Staying Home: Part Quatro

The fourth installment of the Staying at Home series has a Simon update, all the things in my life that have been cancelled and some that still might be, what we've been cooking, drinking, and listening to, and what life is like on the cusp of our state gradually reopening to the public.

Simon camping outside Yellowstone

Simon Update: He's better! Completely back to normal, in fact. He went back to work on Friday night and has worked three shifts total. While his illness overall wasn't as severe as some (he didn't need to go to the hospital), it was the sickest that I've ever seen him in our 13+ years together. I'm glad that he was only out for 2 weeks, as I've heard of others in the community who were sick at home for almost a month or more. Our roommate Eli and I luckily never had any symptoms at all, and we both felt fine the whole time Simon was sick. It's an interesting thing, really. Given that neither Eli nor I were tested, it's hard to say if we actually were infected and recovered with no symptoms or if we somehow managed to not get infected at all. Also a question is if we were, in fact, infected, do we now have some sort of immunity? Or is it somewhat like getting chicken pox, where the lighter the case the more likely you are to contract it again? From what I've been reading, it sounds like they're seeing cases of people being reinfected, but it's hard to know if they're actually getting reinfected with the same strain, if their symptoms from the initial infection are just re-emerging, or if they're getting infected with a mutated strain that's just different enough from their original strain to make them sick again. It's so hard to say. This illness is so new and there's still so much that we don't know about it. Ultimately I'd like to get the antibody test just to see, but I've heard the accuracy on that test is about 60%, which isn't all that promising. Fingers crossed that I had it, I've recovered, and should be good to go for a while.

The new bike I bought for RAGBRAI

Things that have been cancelled: This is kind of a sore subject, but in the interest of the health and well-being of the general public, I'm okay with it. Most of the things that have been cancelled involved activities in large groups, which I think will be the very last things to resume once the community and the country in general feel it's safe. Two things that I missed in April were a haircut and a dentist appointment...non-essential really as I'm not having any tooth issues and my hair just is what it is. I've been trying to grow it out anyway so now is as good a time as any. My April ladies' bike trip to Utah was postponed to October. The Chino Grinder, which was supposed to be happening today, is a gravel bike race taking place in Chino Valley, AZ. It was postponed to sometime in September. I'm still not sure if I'm going to try to go in September or not. I hadn't officially registered for it so at this point I'm not yet out any money. The Yosemite Half Marathon, which I was going to do with my friend Madison, has been postponed until next year and I deferred my registration for that. What's funny is that this is the third year that I've signed up for it and been unable to go, but this is the first year that it wasn't my fault...hahaha! My friend Brie's wedding was supposed to take place in July in Alaska; it's been postponed until next July. We had taken two weeks off and were planning to make a big trip out of it. After the wedding was postponed I signed up for RAGBRAI, which is a 7-day bike ride across the state of Iowa, which was supposed to take place July 19-26. That has been postponed until next July as well, and I have until June 1st to decide if I want to defer my registration or get my money back. I got tickets to the Bottle Rock music festival in Napa, California, which has already been rescheduled once from May to October. Given that music festivals are huge, non-essential gatherings of people, I'm curious to see if it gets postponed until 2021. I wouldn't be a bit surprised. We also recently booked flights home to Minnesota for our annual trip to the Minnesota State Fair and to see family, but I'm wondering if the State Fair will happen. As of right now, it hasn't been cancelled, but time will tell. I think Minnesota is a few weeks behind Arizona as far as COVID cases are concerned, so they've still got some time for things to continue to escalate.

Riding bikes with Carrie :)

Social Distancing: We've been doing a really good job at staying at home and only leaving for essential things, like work and going to the grocery store. When I go to the store I try to stock up on things for the coming week so that I don't have to go again. We're also making use of things in the freezer and in the pantry. I've always been a bit of a food hoarder (I like options!) so we were good in the pantry department long before the staying-at-home measures were implemented. I miss our friends, so very much. I've managed to get out on a hike with a couple girlfriends and their dogs, and I went on a bike ride Thursday with my friend Carrie. Other than that socializing has been pretty much limited to text messages, facetime, and whatever interactions the three of us have amongst ourselves. It's amazing that we haven't run out of things to talk about yet! We've been having some really good conversations, and I'm so thankful that Eli is here to fulfill my extroverted needs and desire for interaction, much to his dismay, maybe...hahaha! What's also unfortunate about the timing of all this is that our very good friends who are nurses from Little Rock, Mark and Liz, have taken a travel assignment in Lake Havasu City, and we haven't been able to get out to visit them yet, partly because Simon was sick for so long and partly because we're just not sure what's appropriate in the current social distancing climate, and truth be told, we don't know how infectious we might be. All things that have kept us apart, which sucks because we haven't seen them in so long. It'll happen, but it just might be more towards the end of their contract, unfortunately.

