normal

Well it's about time: I'm Covid negative, Ed has finally shed his fever (though he does still have a faint positive line). 

On the one hand, I was never very ill. The literature confirms that past infections do strengthen your overall immunity, and I've had Covid twice before. Nonetheless, I was a walking caldron of infection. And Ed? I'd say he slept through much of his illness, but oh my, did he sound awful in his awake moments! All that is (fingers crossed) in the past. We wake up on a new platform of good health.

But I think about Covid and how it continues to cause problems for so many, in part because so many choose to ignore its unique dangers. Not vaccinated, never testing, they spread the virus in the same way that they spread colds before. And in many ways, I can't blame them, because I know how disruptive to your life it is to admit that you have Covid. For Ed, for me, Covid came at a fairly good time. Some postponements, some scrambling for child care, but really, no great loss resulted from our isolation. But here's a hypothetical: I know a couple who just embarked on a voyage of a lifetime: 150 days, halfway around the world. If one came down with Covid the day before leaving, would she (or he) really say -- I guess we should not travel. Maybe another year..., losing money, losing a life's dream. Would you do that? Isn't it easier not to test and say "it's probably just a light cold?" 

I suppose I favor the middle ground: when they can, at only a small cost to themselves, it would be so good if people would isolate. But if they must head out, because, well, it's 150 days of travel and after a week they will be fine -- wouldn't it be good if they could at least minimize the risk to others? Masking, avoiding public gatherings as much as feasible, that kind of thing. It's not a perfect situation, but Covid is not a perfect virus. We can't help much of its spread (because we aren't aware of being contagious initially), but we can do so much more to help curb its pernicious desire to infect as many as it can.

We also wake up to bitter cold and it will only get worse: next week will be colder still. But, let's take one day at a time. I appreciate the sunshine! So do the chickens -- despite the bone chilling Arctic air, they head out toward the garage. I greet them with leftover crumbs from the poppy seed cake. (Do chickens get high on a concentration of poppy seeds? Well, they deserve their moment of joy!)

Breakfast, still alone, still healthy.

And then I kind of lose it, time wise. I've had an easy ten days, but now I am back to a schedule and today's is especially complicated because we will finally be celebrating Snowdrop's birthday (without Ed, who has to hang out in the shed all day to keep the house free of his germs). I refrained from baking a cake until I knew for sure I'd be negative. So I have to bake one this morning. And I have to do some initial dinner prep. And I must clean the house and wipe down surfaces Ed might have touched yesterday. 

Suddenly time slips away from me. I'm not used to hurrying! A rough draft of a post should be in the works by the time I pick up the girl at school, but there was no time for a rough draft and I'm doing it now, in the car, on my lap, waiting for her to come out from school.

Too, I had selected a recipe for a chocolate cake I'd never tried before (by Yossy Arefi, whom I know from her books and publications). And I tweaked the ingredients. Some random commenter suggested an oil substitution (olive instead of canola) and I went with that, in addition to using a cocoa that seemed awfully... intense. And I started in on the whole project very late in the morning because the recipe is rated as easy and heck, I'm a skilled baker.

(Dance watches: don't you love the way cats tuck in their paws snugly under their chest?)

This was all plain foolish. Bottom line, the clock ticked, I had no time for a walk, a lunch, anything actually. And I had to start in on frosting a still warm cake (that looked... awfully dark). Ever put buttercream frosting on a still warm cake? 

Lessons never learned! 

But I made it! (She wanted chocolate, but not flourless, frosted with fluffy frosting, not glaze or ganache, and importantly: decorated with candied violets!)

And now finally I pick up the girl. She is so very happy to be returning to normal routines!

At the farmhouse, she reads...

 

 

 

... I cook, we read, I secretly frost, I cook some more, we read again, she eats, we keep on reading. We had dropped a story in midstream back on their last day of school in December and it was so good to get closer to a resolution!

And toward evening, the whole family comes over for a very belated birthday celebration. It is good to see them again!

(Snowdrop got her presents finally; the boys got some new books...)

(Sandpiper needed a little help with the story line...)

(the girl joins her mom and me for some catching up in the kitchen...)

(dinner)

(cake!)

Happy, happy belated birthday to you! And so many more!!

Ed was to come back to the farmhouse when everyone left, but last I heard, he fell asleep in the shed early. So not quite a full throttle return to normal yet, but we're getting there!

with so much love...

for the better

If you have lived for at least seven decades, you'll agree with me on this: life, in so many ways, for so many of us, has gotten to be so much easier.

There are the obvious: I spent the first three years of my life (and many summers after) in a home with no electricity or running water and of course, no phone service. I'm sure you'll think those times to be positively ancient, so let's roll forward a little and take it out of rural postwar Poland, which, admittedly, struggled. When I was a young adult, living now in the U.S., travel was hard, no matter how you wanted to move from point A to point B. No air conditioning in cars. Smoking people everywhere -- on buses, trains, planes. Not unusual to have a seatmate puffin away next to you. And suitcases didn't have wheels. You lugged everything you traveled with. No credit cards to pay your bills away from home. Cash or travelers checks only. Dont get me started on the hassle of arriving at foreign city with American Express travelers checks. What a pain. I'm not going to mention the absence of the internet and all that entailed. Your young imagination can probably still conjure up that world. But really, I could write a book about all the life's improvements, from three point seat belts and crumple zones in cars to microwaves heating up your soup in the kitchen, on and on, but let me just pause on one wonder and it is in the word "write."

