Beautiful Thing of the Day:
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| Texas bluebonnets! |
Tip of the Day:
Make time to write down what's happening in your life.
Write down your fears (be HONEST)
Write down the things that make you crazy
Write down what you're doing to deal with this New Reality.
Don't write thinking you'll publish it.
Just write it to remember.
This is going to be over one of these days (not soon enough) and we're going
to need to remember what really happened.
Our collective memory of this will soften the hard edges. We need to remember
it as it really was.
Think of this as 20 minutes of free writing daily. Don't revise, don't go back and think "oh should I say that?" Let your mind roll the truth onto the page.
Fending off anxiety at 3am:
Amazon Prime's WIRED
Progress on biscuits:
none. I bought a doughnut instead.
Twitter is tormenting me with waffle iron recipes.
Pet photo of the Day
On the window sill is Leo; in the bed is Levi (he's my buddy and normally demands to sit in my lap. This was a rare time that he slept in their bed). They aren't worried about anything. They have a human to do the worrying for them. --blog reader K. White
28 comments:
I love this blog. That is all I have for Day 18.
Beautiful scenes, adorable pets, and great peeps
This place...a stand against groundhog day, again.
Beautiful cats! Leo looks like Loaner Cat who is at this moment, flipping and flopping all over husband's bare feet because who knows why? But it's her favorite thing to do.
The flowers outside my back door are trying their best. They truly are. But it was 31 degrees this morning again so I'm afraid they haven't much of a chance this year :(
I thought this was a good article on how to disengage the anxiety and crippling fear. Or at least better cope with it:
https://medium.com/the-mission/why-coronavirus-should-be-the-least-of-your-worries-d6ed6abe75bc
Morrison's has a good bis-kit packaged mix and Red Lobster has a good boxed biscuit mix--includes that good garlic taste (add butter). (Can do a dropped biscuit, too.)
Excellent idea. A journaling I will go.
Brenda
Okay... I did the linky thing wrong. Colin, are you rolling your eyes? Is everyone rolling their eyes?
Melanie: I'm not rolling my eyes. Social distancing, you know. Got to keep them in place. ;)
Here's my "how to hyperlink" page: http://www.colindsmith.com/blog/2015/01/04/how-to-hyperlink/
Hope that helps!
Oh, and here's Melanie's link linkified:
https://medium.com/the-mission/why-coronavirus-should-be-the-least-of-your-worries-d6ed6abe75bc
You bought a doughnut? How does one pull off that feat behind closed doors? Because, yes, I want to replicate!
I began my journal on March 21, Janet, with this entry: "I should have started this journal a few days ago, when (we) began our self-imposed isolation. This morning, it occurred to me that not only do I feel a need to chronical our experience and how this event is affecting not only us, but our extended family, friends and neighbors and our community within the larger picture of our country and the world as a whole."
My son's social studies teacher has them doing a daily diary, both personal and how COVID is affecting different parts of society, etc. He told them, "You are, right now, living a part of history that other students will learn about in classes like these for hundreds of years, and a lot of best information we have about previous pandemics has come from personal accounts like diaries, so you could be WRITING history."
Or videoing it, in our case. We set up a YouTube daily news report for Logan, and we're searching out the quirky, less depressing news about unique and unexpected consequences.
This was from an entry I wrote on March 13th.
Right now, our internet went down due to a blowing snow storm. So we have lost connectivity with the world. You can imagine that things are apocalyptic, yet you try to talk yourself down from the edge. It’s just a storm. It’s just a virus. You will wake up tomorrow and things will be better. But you kind of feel like only some things will be better. Yes, the power is on and the house is still warm, and there is water coming out of the taps, but things feel off kilter somehow. Like the axis got jolted from some space junk or a solar flare or some kind of outer space shenanigans that I do not have the words to describe.
Rosanna, you describe the feeling so well. Said feeling was enhanced because in our state we had an earthquake a few days ago. And some people felt it, but I didn't, which is even more disorienting. The apocalypse is happening and I'm missing it. Is that good or bad? :)
Also, Janet, please tell me that blue bonnet photo is from a previous year. In Texas they have blue bonnets and today I woke up to SNOW ?
Thanks for these blog entries. I look forward to reading them with my morning coffee, especially this morning when our Colorado blue sky turned into a Glasgow gray (of course, this could be a call for a nice shot of Bruichladdich's Port Charlotte).
I've been watching the waffle iron chronicles on Twitter. I have many, many semi-useful kitchen appliances but I've never owned a waffle iron. Now I'm tempted. My brother-in-law likes waffles so much he carried a waffle iron in his carry-on luggage once. Turns out a waffle iron looks a lot like a land mine on an x-ray. Lesson learned.
Both of these photos are very sustaining.
Another sunshiny day in sw Wisconsin, perfect for an after lunch walk.
I've been trying to finish ch. 4 of my wip, but I ran across a knotty chronology issue that's been repeated in a lot of source material, so I had to go back to the primary sources to sort it out.
And I made my first face mask.
Smart kitties, sub-contracting all worries to their human! Beth Carpenter, the carry-on waffle iron made my day!I I might need to dust off my Mickey Mouse waffle iron for supper tonight. John Davis Frain,I I think you inadvertently answered your own question -- Janet got the doughnut from her replicator, of course.
