You're Doing It Wrong

I have all kinds of photos from the end of last year and beginning of this year that I’m going to try to post over the next couple of weeks.

These are socks that my sister made for me. They are so pretty I can’t bear the idea of wearing them.

She told me to wear them.

But also as I have aged I realize that when you save things what are you saving them for? Like a pretty candle sitting there for 10 years and starts to look grey and droopy and I realize I should just light the candle and enjoy it.

Another pair of tiny socks she made for one of the bebes:

Here are some pretty tulips:

Decades ago my mother-in-law gave me a bundt pan and also a recipe called Black Magic Cake which I have previously posted about here.

This recipe has been a huge hit every time I make it. It’s dense, very chocolatey and freezes well.

The reason I post about it again is that, the original recipe calls for 8 – 2.05 oz Milky Way bars. I’m sure there are places to get big candy bars but not at my usual grocery store. So I had to buy and unwrap a whole bag of itty bitty bars.

I have used other chocolates to fill out the recipe — various odds and ends of baker chocolate and half-full bags of chocolate chips I have in my cupboard.

It’s never gone wrong.

Driving in the Dark

As I am getting older, it is harder to drive in the dark. Especially when it is dark and raining.

When Dad first went to the hospital back in December, we had a to get to the hospital late at night and then again early the next morning and both drives were in the dark and driving rain.

It was miserable. Especially when it seems like half the cars on the road are driving much faster and more aggressively than conditions would warrant.

On a different night, after a series of long days, I left the hospital after dark. I was really run down and hungry. The rain was spitting and the car windows and my glasses were all foggy, so I struggled to see.

I grabbed the mask that I’d used all day to wipe off my glasses, and this was a mistake. It was like I had wiped Vaseline on the lenses.

All I wanted was to get home and put on some fuzzy pants and eat a bowl of soup but first I had to get home squinting through the glaze.

I made it. I also put lens wipes in the car.

Here’s a good hospital story: Peacehealth plays a little harp song when a baby is born. I stopped by to hang out with Dad for a couple hours on my birthday and I heard the harp song. A birthday twin!

Aw nuts! I make granola for my breakfast and I buy giant bags of nuts at the natural foods store and then mix them together and put them into 2-cup bags for the freezer.

[I wrote this last month when I thought my website was about to be fixed but it wasn’t.]

Smells Like Nothing

On the third day after I tested positive for Covid, I realized I’d lost my sense of smell. I had kind-of been monitoring for that symptom. I was curious if it went gradually or if you just woke up and it was gone.

By the time I noticed, it was completely gone. I ran around smelling things and everything smelled like nothing.

But as fast as I identified this, I forgot about it.

Bob had some ricotta cheese on the counter that he was using for our dinner. I thought we had opened a while ago and smelled it to make sure it didn’t smell off.

“Smells fine,” I said, making a joke, but not on purpose.

Initially, a lack of smell is amusing. I sniffed vinegar and my favorite soap and the hand sanitizer we have that smells like tequila: nothing!

But also food tastes like nothing. Just stuff to chew for nutrition. That created some despair.

Bob got his Mustard of the Month supply (he gets it quarterly) and one of the mustards was Cherchies Banana Pepper Mustard.

I wanted to taste it and took a bite of Bob’s sandwich and even though I couldn’t taste anything, I could feel the chemical tingle in my mouth and on my lips. Science!

On Sunday morning Bob made bacon and if I stood over it and huffed, I could get a faint sense of bacon. Later, when he made dinner, I got a whiff of onion. I can smell very strong smells and have a hint of taste, so eating isn’t a complete waste of time.

Hopefully, full recovery is coming soon. (It took 2-3 weeks but it came back.)

February Snow

[This was written in March when I thought my website was fixed but it wasn’t yet.]

I’m back!

I did not expect to be away so long, but life events have conspired against me.

First is the Dad situation, which has been a nonstop journey with surges of hope together with disheartening setbacks.

