Fall Break with Lu and Bea

Beatrice and Lucia visited Mom and Dad on the farm for part of their fall break last week, and spending time with them was wondrous. I don't use that word very often, but when I do I mean it *THIS BIG*. Shew! Some of y'all know how much I miss them on the regular, especially when I haven't seen them since July. 

OR SIS!! 

Beatrice arrived a day earlier than Lucia and enjoyed having "run of the place," as the old-timers say.

She did "miss her Sis," because that's how it works with sisters in this family and was glad to see Lucia on Tuesday. 

The next day, Jack and I loaded them up and carried them for some dorking around - that's what we call it - at Rock Island State Park. LOVE that place. I'm sad that our family didn't know about it when we were growing up, because it's a beautiful state park almost literally in our back yard. 

Anyhoo - 

Here are some photos I took during their visit: 

Beatrice

Beatrice and NanNan

Lu and Bea with an American beauty berry bush at Rock Island State Park.

Lu and Bea at the spring house at Rock Island State Park

Girls at Great Falls 

Girls at Great Falls

Beatrice doing a perfect cartwheel. Look at those sweet pink toes!!!

Birthday Bulletin

You may have noticed that I've dropped the COVID19 designation from the title of the post. COVID19 is going to be with us from here on out. The United States' response to the virus this time last year was so politicized and intentionally bumbled that the concept of "herd immunity" isn't even an option for us now.

Folks who live their lives by "Fear not," saith the Lord are more afraid of the virus than the vaccine, even though one thing is known to be deadly and the other one isn't. Those same "fear nots" are also the ones cheering the new Tennessee state law allowing anyone who wants to carry a handgun openly to by-God-strap-one-on because they're terrified of whatever might need to be shot and killed, but that's a whole different box of snakes.

I celebrated my 56th birthday on Tuesday the 27th, and I don't feel any older. In fact, I currently feel better than I've felt in a few years. Back in December'ish, Jack and I switched to a healthier diet with lots of vegetables, healthy fats, and almost no fried food ever, and now four months into "improved diet," we both feel physically improved, which at our age is the best gift we can give ourselves.

Bea's birthday was the 23rd, and the family got together for a joint celebration on Sunday afternoon. It was for Bea and myself, but it was truly a celebration of our entire family. This marked the first time we've been together as a family - all of us - since we got vaccinated. Vaccines have still not been approved for children, but surely to goodness they'll be eligible soon since young people are the newest high risk group.

Here are a few pictures from the party:

 

COVID19: Vaccinated, Easter on the Farm, Photos of the Girls

Even though the COVID19 is still with us and will be for a long time, I'm not going to preface my titles with it any longer. We've been isolating and taking precautions for a year now, and this is our new reality.

Jack and I have received both rounds of the Moderna vaccine, and while we still have about ten days before we have maximum protection, the relief feels sweet. 

That said, there's still no place I want to go and nothing I want to do other than some serious hanging with Sis and the girls. Mom and Dad and I got huggy last week, and the situation feels overall better, but  news of dangerous variants and Canada on lockdown and young people now at increased danger of illness, death, and transmission have me on high alert. All of us really, and all I can do is hope that everyone stays as safe and well as they can. 

We had Easter on the farm last Saturday (the day before Easter) with Sis, Chris, and the girls coming for a longer, visit with inside-time and a more normal feel to it. Because Jack and I are not quite protected, we had to hang back and refrain from hugs, but that time's coming with a couple of birthdays - Bea's and mine - later in April.

I was so excited about seeing everybody and volunteered to make a beautiful and perfect strawberry cake using a recipe from Jack's side of the family. I filled it with strawberry jam and was on Cloud9 about how much everyone was going to love that cake. Until I dropped it putting it into the car. At least it landed right side up, and aside from some grime from the side of the car that scraped off easily enough with a spatula, it was fine and tasted delicious.

Mom posed with the big spruce tree in the yard. It was our first Christmas tree after we moved into the house 1978. Forty two years now! It's huge and beautiful. When I posted the photo on Facebook, my friend Mike commented, "It's a Christmas tree with the angel at the bottom." 

We all love kitties. This is Mom's cat, Bingo.

COVID19: Safe Distance Thanksgiving on the Farm Photos

 

COVID19: Flour Child

 When I told Jack I wanted to make pizza dough by hand instead of using the KitchenAid, he predicted I'd give up after about five minutes of kneading or be sore for days afterward, and neither of those things happened.