Sometime in the middle of the night I thought about how many times I corrected sentences/thoughts/ideas in yesterday's Ocean post. The fact is that the written word is, for me, like music. I can feel when it doesn't sound right. I can't always make it passable let alone great, and in music, I can do nothing at all with it, but surely I can tell when a sentence falters. If I start in on a post early, you can be sure I will have gone back to it and corrected it ten times over. When I worked on my book, I rewrote sections every time I went back to that Great Writing Project. Maybe everyone does it, and surely most bilingual people are sensitive to language nuance, or maybe it dates back to my early years in New York when I confidently proclaimed that when I grow up I want to be a journalist. I've paid attention to writing, even as I have lived a life of language confusion, traveling as I did between Warsaw and New York all my younger years.

I lay awake thinking how easy writing is now that we have computers to smooth things over for us -- keep drafts, fix mistakes, do quick edits, and importantly, they allow us to publish our writings so that they can be put out there quickly, while still relevant. As you know, I started blogging 21 years ago. You have to think it's important to me or else why would I devote so many hours of every single day on this project. And it boggles my mind that it is something I could not have done at another time in the past. It is entirely a product of change and innovation. My life, made so different, and for me, so much richer, because times have changed so much. I wonder -- what will my grandkids do that will be totally important to who they are that can't even be imagined yet? I'm excited for them, for the possibilities that we do not realize are there, percolating, waiting for their moment.

Today is dreary and the temps are hovering around freezing and I feel like this Covid slog has been going on for too long here at the farmette. 

Still, Ed says once again that he is "better." He sounds the same to me, so maybe it's a bit of wishful thinking on his part, but to prove it, he puts a bit more energy into the day. Not only does he do the morning chicken duty, but he asks -- want to go out for a walk in the park today?

Yes I do.

First, of course, there is breakfast, still alone. 

But by noon he is here and we're bundling up for our first walk together since... New Year's Day!

There is a gusty wind, and the landscape has neither the look of winter, nor fall, nor spring -- it's just stuck in the harsh reality of bare trees, frozen earth, against a gray sky. But the prairie is golden...

... and those bare trees do whisper their secrets as I pass among them -- we are there for you, we are there for you... 

I'm thrilled to be back in their midst.

Ed of course follows this with a deep sleep on the couch. But maybe he is better? He managed that half hour walk, if not at a breakneck pace, then at least at his steady, forceful gait.

For lunch? I go Polish today! I had a grocery delivery this morning and among the goodies was a jar of herring (in vinegar). For that German seeded bread. With the leftover poppy seed roll I'd gotten over the holidays from Delaney's in New York. So this:

To be honest, I prefer my combination Kind/Cliff granola bars and I will return to them again, just as I will bring back my beloved croissants in the morning. For now though, I'm playing with being extra mindful during my confinement so that I don't go berserk. With a touch of nostalgia for my Polish past thrown in for good measure.

Evening. Still alone. We'll both retest tomorrow and I expect us to both be negative. I mean, I'll be on day 10 of the infection. Ed? Day 13th. Let's move on already, okay? Honestly!

with love...

joy, in trouble

Joy can be complicated. When you're a kid, you dont think much about it. You're giddy with joy when they announce a snow day (closed schools). You bubble over with excitement the night before Christmas or before your birthday. You clap your hands with glee when your grandma says yes to ice cream or french fries after school. Then comes teen angst and doubt trickles in. Am I really happy? What does it mean to be happy? Why am I not happy? And when you're an overwhelmed working parent, you understand that joy comes in fleeting spurts: a free hour to yourself, a snuggle with your kid over a good book, the end of school and thus the end of homework nagging and lunch making. A work project finished. Time to plant a flower. A walk in the forest, a coffee with a friend.

When you're past your employment years and way past your parenting-of-a-young child years, you have time to unravel all those intricate and convoluted layers of life and you begin to understand that you actually have to fight to find, and then too, to preserve joy. 

Let's just stay with food for a bit longer. I wrote a lot about it yesterday -- how so much of what we enjoy turns out to be horrible for you and how much harm you're doing to yourself if you stick with your candy bars and UPFs, and win,e and, well, just about everything else that's not growing in your organic farmer's fields. I don't deny that this is all true. All that stuff lining grocery store shelves is to a degree harmful. But how much can we ignore the joy that at least some of it brings us? I was thinking of my mother, who spent most of her senior years as a type 2 diabetic. (She died this September at age 100.) And yet, each time I moved her -- to senior living, then to assisted living, then to another assisted living, and finally to the nursing care facility -- I'd find stashes and stashes of candy bars in her fridge, her suitcase, her closet. I would discard most of them, not because I wanted to deprive her of sweets, but because there was just too much. In her final move, she was no longer mobile and she could not make her way to the cupboard where I kept her candy bars. I would offer them to her when I came to see her, but she was not interested. Me, handing it over to her as a largess did not give her the same guilty pleasure as eating it on her own did, straight from her hoarded loot. You could say that she deteriorated because she was physically weak. I'd say she deteriorated rapidly because she no longer had any iota of joy in her life. And that included not being able to wheel herself over to the shop that sold those illicit candy bars, which she presumably ate on the sly.

Today, finally, I came across something in my readings that tried to balance out the avalanche of press on the harms all around us. It's an article in the NYTimes about wine (again, I'm gifting it for you so it's free; it actually appeared three days ago, but it is SO BURIED at the bottom that I missed it). I'm seeing in it something of what I feel about joy: a message that it's complicated and nuanced and you have to be studious, and smart, and certainly careful in how you look for it, but you cannot stop the search!  