There's an article about author Anne Tyler on the BBC this morning, that talks about referencing the pandemic in writing.
Janet
I sent out an email with some beautiful bluebonnet pictures yesterday. I'll try to email them to you. Look for "Bluebonnets of St. Mary's"
John Davis Frain --Dunkin is on seamless/grubhub! (at least in NYC). It's insanely expensive and doesn't list their full menu, so I've only done it once, but it's an option.
The photo is a week old. I plan to go back to my local nature trail this weekend to see how many more bluebonnets have bloomed. With the rain we've been getting I expect a bumper crop this year (but no snow. In north Texas we haven't seen snow in at least five years).
Bluebonnets! The state flower of my Home Sweet Home. But they won't grow up here where I live in the middle of the Texas panhandle. Too cold in the winter. The nearest patch of bluebonnets is a 7 hour drive to the southeast (and that's with no Dairy Queen stops.) Around here there's scrubby mesquite and short grasses and cactus. The land is flat as the bottom of a cast iron skillet. This area wasn't settled until 1887 because it's not much to look at, but there's an austere beauty if you have the eyes to see it. The good news? People who decided to homestead here were tough. I come from strong.
Thank you for this blog, Janet. You have taught me so much and I appreciate it. Times like these make me wonder if my writing is a worthy endeavor, but I do know that having a familiar place to visit every day with like-minded people is important.
Stay well and safe.
I honestly wouldn't have much to write in a journal. I've been self-isolated since before the bug came to Canada, as I had a nasty cold the end of February and I live in a retirement community. We've been in lockdown since the middle of March. It's really not different from my usual life. When I feel like I need something more than I can get here, I order in from a local restaurant for supper.
The thing that's been wearing on me, though, is that I can't hug anyone, and I don't have a critter to share love with right now. The day we went into lockdown, I had applications in on two dogs - but since lockdown, I haven't been allowed to leave the building except for medical appointments, so I can't actually go meet or pick up any dogs or fulfill adoption obligations like getting a home check. I was doing okay, though, until I saw a lovely video of dogs greeting their owners, and I couldn't stop thinking about how much I miss Koko and Little Girl Dog.
The first thing I'm going to do when lockdown is lifted is hug my family. The next thing will be to find a dog.
K. White (and Janet) thank for sharing these pics! The beauty of nature and sleeping furballs are so calming.
About writing things down:
For a couple weeks, I had been making random pandemic-related notes for a possible blog post (goal being to post once a month this year, even if just something completely stupid), but the March deadline was coming up and . . . I had nothing. I didn't know what I wanted to say. So I finally made myself sit down and try to shape it into something coherent. I *think* I was successful with the coherence, and met the self-imposed deadline. Yay, me.
The important thing was the reminder (yet again) that when I have thoughts cycling in my brain that won't stop or settle, it ALWAYS helps if I write them down. Being me, of course I "published" it on my blog. (Sorry, Janet, for disregarding that advice. I long ago ran out of fucks to give about sharing thoughts in that space.)
BUT, the helpful part wasn't the sharing, it was the writing. Doing that serves to clear stuff out of my head to make space for other thoughts. Maybe even some words of fiction. *fingers crossed* It may not work the same for everyone, but it's worth a try.
All that to say, I second Janet's tip of the day suggestion. Just maybe for a different-- no, for an additional reason.
Good article that Melanie linked, but I disagree about the toilet paper shortage being (wholly) caused by fear/panic. People who used the bathroom at work or school are now doing so at home and using close to twice as much as they had been. Supply has remained constant. There's apparently a surplus now of commercial-grade tp, which is an entirely different supply chain. [paraphrasing an article I read earlier today and can't remember where. WaPo? The Atlantic? Hang on . . . OK, found it: https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0 ]
I need to stop being so lazy.
link from my comment above
Curious. I had a fixation on waffle irons about a month ago. I don't think I want to know why I didn't go get one, if my attention was diverted or the world fell apart.
I haven't contemplated doughnuts for a while either. Got a wild hair a while back and made some chocolate cake doughnuts from the baking mix recipe I screwed up last night ( use the second one).
I added 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup cocoa powder, and three egg yolk to the mix and fried doughnuts in peanut oil.
Topped them with peanut butter buttercream icing, like a cake Reese's cup. Tasty.
Sorry to be rambling of late, but social distancing is affecting me strangely. Hope everyone else is doing well and holding their sanity with both hands.
Thanks to Joe Snoe, I have already fallen in love with the Texas Bluebonnet. They are so pretty.
If anyone is wanting something to do at home, I've just read this...
Starting on Friday April 3, Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group, in partnership with Universal, will offer free access to his back catalog of hugely successful musicals, including such megahits as ‘Cats’ and ‘The Phantom of the Opera’.
A different Lloyd Webber musical will stream each week on The Shows Must Go On!, a new YouTube channel devoted to this project. Each show will go live on the channel on Friday at 7pm BST (2pm EDT, 4am AEST), and will remain viewable for 48 hours afterward.
Andrew Lloyd Webber's anouncement
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