The pandemic isolation, or hibernation, or let's call it sheltering has created new normals and I'm finding that leaving them behind is not easy. Many of my pandemic habits were formed early on, when we knew very little about the virus spread. When they work for you, you stick with them, even though the science behind them has moved on. I suppose we tell ourselves that there are still many unknowns and evolving variants and who knows what else. So we stay with the rules we developed now close to a year ago.
One rule that we set for ourselves (thinking that the pandemic surely wont last) was to eat only home cooked meals. This isn't exactly tortuous, since I like to cook, but we did, in the past, have take-out once a week, or maybe two weeks. Picked up Asian foods, Mexican foods -- they gave me a break from the constancy of menu planning, shopping, preparing, cleaning up. That ended last March and, well, I've just stuck with cooking it all myself. When my daughter asked me today what I would like to eat now that such boundaries to dinner foods can surely be lifted, I recoiled: have I really prepared 344 dinners in a row? Oh my. I am looking forward to a break!
Other routines have taken hold as well: since I haven't spent time with the grandkids, I've found time to be rather regular with the walking/skiing habit. Ed and I are out doing one or the other every day. We haven't looked for grand adventures. Instead, most of the time we stick with out local county park, just a couple of miles up the road from us. The point is to enjoy the fresh air, the forest quiet, the changing landscape. We don't really mind the repetition of the trails.
Still, sometimes there is that itch to branch out. And today, the itch took hold and you know how itches go: once they're there, you have to scratch.
I think I am correct in predicting that this will have been the last of the super cold mornings, where the reading is in the negatives (F), meaning far far below freezing. Still, the sun is out: it looks promising out there.
We have started to let out the cheepers again -- all four of them. The possum raid spooked us and so during the cold snap, we kept them in the coop round the clock. A heating unit close to their coop kept them fairly warm. There was no need for them to be released to the frozen tundra out there. Still, they were restless. Time to relax and let go.
(four chickens and a cat)
Our breakfast? In the front room. A new habit!
And then comes the couch time -- the garden planning on my part, the discussion about how our spring will unfold. And eventually we rouse ourselves and head out. Not to the county park! Anywhere but the county park!
We drive to the Brooklyn Wildlife Area. The Ice Age trail cuts through it and we like several loops we can do there. And unlike the county parks, this combination of forest and prairie is rarely visited (except in the height of the hunting season). But wait! Things have changed. the pandemic has moved others to explore hiking, snow shoeing, trekking through the woods. The parking lot by the trail head is full! A dozen cars! Our little corner of quiet has been discovered!
The good thing about having devoted so many days to working on the Ice Age Trail is that you know all the nearby segments. And so we do an about face and pick up a secret fragment that no one knows of.
Well, almost no one. We do pass three people. We can deal with bumping into just three!
In the evening, we talk about the microwave again! We've replaced it FOUR times in the past two years and we are about to do it again. I blame it on the schools. Here's why:
I was reading about the tragic loss of power in Texas after the storms and this one sentence caught my eye: many people who turned on their gas stoves to heat their homes were poisoned by the gases released through keeping the burners going full blast.
Gases? What gases?
I turn to Ed for help. He explains all about gas, combustion, carbon monoxide, this, that, more names of gases. Really? Merely lighting your gas stove poisons the air you breathe? Well, he tells me, not if you vent it out.
So I read up on this subject and indeed, I learn that we gas stove users do exactly that: we let toxins fill our kitchens, our lungs, our homes. What's the solution? Vent the damn stove out or replace it with an electric model. Bottom line, if I want to un-polute the farmhouse, we should cut a hole in the kitchen wall and vent the stove out. (Which would require getting rid of the microwave that's over our stove right now.)
I feel a little bit like the moment when, as a young adult, I learned that you really can't dry your hair and take a bath at the same time. Death might result. I mean, I should have put two and two together, but I had skipped grades in school, including the year my class had Physics 101, though honestly, I dont think the ancient male teacher talked about hair dryers then and he certainly skipped over any toxins released by gas stoves -- of that I'm sure. And this is my point: the school curriculum should cover stuff like that: things you should not do to inadvertantly kill yourself. How else do you learn this stuff?
Evening quiet. I glance at the (online) paper and read about the oldest recipient of the COVID vaccine -- a woman who is 111 years old. People that old are always asked about what they do to live so long. This woman answered -- it's all about wine, beer and good food. I'm not surprised. Delighting in things that fill your everyday and keeping that dryer out of the bathtub will do it every time.
To longevity. And love.