Since I know most of you will not read the link (or listen to it, as it's a podcast), I pulled out a couple of sentences that I find especially strong (again, this is from a guy who studies and writes about wine, and it is in response to the Surgeon General's proposed cancer warnings on wines, beers and all other alcohol, but you could substitute it with any number of pleasures -- for example, my mother's candy bars):

I’m here to say that there is so much beauty and meaning in consuming a small amount of wine, that to have that bigfooted by threats and warnings, like the ones we’re seeing now that lack so much nuance, is really disappointing and frustrating because it’s going to drive so many people away from a truly magical experience. ...

In a life that risks becoming stripped of a certain kind of magic, because we’re trying to protect ourselves out of existence, I want you to think about what your glass of wine is and advocate for that and keep that alive in your lives, because that flame is precious. And there are certain things in our modern existence that really threaten it.

So yes, of course, we should have access to the science, we should care about harm (mom! those candies are not good for you! dad! you drank too much, to the embarrassment of your whole family!), but should we run scared into a dark forest and stick with foraging wild berries and nuts to keep us primed for a healthy tomorrow? You know, I read passages in a book about a French detective that describe his pause in the middle of an investigation for a swig of coffee and a bite into a fresh croissant. The world melts for him. He is made whole bu it. This, to me, is the other side. The world melts for me as well when I break off a croissant piece with my milky coffee. I feel his joy, just as I feel my own in the mornings when I go rogue and eat pastries.

I wish it were easier. I wish a glass of wine or a Negroni wouldn't disrupt my sleep, nor put me inline for cancer treatments, and I hope Ed never has a fatal bike or motorbike crash (over 1000 are killed in bike traffic accidents and more than 6000 in motorbike ones in the US each year), and I wish going to Paris would not leave such a carbon footprint, and that croissants weren't all about butter and white flour, with added sugars in jam. But as I said, joy is complicated and I think you have to unravel it for yourself and come to terms with what is good for your body and what is good for your soul, but do not, please do not leave out of it the discussion joy. Please. 

[To stick with wine, here's a proposed by me warning on wine bottles, but really anything else that you may want to ingest even as you are told it may be bad for you: wine, in addition to harming your fetus should you be pregnant, and killing innocent bystanders should you choose to drive after consuming it, may increase your chances of addiction, and it may increase your chances of disrupted sleep and slightly increase your chances of disease. Excessive drinking, as defined by your age, gender and physical characteristics will definitely harm you and everyone else within spittin' distance of your inebriated self, so don't do it! However, a reasonable amounts of it, with due consideration for your physical and mental health and your surroundings, may well increase your pleasure in life, raising your level of well being modestly, or even greatly, depending on how much care and wisdom your give to the act of its consumption.]

Overnight, there was a new dusting of snow. Nothing significant, but still, enough to have me take that half hour morning walk outside.

(the chickens stand on one foot at a time to keep those icy toes from freezing)

(Friendly, why are you in a tree? Running away from Pancake again? Okay, let me provide an escort back to the house...)

(we planted these trees when they were literally an inch tall)

A little around farmette lands, but mostly around the new development. Why there? Well, because I am so isolated from humanity that I actually welcome some signs of human life. I give gusty hellos to people brushing off the snow from the sidewalks.

I do test myself for Covid today and the upshot is that I detect, with all lights on and with my best magnifying glasses, the faintest possible "positive" line. This does mean that I am not 100% free of it and so I postponed tomorrow's birthday dinner yet again, moving it to Monday. I want not even a vague shadow of a line. I want certainty. Ed and I have kept to our isolation for so many days -- I'm not going to blow it now.

And it is because of the isolation and the absence of demands on my days that I'm playing this healthy game of daily movement, no matter what (even if it had to be in pacing the living room of the farmhouse for a few days), and of healthy breakfasts (I haven't had a croissant since... 2024!), and of boring lunches with seed bread and hummus. It's become a fun game -- to mind my habits during this prison sentence! I'll show them who's boss of my body!

Breakfast? Oatmeal based.

Ed visits in the afternoon once more. Still sleeping a lot, reading some, under a quilt, on the couch. It feels as quiet with him here as it is when he retreats to the shed. His is a much longer Covid and were it me, I'd be in the clinic by now checking things out, but Ed is not persuadable, at least not today, and so I watch him rest and hope tomorrow we'll see noticeable improvement.

 

Then dinner. Chili, because it will last for several days.

 

It surely is a weird start to the New Year for us, but I've had worse! And the house is warm, and I turn on the TV once more, still alone, so picking out stuff that would cause Ed to yawn. How about Escape to the Country on BritBox? I'll let you know tomorrow what I think of it.

with love...

missing snow and eating well

This wont go down in Madison's history as the least snowy winter. That fun designation belongs to 1901-02, at which time Madison got all of 4 inches of snow. But we are dangerously close to being in the record books! Right now we're in the second spot (since they began keeping score in 1884), with only about 10 inches of snow thus far. But of course, we will get more this winter, right? Right?? To give you some perspective, our snowiest winter was 2007-08, when we had over 110 inches (so almost 10 feet of it!). Oh, I remember it well... It was a mess. It was beautiful.

This morning I woke to a scant dusting of snow. Enough to put a little crunch under my step. Enough to have to sweep off the walkway to the farmhouse. Ed fed the cheepers again, but by the time I got notice of it, I was bundled and out anyway. 

 

 

That's okay -- I feel strong enough to venture out into the great big world. I head for the new development that abuts farmette lands. Walking there, you can look back at the farmette barn, the silo, the toppling box elders and tall but fragile willows.

The fact that I love my morning pre-breakfast walk tells me that I am feeling stronger. I haven't yet retested for Covid, but I'm hoping for a first negative tomorrow. With that, I should be able to return to Real Life by Sunday. In the meantime, I'm at war with the lethargy aspect of Covid!

