Staying Home: Part หนึ่ง

In case you're wondering, that funny little symbol in the blog title is the Thai numeral for 3. :) Going on week whatever-this-is of staying at home, here's a little update on the daily going's on around here.

What I'm drinking: I've started drinking black coffee. Weird, I know. I never thought I'd be a black coffee drinker, and here I am. I'm still in the early stages and luckily Simon and our roommate Eli are coffee snobs, so I'm drinking some pretty good stuff. I don't forsee me ever being a Folgers black coffee drinker, though...hahaha! My friend Jan also gave Simon and I some Celestial Seasonings Ginger + Probiotics tea, and it's so good!! I drink one cup a day and hopefully that will keep all the bad things away.

What I'm watching: Years ago for Christmas my parents bought me season one of Six Feet Under, an HBO show about a dysfunctional family who runs a funeral home. I never did get around to watching it until just recently. The show takes place/was filmed in 2001, and it's been fun to see all the familiar things from that era...the outfits, the hair styles, the accessories, the music, the cars, the flip phones, and the cultural references. You can definitely see how Six Feet Under laid the ground work for Michael C. Hall to become the character of Dexter for the Showtime series...he plays a toned down but still conflicted version of Dexter in this series, and as of yet, has not actually murdered anyone. One of the characters, the teenage daughter Claire, drives an old hearse as her personal vehicle, which I think is pretty cool. It also got me thinking...what a great camping vehicle an old hearse would be! Plenty of room in the back for a mattress and whatnot. Just jack that thing up, put some burly tires on it, and boom...instant adventure vehicle. I'm surprised we don't see more hearses hanging out in the woods...perhaps people are weirded out by sleeping in a spot that had previously been occupied by dead people. I'm not going to lie, I did a used vehicle search and you can get an older model, low-milage Cadillac hearse for around $4,000, just in case this idea piques your interest. I could probably even hook you up with a few outfitters who would love the challenge of converting a hearse to a camping vehicle. :)

What I'm reading: I started reading a book called Heart: A History by Sandeep Jauhar. I snagged it out of a lending library at the hospital during a relatively slow night on our unit. It's a book about our complicated relationship with our hearts, which is both an organ, a muscle, and very affected by emotions, different from our other organs. I was particularly fascinated by the chapter on Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy, also known as broken-heart syndrome. I remember years ago when I was in my early 20's, enduring heartbreak after heartbreak, hoping someday either I or the men I was pursuing would get our shit together. I asked my friend Pritish, who was a medical resident at the time, why our hearts hurt when we're sad. I knew there had to be some sort of physiologic explanation for it, because the ache was so intense and so very real. He didn't have an answer for me. It's also entirely possible that he might have known, but just didn't want to get involved in the sadness of a broken-hearted 20-something, which is understandable. It wasn't until years later that I first heard about Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy, because I was caring for a patient who had been diagnosed with it after the death of her spouse. Apparently during intense sadness and the adrenaline increases that go along with it, the heart actually physically changes shape and balloons into the shape of a Takotsubo pot, which the Japanese used to trap octopus...it's wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy is typically temporary and resolves within a few weeks, but during the acute phase it can cause heart failure, arrythmias, and even death. The symptoms of Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy mimic those of a heart attack, including chest pain and shortness of breath, both of which I had personally experienced during periods of sadness following breakups. I'm not trying to say that I had Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy, but the symptoms were very much there. So there you have it. A broken heart really is and can be just that...a broken heart.

What I'm reading

What I've been working on: I started training Kiki with a shock collar. It kind of breaks my heart, but it's something that I've been considering for quite a while, and we had an incident the other day that convinced me that it was time. Since we've been social distancing, I've been trying to get in at least a 3 mile walk everyday, and Kiki comes along. I prefer to walk her off-leash, as it's just more pleasurable for the both of us...she gets to tear around and sniff, and I don't have to wait for her or try to keep up with her. She typically sticks pretty close and most of the time she comes back when called. There's a road that we walk along that has a few houses on it, but otherwise is pretty open and wild. There's one particular house that has chickens, and we've walked by this house tons of times and Kiki hasn't paid the chickens any mind. Well, the other day the chickens were closer to the road than they typically are, and she took off after them. No amount of yelling at her or calling to her could break her focus, and I was worried that she was going to catch one and kill it, or even worse, that the owner of the house would see her going after his chickens and shoot her. Growing up in farm country in Minnesota, farmers were known to shoot dogs who came onto their property and chased their livestock, that's just how it was. As I chased Kiki across this farmer's property, I was worried about her getting shot, but I also worried about myself getting caught in the middle of it as well...it's just not a safe situation for anyone. I finally caught her and that has been the end of the off-leash walking. We've gone on three walks now with the shock collar and I've used it to correct her a few times. She's a smart dog and she's been really responsive, and she's starting to respond more readily to my voice. There are still times when I struggle to break her focus, and we'll see what happens when I start trying her off-leash again. I've determined that it's going to be a while before I'm comfortable walking her off-leash near the farmhouses though, so I'm going to start off-leash training out in the woods. She loves to chase birds and squirrels, and we've been pretty lenient since we got her about letting her chase them, so we'll see if I can start having success with calling her off of those before we delve into chicken territory again. She's a cattle dog and she loves to chase, that's just who she is and it makes me sad to take that away from her, but she needs to be safe and listen to me. If you've trained your dogs with shock collars or have any other advice for me regarding chasing, I'd love to hear it.