Ten minutes of kneading flew by to the rhythm of a couple of favorite songs, and an hour later, a bowl of perfectly risen dough was divided into two balls, zip-bagged, and put into the fridge to proof overnight.

I made a couple of tweaks over the next batches and have reached the point where I'd be proud to serve pizza to just about anybody and just about anytime. Last night as Jack and I devoured a large onion and black olive with a few blobs of whole milk mozzarella and half smoked sausage (his side), he proclaimed that nobody in DeKalb eats better pizza than we do.

This one has peppers from Dad's little garden row.

There are some great kitchens out there on ridges, in hollers, and along all kinds of county roads, but he's likely right, because we do throw out a great pie.

Another thing we've thrown out recently is homemade Canadian bacon, which was super easy and getting done again this weekend!

Step One: Make a brine - Bring curing salt, regular salt, bay leaves, garlic, peppercorns to a boil in three quarts of water.

Step Two: Chill it until it's nice and cold.

Step Three: Marinate a pork tenderloin for 72 hours.

Step Four: Roast the pork until the internal temp is 142 degrees.

Step Five: Slice 

That's it, and wow, it was delicious. It was the most tender, tasty "city ham" I may have ever tasted and a completely different critter than the slice of Canadian bacon on an Egg McMuffin, the pieces on a restaurant pizza, or anything from the grocery store. The old adage about how homemade is way better holds true for the brined meat category given our recent experience with corned beef, pastrami, and now Canadian bacon, which is actually Irish bacon because it's roasted instead of smoked, but we aren't splitting that hair in this particular blog post. 

We are splitting homemade bagels, though, while we're talking about tasty thing from the kitchen. I started out with a batch of plain ones and have experimented just a bit, making sun dried tomato bagels for Sis after she mentioned how much she liked the ones baked at a particular Memphis bagel shop. The first test batch went to the farm for tasting, and Mom suggested using more pieces of tomato to jazz-up the flavor. Sis reports that the follow-up batch I sent to Franklin earlier this week were A-OK. 

I also sent a chocolate cake to Franklin, because not everyone I love who lives there likes sun dried tomato bagels. 

COVID19: Case Counts, Frustration, Back to School

Yesterday, Tennessee had 799 new cases of novel coronavirus. The day before that, the number was 986, and before that, it was 800'ish. We've had, I think, two separate days with more than a thousand cases each. 

Different kinds of businesses in the state keep opening to customers - some with restrictions and limits on occupancy and some without. Restaurants are supposed to be operating at maybe 50% of what is normally allowed, but I think some are pushing the envelope because they need and want the business, and people are more than ready to give it to them. 

More and more frustration with the situation is building, and without clear orders/requirements to wear masks or to limit shopping and other outings to essential business only, some states, like Tennessee, are struggling to get ahead of spiking numbers of cases. "Flattening the curve" is still weeks and an atrocious number of preventable infections away. Unless folks start taking this pandemic seriously, we may not get to that point. 

Many counties, including DeKalb, are planning to start school as usual in August, but nobody seems to have a clear idea of what's going to happen or how it's going to look in practice. From what I've seen on social media and in the news, the people in charge of coming up with a plan haven't been and aren't listening to teachers, focusing instead on doing whatever is necessary to stimulate the local economies which pay the bills and make-nice with the loudest, meanest, most oppositional parent voices. 

As a non-parent, some say I don't have a dog in the race, but I'm a property-owning tax payer, and while my sister and nieces aren't part of the school system here, they are very involved in the school system where they live, so yes, I do. Sis teaches, and Lu and Bea are both students. Wanting them to be safe and expecting the safety of people just like them to be the priority isn't selfish, and none of us - NONE of us - should expect anything less. 

My blog readership is tiny, but I'm thinking about writing a letter to the editor, and this is a good place to practice.

Click on this link to reach the Tennessee state website to see each day's updated case count, recovered, death, and number of tests performed. It is updated at 2:00 p.m. daily.

https://www.tn.gov/health/cedep/ncov.html

Lucia Turns Nine

Lucia turned nine on Sunday the 10th.

Yes, nine - like Jack said, "halfway to college" - and no, it doesn't seem real that the years have passed so quickly and transformed LuV, a sweet wad of carrot-topped baby, into the smart, spindly third grader with complex opinions and incredible vocabulary skills we know and love today.

We celebrated the big day in Franklin at the Baby House with tasty take-out from the Franklin Chop House and a delicious Coca-Cola cake made by Sis. Over the last week and a half, I've thought about that cake a few times and wish I had just another bite or two of it...