Almond croissant and Dalgona coffee

What I've been eating: This week for our group recipe night Simon made fish tacos. It's not a new recipe, but it's a good one and we had some Mahi in the freezer that needed to be eaten. I also made a breakfast quiche using quinoa for the crust. Yesterday I made Dalgona coffee, which is one of the latest trends cycling around on social media for people to try at home. It was so incredibly good. It's basically whipped coffee that you put on top of your milk or coffee drink. As per usual, I didn't read the recipe all the way through and ended up doubling it because I thought the recipe was only for one serving, so we ended up with a ton of whip, but it kept nicely in the fridge and I was able to use it for an iced coffee yesterday afternoon. Winning! I finally made it through all of my Rachel Ray and Food Network magazines, so I've got a whole binder full of new recipes for us to try. I'm not going to lie, it was a lot of pasta recipes. I'm a carb junkie, what can I say? It was interesting to see how complicated a lot of the recipes were in those magazines...lots of ingredients that would require access to a specialty store, multiple steps to complete, and so much fennel. Who eats fennel? Doesn't it taste like black licorice? I didn't keep any of the recipes that required more than two pans, more than three steps, ingredients I can't get from a local grocery store, or fennel. And no salad recipes. I got no time for salad...not enough carbs for my liking. In light of the recent environment around the slaughter houses in the country, we're also re-evaluating our current meat consumption. I won't get into it too much because I've found that it's a touchy subject for most people and I don't feel like defending what ultimately is a personal choice for us in our own home. We've been wanting to eat less meat at home anyway, so again, now just seems like a good time to do it. I'll be exploring some of the local places to get meat and see where I end up. For the most part, as long as I have pasta and Simon has a full arsenal of veggies, we'll be fine. :)

My very first quiche!!

What I'm reading: Still working my way through Heart, A History, and Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, by Janisse Ray, which is a book about growing up white and poor in the South. It's an interesting book, and the author does a good job of not only painting a picture of what growing up was like in the South and how it shaped her as an adult, but she also does an excellent job of describing what the South looked like through the eyes of a child. She also brings in random pertinent cultural events that were happening near her during this time, but given that they were so rural and this was before a whole of technology, her experience with and access to current events was limited. I don't typically read two books at one time, but neither of these books are super heavy hitting with their content, and they're different enough that I don't get them confused. I also recently received the newest Stephen King book, If It Bleeds, and am really looking forward to getting into it. It's four novellas, and if you are familiar with Stephen King's writing at all, you know that his short story work is by and far away some of his very best. Random fact: the movies Stand By Me and Shawshank Redemption were both Stephen King novellas, and they both very clearly demonstrate his ability to write not just supernatural horror and fantasy, but real people in real situations as well. He's commented that a lot of authors like to write about the experiences of extraordinary people in ordinary circumstances, but he likes to write about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, and I think for the most part, he's able to do it quite brilliantly. He's also one of the few male authors who I feel can write exceptionally well from the perspective of a woman, which is not an easy task. Too often I feel male authors try to over-sexualize women's needs and desires while leaving them devoid of complex thoughts and feelings, but it's easy to forget that Stephen is a man writing from the perspective of a woman when you're in the minds of his female characters. I'll keep you posted on what I think when I finally get around to it. I've been putting it off because I want to finish the other two books first; I know that once I get into a Stephen King book, I rarely move but to turn pages for hours at a time. For perspective, I finished his book Under the Dome, which is 1,074 pages, in under 24 hours. Talk about couch-lock!

Kiki and Dewey getting ready for a hike!

What we've been listening to: I've been listening to a lot of Air Supply. Weird, I know. Those two goofy men just elevate my mood instantly, although I recognize that they're not for everyone. I just think they're silly and they remind me of the times my friend Franko and I would be driving down the highway belting out Air Supply songs at the tops of our lungs. Good times, and good memories to have, especially right now. Other than that, I thought I would be listening to more podcasts, but I unfortunately just don't have the attention span for them. Simon is able to do something productive while listening to podcasts, but I have to be doing nothing but listening to the podcast or my attention wanders away and I've absorbed nothing. I also have a hard time sitting still for the duration of a podcast, which is why I really like them on road trips because I physically can't go anywhere or do anything else. So for now, it's just Air Supply, occasionally Meatloaf, and whatever random station I flip to on Pandora.