Breakfast? Alone, but with a candle and with a wonderful video clip to amuse me, sent by Bee, who understands...

 

I know this wont last, but for being quite sick, I have had a very healthy and active January thus far. Oh, the irony of it!

Ed, on the other hand, is still down and out. His big movement for the day? An afternoon walk to the farmhouse, then, a few hours later, a return to the sheep shed. 

Not only is he not particularly mobile, but, too, food, especially the healthy kind, does not tempt him. (Losing his sense of smell doesn't help.) At the same time, the topic of healthy eating keeps creeping up on me (more like pounding at me), relentlessly, daily. Mon Dieu! How I would love to see articles about the pleasures of sinful, delightful, joyful eating! Instead, my Inbox is full of this other stuff. The NY Times is hammering away at changing eating habits, eliminating UPFs (ultra processed foods), as is the Wash Po, and the New Yorker, even the Economist, and they're from across the ocean. I'm besieged. How I hate that I now have to doubt my granola and most certainly my oatmeal-seeded protein bars!

I cave under pressure and try a new approach to lunch. Away from Kind bars to... well, what? I already eat plenty of fruits (breakfast) and veggies (supper). Aside from the PB&J sandwich (which I love, but I can see the health police going after me for all that sweetness and now, too, for stocking up on -- oh horror! -- packaged bread), I've never quite understood the American lunch. Poles often eat their main meal in the afternoon. The French? Well, when I observe them in their crowded cafes, they're scarfing down meats, seafood, lentils, cheeses, with maybe a glass of wine, finished off by a coffee, with a sweet nibble.

This wouldn't play here.

I take out some German dark seeded bread. I spread some hummus over it. I throw in a mini Kind bar for dessert.

You call that a good lunch? Meh. It wont last. 

 

 (chickens, enjoying bits and pieces of the great stuff: croissants, baguette, old granola bars, cinnamon rolls...)

Toward evening I trim Ed's hair (on his request). Yes, he was beginning to look like the flying nun, with tufts of white sticking out on both sides of his head. I know the science -- I wont get sicker touching his scalp. Still, some objective bystander might say that I did a rushed job. 

And then he returns to the sheep shed and I take out yesterday's fish and yesterday's asparagus and make up a salad and think about turning on Emma. Four Austens in a row? Can't do it. It's not going to be a movie night here at the farmhouse. Maybe tomorrow!

with love...

remembering...

I listen to the tributes delivered on behalf of Carter, our president from 1977-81. I was pregnant with my first daughter when he handed over the presidency to Regan. As you may recall from my writings here, I didn't know I was legally entitled to vote, so I did not cast a vote for him or anyone else. But despite that busiest handful of years for me (student, clerk, eventually lawyer, teacher, always the family cook, mom, school volunteer, gardener, family photographer -- the usual stuff for a young working parent), I tracked politics. And I watched Carter's popularity plummet and I tried to understand why and honestly, I didn't really get it. It was my first lesson in democracy: I learned that people blame the president for all sorts of things and a vote is often simply a weapon of displeasure.  I hate this in my life ... fill in the blank ... and it's your fault! Vote cast. We move on to someone else.

But here's a funny thing: opinion is fickle. Carter had a popularity ranking of 31% when he was defeated in 1980. But look at the popularity rankings of presidents, as measured in 2024. Here's a list of the ten most beloved, by one reliable source (every source puts Lincoln on the top): 1. Abraham Lincoln (83%), 2. George Washington (76%), 3. JF Kennedy (75%), 4. Theodore Roosevelt (70%), 5. Thomas Jefferson (68%), 6. F.D. Roosevelt (67%), 7. Barack Obama (61%), 8. John Adams (60%), 9. James Madison (60%), and yes.... drum roll here.... 10. Jimmy Carter (58%).

I have nothing to add to the beautiful words of his grandsons, Ford's son, Mondale's son, or the politicians who spoke today. Still, I look at that row of past presidents sitting up front in silence, presumably listening, because I see no earbuds silencing the noise in the National Cathedral for them, and I wonder: what must they be thinking? And I reach out to my awesome grandparent and parent friends via texts and emails, all the while thinking  -- I see in you so much of those traits of a caring person that Carter seemed to embody and pass on to his grandkids!

In watching those children and grandchildren (of Ford, of Mondale, of Carter himself), I smile at this obvious passage of time. I'm not quite Carter's generation, nonetheless, I feel closer in age to past presidents than to their kids! 

People are saying how cool it is that all those politicians who hate each other on the political platform are now sitting together to respect Carter. I suppose. I myself would find it hard to sit next to someone who says and thinks hateful things about others, though I guess if you are celebrating Carter, you'll want to emulate his trait of being a friend to all. In any case, I do think that it is good that we are reminded through the words of those who eulogize a good man what it means to be a good person and what you will be remembered for decades from now. Here's hoping we wont be at 31% among family and friends when we keel over, and if we are, that those numbers will double or even tripe down the line. People seem to let go of grudges once someone is no longer with us. Though not always. No one, simply no one seems to like the long dead president, James Buchanan (no. 1). Or Andrew Johnson (no. 2 in the "most disagreeable" listing). [The third on the list of worsts hasn't yet passed away.]

 

*     *     *

We have a small warm-up here. Our high is just a couple of degrees below freezing. That's something to celebrate, though initially I remain at home because Ed has done chicken duty once again. He and I are in a holding pattern -- still not fever free, still with some congestion -- his worse than mine. Nonetheless, I'm feeling more spry than, say, two days ago.