As of this writing, things look like they are improving. The goal is to get him back to his apartment with assistance, and this may come to pass soon. We are finding it best to remain hopeful but also to see how things go day-to-day. (He moved back earlier this month.)

Meanwhile, we had a stomach bug that threw the house into disorder for about a week. At last, we reached the point where we were both recovered and able to eat regular dinner food instead of soup and canned peaches.

Then Covid came to our house. When Bob said he felt like he was coming down with something, I said: You can’t be sick. We were just sick.

I was wrong. He went down hard and surprise! He tested positive. Two days later I tested positive. I guess it was mild? For me it was only about 2 days of gruesome body aches, fever and crushing fatigue. But the coughing and congestion went on and on plus I lost my sense of smell, which was amusing at first but also kind of distressing.

We weren’t able to spend any time with Dad. I had been wishing I could spend some time at home and here it was: you want it, you got it!

Be careful what you wish for.

On top of all that, this website has been broken behind the scenes. There have been signs of trouble going on for quite some time, but I couldn’t deal with it and put it off until the situation became dire. Once or twice I poked around under the hood but the fix was things I don’t understand and I think I have shared before that my web-hosting support isn’t particularly supportive unless you already know what you’re doing.

It’s like if you took your car in and said it wouldn’t start, so they gave you a thirty-page document that internally references about 10 other documents and then stood back and waited for you to fix it.

It’s not a perfect analogy.

They do offer a paying option, but that’s if you want them to build you a website for $1000. I already have a website, I just need help making it start.

Bob found me a colleague who works on websites and if you are reading this, it means she successfully helped me get it all working again.

Hopefully, I will resume posting 1-2 times per week again.

This is mostly “before.” I had hand dug part of it at this point.

Colleague has a rototiller that he’s brought over to the house a couple of times. Some years we would have a great weekend and I would wish I’d asked him to come over.

This year, I asked if I could borrow it.

This is during.

Too bad I didn’t get video. I have never used a rototiller and it’s like walking a giant dog that’s trying to chase a squirrel. My arms are at least 6 inches longer.

But it was fun and I kind of got the hang of it after a while.

After, nicely raked. That bucket has the critter cam to see if I can catch the residents living under the shed.

It was getting late so I didn’t get any planting done other than scattering some old seeds around. Hopefully next weekend.

HAHA. I think that’s the first major cardio I’ve gotten since last fall. My arms were like noodles.

These are photos I uploaded in January around the time I discovered I couldn’t post without fixing something.

At the end of tomato season I clipped a giant bowl of green tomatoes and put them on the window sill. Most of them turned reddish eventually and we ate them in our salad. By the end they don’t taste very good and the texture is mostly chewy skin. It’s just summer nostalgia.

I’m not sure what’s going on with this picture. Maybe I intentionally blurred the background? It looks also frosty, or maybe snowy but also like a very dirty window. The only time I ever think about washing windows is when I see photos I’m getting ready to post.

These were the very last ones in January.

Friends, it has been a journey.

On the one hand, I had a hairy and soul-shredding aging parent situation.

Things aren’t perfect, as you would expect, but things are stable and less stressful. For now.

On the other hand, this website had been breaking behind the scenes and I knew about it but mostly ignored it. Sometimes I would log in and click around and then contact support and then pull my hair out and then go back to ignoring it.

But then it got to the point where it couldn’t be ignored and was way beyond my skill set. I contacted support some more.

Imagine if someone contacted me and said: You’re good at making apple pie. Can you help me make an apple pie?

And I said: Here are a bunch of recipes.

And they said: But I’m having trouble with the crust. I can’t make it work. Can you help me out?

And I said: Here are a bunch of recipes.

That’s more or less what support is like.

Bob got me in touch with a former colleague: St. Fellene of WordPress Studies and we have been clicking and updating and deleting and databasing and she has helped me get this thing working again. Hallelujah!

I have some ancient drafted posts sitting here that I will roll out and hopefully I will get back to regular posting 1-2x per week.

Happy Spring!