Recent sunset in from our front yard in Moutainaire

Other things: We're getting some yard work done. After failed attempts at both Home Depot and the local garden shop (so many people and lines out the door), we came home and are making due with what yard projects we can accomplish with the supplies on hand. Simon took out some of the pavers in the front yard so I can have another flower bed, and he's planning to use those pavers to build a pad for his motorcycle to sit on. We have a gravel driveway and his bike is pretty heavy, so it needs a stable spot to rest when it's not being ridden. I raked the current flower bed, which is being converted into a ground cover bed full of low-sun plants due to it being north facing and close to the house, leaving it with sunlight for only a couple hours in the morning, at best. I also sowed some wildflower seeds from a can that's been sitting in the shed for over two years. We'll see if the flowers actually grow. The new flower bed is still on the north-facing side of the house, but it's farther away from the house than my current bed and gets good sunlight throughout the day. I'm planning to put in some hardy perennials because I like my plants to be low maintenance, and truthfully it's in their best interest to be low maintenance, otherwise I'll inevitably just kill them. I've pretty much given up on a vegetable garden for the time being. Between the elevation (7,000 feet), the climate (hot during the day and cold at night), and the lack of moisture (we have a rainy monsoon season here that doesn't typically start until late June/early July), it's incredibly hard to grow things out here without a substantial amount of infrastructure, watering, and maintenance. I think growing up in Minnesota has ruined me for gardens, as you can pretty much just put things anywhere in the ground there and they grow with little to no effort. I'm also not sure I want to commit to the time required to maintain a garden here...you are basically interacting with your garden multiple times a day...covering the plants at night, opening them back up in the morning, watering in the morning and the evening, weeding, checking temperatures and soil moisture...it's a lot of time that I could be doing other things, like sitting on the couch or some other non-productive activity that doesn't involve me killing things...hahaha!

Low maintenance plants...because I'm in no way responsible for these! ;)

Opening up: I'm curious to see how this is all going to go when people start venturing out and resume normal life again. I'm honestly a little nervous, as I feel that cases of coronavirus will inevitably spike again as we start interacting with each other again, but my hope is that we'll continue some measures of social distancing and the cases that do emerge will be manageable by the hospitals. This virus is just like most other viruses in that either you need to get exposed to it and establish immunity or you need to get a vaccine, which we don't have and might not have for quite some time yet. We actually don't have vaccines for any coronaviruses currently (there are several), and maybe we never will. People will get sick, some of them will die, that's the nature of viruses, and I think it's naive to approach this with the outlook that no one will die, or that we ultimately can prevent people from becoming infected at all. People need to protect themselves and others as much as possible so that we have the resources to treat those who become acutely ill when they need hospitalization. I'm not sure how I feel about traveling state-to-state or even region to region (I'm not even going to consider international travel at this time) based on how differently the positive cases have been dispersed throughout the country. I also don't think the vast majority of the numbers being reported are at all accurate due to (still) inadequate testing. So we'll see. I do know that we need to try to get back to normal life, whatever that is moving forward, but that we need to be smart about it.

Current work attire

Closing down: I might be taking a short hiatus from Facebook in the near future. Also the mainstream news outlets; I'm not sure which will go first or if both will go simultaneously. Actually, I could probably keep both, I just need to readjust how I interact with them. There are a lot of willfully ignorant, stupid, hateful people out there in the world, and reacting to and responding to them and their words has been a source of stress, disappointment, and sadness for me through all this. I've always been taught and pretty much live by the idea that it's easiest to be kind, even to those who are not, but not everyone shares this idea. To the people who are politicizing this virus, I wish they would just stop. This isn't about them and their haircuts or their political agenda; it's about the health and well-being of everyone around us. Be smart, be kind, wear a mask...that's not too much to ask, yet somehow for some people, it is. Somehow encouraging people to behave a certain way for the health of others is infringing on their rights as human beings. Unfortunately we can't parade scores of ignorant people through our hospitals just to prove that this virus is real, that people are sick and dying and are losing their family members. Somehow I hope that they learn trust us those of us on the front-lines and do the right things to keep everyone safe. That's my hope.

Cooper and Kiki on the porch

Right now: I'm sitting on the front porch with my dogs lying on a blanket next to me. They're kind of snuggling, but as usual, Cooper is resistant and is as far away from Kiki as the edges of the blanket will allow. Such a stubborn little old man. I'm watching the finches nervously approach the bird feeder and listening to the hummingbirds trilling along on their merry way. Such a wonderful sound, and truly the sign of spring in these parts. There's currently a mama junco sitting on 4 eggs in the nest she built in the branches of the christmas tree we have sitting on our front porch. I'm watching my neighbors walk their dogs and push their children in strollers, enjoying this sunny day. It's a beautiful day, and I'm so fortunate to be able to sit out here and be a part of it. Perhaps later I'll venture back to the garden shop to procure some perennials. Or maybe not. I'm perfectly content listening to the wind in the pines.

That's all from me, I hope you all have great weekend ahead of you! Try the Dalgona coffee, you won't regret it!! :)