Lucia got a nice haul of birthday presents, including a watercolor I painted of "her" as goalie of her soccer team. That's her favorite position, and Chris says she does really well at it. I didn't have an actual reference photo of Lucia on the soccer field, but I found an awesome shot of Hope Solo and went from there. Lu quickly recognized herself and was tickled to pieces with both the painting and the folding money we stuck in her card.

And because everybody needs a little folding money and to feel special on her sister's birthday, Beatrice got some goodies, too.

And I love that they are so very different from one another - Lucia's kind of an extrovert. Beatrice is neat and orderly. Lucia is (as her mother once described her) "fearlessly creative." Beatrice is cautious and analytical. Lucia is the child who at age three proclaimed a stick-skinny, twentysomething Japanese waiter at a sushi restaurant looked "just like Jack," because he had a ponytail and glasses. Beatrice could get a job with the government identifying the differences identical twins.

As a side note example of how the girls think differently, last year for Lu's birthday, I painted her a card with her lovey on it - she immediately knew it was "KiTTen" and the longer she looked at it, the more similarities she saw. When I did the same thing in April for Beatrice's birthday, she studied the card, and said, "This cat doesn't look anything like Bananas. This cat is brown and has a shorter tail than Bananas. I like it, but it really doesn't look like my cat, Pammy."

I crack up every time I think about it, and objectively speaking as the "artist" who created both pieces, the Bananas card looked a lot more like its subject than the KiTTen one, because I was five months better at painting.

Halloween 2017

Wow, it's November now.

I haven't blogged since the eclipse back in August, even though things have happened that I should've written about since then, and here I sit, wondering whether to try to condense two and a half months' worth of happenings into a few sentences or work on my long game by writing a lot or what.

Once again, I helped Vernon girls with their costumes, and once again, they created their own imaginative characters: the Carrot Queen and Royal Rabbit. 

With the exception of Bea's tutu and the rest of the accessories, everything about the costumes is fleecy, warm, and weather-appropriate for the last day of October in Middle TN. And aside from the costume value, both girls should get some everyday wear from the soft snuggly pullovers that helped bring their characters to life.

Aside from Halloween, Bea had a big day today celebrating her 50th day of kindergarten with  50's Day.

When you're five years old, is there anything better than wearing a fun costume to school for the day and then changing into another fun costume to go trick or treating? 

Mom and I worked on the skirt together over the weekend, and both of us were concerned that the waist would be too small, but everything fit perfectly, and Bea was the perfect little bobby-socks'er.

                                          

When I made Lucia's skirt for her 50th day of kindergarten, it swallowed her whole. She'll still be wearing it when she's in 6th grade. 

Sewing with Lucia

I haven't written much this summer - this year - because every time I sit down and begin to type, I end up sharing what's on my mind, and things quickly turn to my assessment of the immeasurable disgrace our country is currently experiencing. What starts as a simple blog post to share the what's what of the here and now turns into an expletive-ridden condemnation of the ignorant asshole a bunch other ignorant assholes elected to be our nation's president last November, and I can't be nice about it.

So, for the sake of honesty and my mental health, there it is; and those who say I need to "get over it" can kiss my fat ass and go fall in a hole for all I care.

Shew! I feel better getting that off my chest, so be aware: in the future, when I need to say things, I'm going to say them.

Now - on to better, less-contentious things.

Lucia and I did a sewing day a few weeks ago. She wanted to make clothes for her dolls, but doll clothes are tiny and tedious, and without a decent pattern to follow, we were left to play things by ear. The day was still successful with Lucia crafting these sweet "heart pillows" for her dolls and Beatrice's.

Spending time with the girls does wonders for my spirit when the weight of current events is heavy, and they remind me why I'm becoming more and more outspoken about what's going on in the country. These two deserve the very best the future has to offer.

The major thing is that Lucia is learning to use a sewing machine with confidence, and she enjoys it. When the little machine Jack and I gave her for Christmas two years ago wouldn't cooperate, we pulled out Nan's Singer, and Lucia handled it like a pro. Using the on-board instructions and her own intuition, she figured out how to thread the needle, fill the bobbin, and make long, consistent seams.

Even though she's only eight, Lucia is a creator of beautiful things, and I have no doubt that her sewing and design skills will serve her well in the coming years.

And speaking of creating beautiful things, I'm really pleased with the direction my artistic pursuits have taken me lately.

I know I'm not gallery-ready by any stretch of the imagination, but I am really happy with several of my recent paintings and more convinced than ever that we can learn to do whatever strikes our fancy by watching enough YouTube videos.

Until next time, which hopefully won't be that long!!