Breakfast -- still healthy! -- facing the TV in the kitchen so that I can listen to the Carter remembrances. 

 

And now for today's movement possibilities: I could do 70 loops between the living room and the kitchen once again -- it takes me 30 minutes at a brisk pace to do that -- but did I tell you how incredibly boring that is? Instead, I could do 5 big loops crisscrossing the farmette lands. There are paths that I myself mowed down last fall! 

 

 

They allow for a varied walk and for an appreciation of the beauty of the land even now in the winter season, even without snow. The trees, some fallen, some standing, the old farmstead structures (some seeming to be almost fallen!), the newly planted nut trees and fir trees north of the barn -- all lovely, even now.

 *     *     *

Last night I watched a movie (On Becoming Jane) that loosely traced the little known, little understood love affair that Jane Austen had with Tom Lefroy. The movie tries hard not to give the story a completely dismal ending, but the truth is, Austen's life was neither totally satisfactory nor very long. That her former lover named his daughter after her is little consolation and indeed, perhaps just a little sad -- as if he never got over his profound feelings for her. Should that make her feel happy? (In the movie, Austen claimed to always want to give her written stories more satisfying endings. Is that why we love reading them so much?)

In contrast, many of us, perhaps most of us do get over our first bursting love. The guy I felt such passion for during my adolescence and beyond, eventually flitted over to the occasional dream I'd have, with him front and center, and then, when we met up again decades later, I felt... absolutely nothing. Sucked right out of my heart and soul. And believe me, I had once been totally in love, as you may well know if you've read Like a Swallow!

Ed is still in the sheep shed for the night, so I'm left to my own film selection once more. Should it be Sense and Sensibility, to round up my Austen trilogy? Why not!

With love....

speaking of being sick...

Yes, I know: you're hearing way too much about Covid here, on Ocean. What can I say -- it defines our start to the New Year! Sure, we were granted a lovely day of health and good living on January 1st but the next day Ed tested positive and by January 5th I joined him in the Department of the Sick. He is way more knocked down by it than I am. He says it's age, but that theory is just one of many. I have had more infections and so probably carry greater immunity. I've also been knocked down with bugs from kids and from travel this fall. I do believe that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Poor innocent stay-at-home, sees-noone Ed. He really got a punch in the gut from this one.

He slept in, I did chicken duty this morning. Drab, cold farmette lands. This January is not very nice at all for us snow loving people! In terms of natural beauty, I'd give it a 1 out of 10. Nonetheless, the sunrise it pretty! As are the birds that chirp away as if it were spring.

But it is cold. I do my "walking" inside. Back and forth between kitchen and living room 70 times equals 1.8 miles of boring steps.

More on the topic of illness: Dance is still not her food-gorging self, even as I'm still cleaning up after her. 

At least our chickens are healthy! All we need to add to our woes is a case of the Avian Flu here! We're taking sanitary precautions (as should all free rangers!). So far so good.

Breakfast alone. No Ed, no Dance (she's taking a spin outside when I sit down).

 

(Did you now that honey from thyme flowers is soothing and works wonders for your mental health? So the French say...)

 

 

And now I'm done with health talk, right? Not quite. If yesterday I did the pleasant task of imagining some summer travel, today I took stock of all travel that's before me: only one trip has insurance protection. I need more. There really are two ways to handle this: trip cancellation with medical care protection, or just medical care protection. In the past I traveled with neither. I mean, what are the chances... But this stream of bugs and viruses and Covids and who knows what elses has made me nervous about international travel. So today I checked with my own medical insurance team and of course their international coverage is just plain silly. $20 000 max. True, in Europe that buys you a heck of a lot more than it would here, in the US, but still, that kind of expense is not what would bankrupt me. At my age, you can get really sick really quickly. So I investigate supplemental insurance programs for travel.

You have to enter that little maze of craziness with a meditatively calm mindset. (Or have a glass of wine ready and waiting, but as you know, that's not really an option for me these days...) You can't just read reviews of different companies' plans because everyone hates their coverage when things go wrong and no one has a lot of good things to say about reimbursements. Basically if you get sick and need to get your money back, you have a long slog ahead of you no matter where you purchase your protection. So yes, look at the Forbes ratings if that makes you feel better, but dont expect it to be a fun trip if you get sick.

So, I had to decide if I want just health coverage or also trip protection (the airfare, the hotels, the delays, the lost luggage, etc etc). I opt to skip trip coverage. I pay more by booking flexible hotel rates and I pick changeable (if not refundable) fares. There would be some losses if a trip got cancelled, but I just cannot see the justification for paying at least $1000 per person per trip for even minimal and arguably hard to fight for reimbursements trip protection. It's just horribly expensive. So, medical only. 

And as I spend the day on this very tedious, very boring and downright frustrating task (talking to these people to get accurate information is painful), I think -- well at least I'm not traveling to the United States! Imagine being a foreigner and getting sick here, where just passing through the ER doorway of a hospital will cost you $5000 and that's before anyone asks you your name and country of origin! 

As I take care of all this stuff, I'm thinking about the virtues of having Greenland be part of the US: I could go visit it then and maybe use my American Medicare card when I get sick, right? And will there be a golf course there for the fleeting two weeks of their summer? I understand some people like to play golf an awful lot and Scotland has not been very hospitable to them and their golf clubs lately. 

But I digress.

In the afternoon Ed comes over. It's only a half visit. We chat some and then he falls asleep once again. His recovery is so slow, that I almost insisted that he check himself into some urgent care facility, to make sure he is not in need of medications after all -- until I hear on the radio about how overcrowded these places are right now, spilling over with coughing, sneezing wheezing sick people. (And in any case, Ed never listens to me on matters of needed doctor visits.)