Kiki getting some morning sunlight, waiting patiently for her walk

What I'm cooking: With the collaboration of our roommate Eli, we've been trying out at least one new recipe a week. I think we're about 70-30 with regard to success and failures. Our first big success was a Khao Soi curry recipe, which is a style of curry noodle found in northern Thailand. Simon and I had it there during our trip and it's so amazingly good. I have a Thai cookbook that I've literally never opened and we delved into it and lo and behold, the Khao Soi recipe was so incredibly easy and so delicious! So that was a winner. Another time we made homemade pizzas with homemade dough and we all picked our individual toppings...those were fantastic. Just a couple days ago we made a shwarma chicken pot pie, using marinated chicken thighs that we got at Trader Joe's. Let me tell you, it was absolutely amazing and it took an act of willpower to not just sit down and eat all of it right out of the pie plate. I made chicken meatballs the other day and finally got to use my meatball scooper. From start to finish, there was very little touching of raw meat and the entire process time was cut almost in half. Winning! One of the failures has been a batch of pancakes that were crazy salty due to a measuring spoon mishap. Another failure was a batch of pasta I made using some house-made nduja sausage from one of our local restaurants. It was my first time using this type of sausage and come to find out, a little goes a loooong way. The pasta turned out so greasy and rich that I honestly couldn't eat it. Simon and Eli did a good job of mostly finishing it off. We're coining these mishaps "failures moving forward," because we're learning from our mistakes and are committed to trying again, rather than just quitting all together, which sometimes is the easier route. It's been great trying all these things out together; it's made distancing that much more bearable.

Nduja pasta...better luck next time!

In the cooking vein, I've started going through all the Rachael Ray and Food Network magazines that I've been stockpiling over the years. I'd earmarked a ton of recipes in them and then just stashed them away. So now I'm going through all of them, tearing out the recipes that I want to make, and putting them in a binder for easy access later. For the past couple months, I've been craving pasta like nobody's business, so a vast majority of the recipes I'm saving are for pasta. Also, staying true to my midwestern roots, I'm a huge fan of the one-pot recipes. Anything that requires multiple steps to both prep and then prepare are uninteresting to me. However, I'm more than happy to eat futzy recipes if someone else is willing to make them for me.

What I'm growing: I've recently added to my indoor plant collection, and everyone is still alive! It's a miracle! Even my rehabbed orchid still looks amazing. It turns out that I've been under-watering my plants, which has never been an issue for me before. Typically I water my plants pretty much to death, so this is a new chapter in my plant rearing. So far so good!

Easter cactus that I've managed to keep alive

New traditions: Pretty much every morning, Simon, Eli and I get together for coffee. We all sit at the table and work on whatever projects we have going on. Eli typically writes, Simon reads the news, and I randomly do one thing or another. It's hard for me to sit and focus my attention on any one thing, but I'm working on it. Sometimes we sit and talk and I really enjoy those interactions a lot. It's been nice having a third perspective in the house because there's so much more to talk about. Not that Simon and I would otherwise have nothing to talk about having exhausted all conversations in the 13 years that we've been together, but it's nice to have a new perspective on things. We've also started doing Sushi Sundays. We don't do it every Sunday, but most Sundays we get sushi take-out from our favorite sushi place in town. It's been pretty wonderful and it's a great way to finish off the day. I'm so thankful for the local businesses that continue to offer take-out.

Care packages and coffee from friends. :)

Simon: He's having a good day today, and says that today is the best he's felt since he first started getting sick. He joined me on my walk with Kiki this morning and did the whole thing with us. Typically he starts out with us and then turns around early so as not to wear himself out. He's still pretty tired and takes multiple naps a day, but overall the fevers and the body aches are gone. I'm hoping sometime later this week or early next week I'll be able to move back into the bed and life can resume. Thanks so much for all the kinds words we've received, the offers to bring us things, and thanks for the care packages. You guys have been so great and supportive and have made this process easier not just for Simon, but for me as well. It's been hard not just being apart from him but worrying about him as well. I'm thankful for the times I've been able to get out and clear my head.

What I did today: I had breakfast and coffee and then Simon and I took Kiki for a walk. She did well but still went after a squirrel. She's getting better though. Then I came back, and gave Cooper a bath in the sink. There was much less screaming than the last time, thank goodness. Then I took a shower, and put on real pants. Plans for the day include a live-streaming yoga class and virtual happy hour with a friend this evening. Perhaps I'll get around to another episode of Six Feet Under and put some of my recipes in the binder. But we'll see, don't want to get too ambitious. ;)

Stay well, stay healthy!