past two weekends and the madness in the parking lot at places like Lowe's and WalMart, I shudder to think what will happen to our local hospitals and their ability to take care of people when COVID gets a foot down here in the Upper Cumberland. DeKalb County has four intensive care beds. Warren has eight. White has four.

Math is hard, but it's not that hard.

Elsewhere in Tennessee and across the nation, cities have erupted in protest of the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, at the hands - under the knee - of a while policeman in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The situation is grave, but considering how our president and the attorney general have demonstrated that the rule of law is a moving target and doesn't really matter anyway, what's happening is no big surprise. Donald Trump was elected by racists emboldened by his validation that selfishness is not only morally acceptable but a righteous act when those who suffer are "others." His whole agenda is one of white nationalism, so what we are seeing across the country is only to be expected when fuel is thrown on an already smouldering fire.

COVID19: Homeburger Dinner

When I was a kid, I could really look down my nose at a lot of really tasty eats, and one of the things I judged particularly harshly was a hamburger served on sliced, white bread.

To my immature sensibilities, a hamburger without a store-bought bun wasn't really a hamburger, and I probably stomped my foot on the floor and said something snotty to my mother about having the unmitigated gall to feed the family such nonsense.

Back in those days, a hamburger with more on it that the aforementioned bun was also not really a hamburger, either. It was a disastrous lie full of icky stuff like onions and mustard and tomato.

I still don't do the tomato part - that's another blog post for another day - but I have overcome my aversion to "homeburgers" (hamburgers on sliced, white bread), and these days I really dress'em up with good stuff. This one has mustard, ketchup, Duke's mayonnaise, sliced onion, and arugula (aka "rocket") we grew ourselves in the little bed below the driveway.

A few nights ago, as Jack and I eagerly talked about what goodness would be in our weekly grocery pick-up, he suggested thawing a pack of ground beef and making burgers. We had ten or so little-bitty potatoes which were easily turned into delicious salad with the addition of some chopped onion, green pepper, and celery. Jack always bakes them with a nice smear of duck fat, a liberal sprinkle of kosher salt, and no foil at 400 degrees, and they are always perfect for both eating hot and using later in salads, soups, or riced into a casserole (instead of hash browns.)

Five eggs took a trip through the Instant Pot and got deviled. I decorated them with little bits of asparagus pickle, olive, and the one radish we've harvested this spring. They were fancy-goofy but delicious.

The snap peas are some of my special garlicky-fermented ones and a great foil for the creamy potatoes and dressy eggs.

Jack and I both cleaned our plates.

COVID19: Sunday Observations

Today we picked up groceries at Kroger in Murfreesboro again. This time was a doozie, and I'll not go into the gory details of our horrible customer service experience because I have already spent way too much time thinking about it today and have already typed out the chronology of events twice - once in the survey about our pickup and in a separate contact form submission from the Kroger website.

Some points:

• People loitering or lingering on foot in the pick-up area are a hazard in multiple ways, and customers should not be allowed to have a leisurely visit while others are trying to get in and out with their orders.
• Masks only work when you wear them up over your nose and mouth. 
• "Jesus is stronger than COVID" emblazoned in rhinestones and sequins across the front of a t-shirt looks stupid.

The weather was lovely for most of the day, but storms rolled through at sunset-ish and have left lots of folks, including Mom and Dad, without power. Ours blinked off for a few seconds but came right back. We were lucky this time. Normally we're the ones whose power stays off for hours and hours when  storm knocks it out.

Thankfully the weather wasn't wild for long.

Mary-Mary, How Does Your Garden Grow?

I snapped photos of some of Mom's flowers when I went to pick up a few groceries she'd added to her pick-up order from Kroger the other day.

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These are all beautiful.

This one is from my yard, and though someone told me what it is, I can't remember.

Not Bad at All: My COVID19 Cleaning Binge

For the past few days, I've channeled my frustration with the COVID19 situation into an incredible head of spring cleaning steam. My hands are chapped and my shoulders are sore, but there are clean places in this house right now that haven't had the attention of a damp cloth in years.

This burst of energy started when Jack and I decided to purchase a new heavy duty chrome-plated wire shelf for our kitchen as an anniversary present to ourselves. We celebrated 22 years yesterday and have endured the inconvenience of not enough storage space in our tiny kitchen for more than 20 of them. Storage solutions for small spaces are hard to come by, but the shelf we found on Amazon is perfect at 24 inches wide, 18 inches deep, and 72 inches tall with five shelves and high quality casters. 

Wheels are a requirement, because for the space we have, the shelf has to roll to allow the dishwasher door to open. No, it's not convenient or pretty, but we make do.

The initial delivery estimate was for Thursday, but it came on my birthday, and I was so excited, I couldn't wait to get home from eating cake on the farm to put it together and start filling it up. Yes, you heard that right. I rushed cake and a visit with my parents to assemble a shelf and throw myself into revamping our kitchen. 

In addition to the new shelf, I also have new cleaning products. With paper towels being in short supply, Jack and I decided to investigate ways to decrease our consumption, which was obscenely high in the months before Diva died. In dealing with her incontinence, we relied mainly on paper towels, because they were easy and convenient. Managing urine-soaked cotton rags wasn't logistically manageable with our laundry location in the basement and no interior stairs to get there, and who really wants to fill their washing machine with pee towels every day or two anyway?

I'd read about Swedish dish cloths online somewhere but not given them much thought until last week when I was shopping to see just how hard finding the next big block of paper towels was going to be when Amazon recommended something called Skoy cloths and Skoy scrubs to help us decrease our paper towel use. They have thousands of 5-star ratings, and the glowing reviews convinced me to spend $12.99 for a set of four cloths and 2 scrubbies, which about the price of a dozen rolls of paper towels.

I also ordered something called a Lunatech dish cloth, which is a less-aggressive texture than the Skoy scrubbie and, according to the Amazon reviews, almost indestructible. 

Both were delivered a week ago today, and I have honestly never been more excited about cleaning my house. Cleaning jobs and little projects I've procrastinated for an embarrassingly long time have been checked off the flip chart list taped to the wall of my skull and new ideas have come to life. 

After Jack pointed out how horrible the sconce shades in our great room looked, we pulled the old material off the bulb-clip wire frames, and minutes later, a watercolor exercise I'd done months ago and put in my recycle stack had been repurposed into colorful new shades. The others came with the house and had been here since it was built in 1975, so they were horrible shape but had been nothing special when they were new. The material was heavy brown kraft paper with leather-look texturing, so these bright blue and green new ones, painted to celebrate the earth and the sky, are a welcome change. 

I used a hole punch and laced faux suede cord to create a cool new shade from a watercolor in the recycle pile.

Another little project involved moving the ashes of beloved pets to a safe place of reverence, so Dudley, Moose, Venus, Fuzz, and Carlton have been moved to our ski shelf, Jack's old slalom ski that we hung over the entrance to our hall. I plan to add framed photos of each sweetie above the railing, and there are already photos of Tess and Cynthia's sweet Bonnie on the shelf below that daisy painting. No, Bonnie wasn't our dog, but she was my first dog niece. She and Tess grew up as puppies together, and she absolutely belongs on the memory wall.

COVID aside, each new day seems to bring some progress, and that's not bad at all.