Evening. One of us needs to go out and pick up spinach and carrots and russian kale from our CSA farmers. I'm up for the drive, though I wish it wasn't this cold right now! 

( a glimpse of the outside world for me!)

 

 

(Sunset -- do you see the farmette silo?)

 

Ah well, it's only day 4 for me. Can't expect miracles. What I can expect is a hearty supper at home: one more day of soup, a lovely salad, a piece of chocolate. Ed has lost his sense of smell but I haven't and reheated soup smells heavenly!

As for movies? I finally watched Pride and Prejudice last night and that is just such a lovely little piece of Austen on screen. Her books lend themselves to visual representation! Love stories never looked so good! As for tonight? Well, Ed's still spending the night in the sheep shed (too loud for our small house!), so it's just me. Hmmm, there's always Austin's Emma. Or better yet -- the movie about Austen herself: On Becoming Jane. Or another one about her love life -- Miss Austen Regrets. (Did you know that England is celebrating her 250th birthday this year?) Yep, I'm set. 

with love...

isolating with a cat

Part 1

Day three of a Covid positive existence. Therefore a day of quiet. Ed again fed the hens, so I skipped the morning barn walk. Peeking out at the farmette lands, I have to say, I do not think I am missing much. Cold, brittle, no snow.

I did have company for breakfast: Dance, our oldest cat, the matriarch, the most attached to me of the whole lot. 

You get to see her in all her breakfast poses.

Everyone has their weak sides and she has two: she can't really hold much food down (we dont know why), so you have to be very measured in what you give her, or else be ready with a mop (or carpet cleaner). Secondly, she does her business outside, but she doesn't really like going outside now. Too cold and our most feral cat, Pancake, hangs out close to the door and Dance is just a little terrified of Pancake. So quite a bit of time is spent on coaxing her to go out twice a day. 

Those are her disabilities. Her virtues are much more numerous.

People claim they're either sweet on dogs or on cats, but not both. I went along with this for years, seeing myself as a dog person. And I do like well trained, quiet dogs. (So not a total dog person, right? By comparison -- I like all my grandkids, even the louder ones who are still learning!) The cats were imposed on me, on us by circumstances. Winter in Wisconsin pushed them to dare come inside. And two have stayed in the farmhouse (actually three, but the third has disappeared into thin air -- not uncommon for ferals).

Perhaps you are not a "cat person?"  But maybe you've never been isolated at home with Covid in the dead of winter without much life around you. 

I think Dance has caught some of this virus (pets can be vulnerable to it), because she is not eating right now. Mostly she sleeps on the warm vent. But at breakfast time, she always, always joins us at the table (more like on the table)..

And though it puzzles her why the guy who rubs foreheads with her isn't around, she does like me an awful lot. So we sit together and I say sweet nothings to her and she purrs and smiles.

Part 2

Predictably, with more time in my pocket, I think about travel. I have quite the unusual trips in mind for 2025. It's not about the destinations -- those remain predictable. But my travel will be less solo than in the past. Some family, occasionally friends. I am joyfully optimistic (as I plunked down money this morning on a summer airfare, because I could hit a good bargain now, when no one is thinking about that season yet).

More interesting perhaps was my reading of the travel article that is published in January each year in the NYTimes. (I gifted it for you so it's free when you click.) 52 places we should consider visiting in the year ahead. 

I love this piece!

There was a time in my life when all their recommendations sounded bells of excitement in me. This year I counted only a dozen that seriously tempted me (this is all very theoretical of course, as I likely will go to none, or at best one, unless we invade Greenland and then I'm sure to book a trip as a triumphant colonizer of that island... sigh...). Nonetheless, even if I never travel to any, I love floating in the possibilities out there. I wont go, but I could go, and wouldn't it be wonderful, to revisit Bulgaria (Bulgaria, under so called Communist rule, was the very first foreign country I ever traveled to), or to take a bike ride along the coast of Sicily, or visit the Flows in Scotland by train... When you are housebound with Covid, all of it sounds downright magical. 

Of course, the article brought the usual comment: "the NYT ruins these places! Dont go there now -- it will be flooded with people." The author replied: 

I anticipated this comment. This past October I went to one of the places on the 2024 list. Over the course of two days I saw only a small handful of foreign tourists. Many of the local people I spoke with asked me how I learned about the place. I mentioned the New York Times 52 places to visit in 2024 article. They had never heard of it. It’s easy to over-state the influence of the New York Times.

Indeed. 

Most people cannot afford to travel frequently (unless they really make it a life's goal to do just that when they retire) and when they do travel, they want to see the big ticket items and I don't blame them. The Pew Research Center posted a study last year that indicates that 50% of Americans have traveled to only 1 foreign country in their lives and 23% have never traveled outside the U.S. at all, which makes us a non-traveling-much-internationally bunch. That same study shows that Swedes travel the most: 0% have never been to another country; the Dutch, Germans and British people are close behind. Of course, the US is 20 times the size of Sweden and probably a million times the size of the Netherlands, but still, I think interest in foreign travel here runs on the low side. Not having adequate vacation time in the US surely contributes to that: only 75% of Americans have paid vacation time, and that time isn't exactly grand: on the average, 18 days after 18 years of work. Those lucky Swedes get, on the average, 30 days of paid vacation from the get-go, and they are mandated to have 4 weeks of consecutive vacation time during the summer months.

Speaking of travel, Ed did "travel" to the farmhouse this afternoon again. I had him groom Dance who loves being combed and has missed him here. Three hour visit! And he stayed awake this time!

We both still have light fevers (his obviously longer lasting than mine), but I think we are on the upswing. Ed, who calls this the worst type of cold he remembers ever having, tells me that he read articles about people experiencing Covid before the vaccination roll out. Grim stuff. And here we are, just sniffling, me contributing to the Kleenex profit margins but nothing more than that, feeling so so grateful for the work of scientists on our behalf. So grateful!

with love...

so much out there!

Part 1

Day two of being positive with Covid. Stuck at home. On a gray cold January day. Not fun, eh?

However I may wish it to be slightly different (for example: skip the viral attack!), I have an extraordinarily comfy set-up here, in the farmhouse. It's warm (which you may take for granted, but to remind you -- we live in a farmhouse that is over 100 years old; drafts abound in old houses, but we had this one insulated as best we could and it's working very well!). It has comfort foods in the pantry.

Wait, roll back that one: comfort foods. Food that's comforting and satisfying and easy to prepare. Yes, to all. But food can be a source of frustration too. Everyone's talking about UPF's (ultra processed foods) and how we're finding that both the ingredients in them, as well as the mere act of processing them is... bad for you. Well okay. I cook up our own suppers using fresh veggies (Oh no! Is the broth I use as a base considered a UPF?? I bet it is!)  and for goodness sake, I'm back to oatmeal or granola in the morning. I've been a label reader for decades now. I know to avoid stuff with incomprehensible ingredient lists. But now even simple ingredients can fool you. Do you buy packaged breads? You're doomed. Ice cream? Yogurt? Most (though not all) are classified as UPFs. As may be your morning granola if you're not UC (ultra careful).

You cannot win.

I remember when I used to love to drink wine in the evening. I never quite believed it was good for you, but as recently as ten years ago, the calculated risks of doing that were so small that I shrugged them off.

Then came the recommendation that it should be no more than two servings per day, or else! I adjusted.

Then that it should be no more than one per day. I adjusted.

Now they're talking about a target of 0. And they're taking away my granola bars! (The kind I like have processed protein which appears to be a real no-no.) 

I'm not a neurotic follower of all these admonishments and recommendations. I recognize the value of having my precious, small glass of wine and my granola bar (not at the same time). But it does seem like we've turned our food production into one big machine that spews out endless poison at us, just waiting to knock us down. I appreciate the studies, the new evidence, the ability to make wise choices, but I do wish food news wasn't always a stream of depressing new prohibitions, stirring up your anxieties and feeding your guilt if you happen to be responsible for feeding the young. (Snowdrop loves loves loves potato chips and french fries. Should I say no to either? Both? Even though she eats a heaping bowlfuls of fruits here, always? Do I want to introduce the language of anxiety over foods to this kid who is only ten years old?)

To counter this relentless and dispiriting onslaught of new information, I did something more positive: I subscribed to more newsletters from food people. I already read 1. Eat Voraciously from the Wash Po, 2. Smitten Kitchen Digest and her emailed newsletter (love it!), 3. the David Lebovitz Newsletter (I want him for a friend!), 4. Amateur Gourmet (he's so sincere and fun-loving!) and 5. Anything that Mark Bittman or Stanley Tucci put in my mailbox. Today I added 6. Dorie Greenspan's XOXO Dorrie and 7. To Vegetables with Love (because I actually do love vegetables), 8. The Best Bit by Clare de Boer (a new name for me) and finally 9. The Kitchen Shrink by Tamar Adler (the name alone won me over).

In other words, I'm switching my focus. I'll still read the depresso news about the recent findings on every food I eat, but this steady stream of kitchen magic will balance that out. 

 

Part 2

Still cold, though not Arctic cold, just Wisconsin January cold. Ed does the chicken duty since he is so close to the barn. Me, I pace the rooms again. Thirty minutes of walking to music. It could not be more boring!

(Friendly the cat watches once more...)

Breakfast -- this is where I can give you color. How fortunate to eat red and orange fruits in January!

Ed comes over at about lunch time. On the one hand -- how wonderful! On the other hand -- I look at him in the same way that he looks at me: so germy! Don't come too near me!

He sits down on the couch and within two minutes, he's stretched out on it, fast asleep. He wakes up a few hours later and retreats to the sheep shed. Visit complete.

Part 3

One pot of soup, spread over three days -- done. Time to cook up another veggie one. In the alternative, I could look through recipes and create something new, different and wonderful, but hey, I'm sick with Covid. Creativity plummets with Covid! Haven't we proof of that here?!

I cancelled everything for this week: dinners, haircuts, doc appointments. Kid care, of course. Tomorrow's my third day of heavy tissue use and Ed's seventh day of snorting and snoring. Let's see if we can both wrap it up by the end of the week, okay?

with love...

generations

Part 1

Every once in a while you turn on the radio, randomly, as background noise, maybe because you're cutting up fruit and you are tired of your playlist, and you hear a podcast, an interview that really moves you. More than that -- it shifts your perspective. In hearing someone else's story, you want to rethink aspects of your own story. It happened to me this morning.

Things started out very predictably: I bundled up and faced the morning. 6F (maybe -15C). We may warm up a little tomorrow, but we are definitely in the coldest moment of the coldest month.

(the chickens protect their most vulnerable extremities in every way they can)

I pass the sheep shed. I peek through the window and see Ed moving around inside. Well that's a good sign!

(yes, that's Campbells Chicken Noodle soup -- his preferred medicine for everything)

He's feeling better. Like the tail end of a very bad cold, he tells me through the glass. I think we're in for another week of separation. I'll test again soon, but I am hopeful. 

I start in on breakfast. Oatmeal today. I've read a bunch of articles admonishing us to quit with the resolutions. Celebrate the good in your life. Quit searching for radical improvements. They never work. 

Well of course, we know that. Telling yourself that as of January 1st, you'll move more, eat less, drink less, read better stuff etc etc is likely to tide you over for a handful of days and then you're back to your same old. On the other hand, I see nothing wrong with trying. Small stuff, but still, any effort seems worth it, no? If you had five good days of movement, well now, that's just great! You're that much stronger! So, I'm resuming the oatmeal/granola habit -- it wont last, but so what. For now, I'm feeling very noble.

(getting the two farmhouse cats to go outside in this deep freeze -- and they must go outside -- is a challenge)

And it was during my cutting up of the fruit for my oatmeal that I listened to the interview on PBS with Crystal Wilkinson. If you don't recognize the name -- she is an African American writer and professor of writing at U of Kentucky. (Read about her here.) She talked about her most recent book -- Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks. 

What was so transformative about this woman's story? Her history is not anywhere near my own. Tracing her roots to slavery (a white, five generations-back grandfather, a Black, five generations-back grandmother), a childhood in the hills of Appalachia -- none of it is familiar to me. But I wasn't listening for echos of my own past. What caught me instead were her reflections on cooking and her memories of being in the kitchen where her grandmother cooked. It's that connection to past generations, through food that had me put down my paring knife and really listen.

My grandmother, too, cooked over a coal and wood burning stove and my memories of her are very much centered on her in the kitchen. Yeah, she did other things. She washed clothes in a tin tub, she cleaned constantly, she grew vegetables. But when I think of her now, I mostly see her in the farmhouse kitchen, rolling out dough or stoking the fire in the stove. 

Wilkinson talks about the movement of her grandmother's hands as she kneaded bread dough. She sees in her own now grandmotherly knuckles the same rhythm, bend and twist. And she hangs her grandmother's dress in her kitchen, to stay close to the person who shaped her childhood profoundly (like me, Wilkinson lived with her grandmother, though in her case -- for her later childhood).

Here's where I had this revelation: maybe as grandparents, you know -- modern age grandparents, we tend to want to fit into our children's habits and styles of living too much. We even dress not too differently! (I own the same sweatpants as one daughter and hounded the other one to reveal the label of her corduroys.) Maybe the best memories that we can leave for our grandkids are not those of "substitute parent-like figures," but ones that are truer to our age, our styles, our way of defining grandparenthood. I wont leave a cotton frock for them to hang in the kitchen, but maybe they'll remember the hodgepodge of foods at brunch, the cut up fruits I always give them, the camera forever around my neck. Sweatpants and warm fuzzy slippers. And blueberry muffins. Because mine really are the world's best blueberry muffins (not really "mine" but then nothing is really just "ours.")

 

Part 2

By noon, I notice the sniffle. An hour later I'm looking at my test results: I'm Covid positive. 

I'm not really surprised. Ed and I spent all of January 1st together and he tested positive the next day. Five days later -- I'm down with it. Textbook Covid trajectory. 

There are many things about which I can feel grateful: first of all, getting sick now sucks, but it would have sucked a thousand times more had we both gotten this a week earlier. Secondly, I have not been around anyone for a couple of days now, so the infection stops here! We will not have contaminated anyone. Thirdly -- well, there isn't really a thirdly. If I don't get too sick, I'll add that to my thirdly, but right now I'm just at the starting gate, so we will see how this develops. (My previous two Covids weren't long or terrible, so I'm hoping for the same now.)

The worst part is that I have several birthday celebrations before me and at least one but maybe both will have to be postponed. Snowdrop turns ten this weekend and my younger daughter turns forty shortly after. I was to spend time with both and am all set to pop some champagne corks (at least for my daughter!), but now everything is a bit muddled.

Just at noon, I had driven over to the Shakespeare program where Snowdrop was being dropped off for the better part of the day, it being the twelfth night and all, so I did see the girl as she starts in on her journey into the world of double digit age numbers. Ah, sweet child, already one foot into the preteen craziness! Keep that grin going in life! It really does smooth the way for so much of what lies before you! If you find reasons to smile every day -- you're set, my sweet child...

 

Part 3

So what do I do with my newly launched commitment to greater and more consistent movement?  Everyone knows you are NOT supposed to push yourself into any form of exertion when you have Covid. Strange things happen! You can slide downhill quickly. A friend was hospitalized because he went on a bike ride while still fighting his infection. 

Nonetheless, I can walk, no? Not outside, because it's just too cold for that. We know colds hate the cold. So I walk inside. From room to room -- a challenge, given that the farmhouse is... small. The cat stares at me as if I'm nuts. And maybe he has a point, but frankly, it feels good to move a little. At least today it still feels good.

Ed and I discuss when to reunite. We both vote for a postponement for a day. The literature suggests that we cant toss around the infection like a ping pong ball, nor will I be sicker by being around him (or he by being around me),  but there are a lot of words like "probably" and "chances are" in the conclusions. And in truth, I want him to shake a little more of the congestion he now has. We have quite different habits in the treatment of respiratory infections -- I'm committed to mine and he is to his! Still, it's great to know that we wont have to have five more days of separation. United in misery!

As for evening viewing pleasures? Oh, that's easy for tonight: I turn on the Golden Globes. Ed dislikes any award shows and though he likes strong acting, he cares little for the glitz that goes into acting awards Me -- hey, I watched a hot contender for best picture the other night! Of course I'm tuning in! With leftover soup, a salad and hopes for a fast processing of this damn Covid.

And with love...