Entering our 12 month of the Pandemic and COVID self quarantining. This slog through the cold winter months, coupled with the inability to go much of anywhere or to spend time with friends and loved ones is getting very tiresome. This again has been a quiet week. Saturday, Mark joined 240 other Gardeners on a Zoom class about Seed Starting and Indoor Seed Lighting. It doesn’t sound particularly exciting but it was interesting and got us to thinking of Spring. Deb hopped right on the internet to order some Haricots Vert bean seeds that will be planted in Abigail’s vegetable garden at first chance. We will have to google about planting soil temperatures and days to harvest but it does get us thinking.
Now that we are down to one pet in our three-person household, we seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time on Sushi the cat. He gets constant brushing, his litter box is cleaned much more frequently, and his happiness level seems to be higher. At least that is our understanding based upon his purring. However his purring mechanism seems to have broken down. It is now a loud deep roar, as if he has a cold in his throat. This aids him to become more demanding at the hour he has deemed Dinner Time.
Sunday evening we had a Zoom cocktail hour with Lee and Howie Needelman, getting a chance to spend a little conversational time with them. Their daughter Molly had headed back to San Francisco after spending over two months with them, and they were sad to see her go, although, as we all know when kids return for an extended visit, also glad to push them back out into their world. We have been binge watching Longmire on Netflix, all six seasons, and we finished up all but the last few episodes on Sunday and Monday. Monday also found Deb off to the cardiologist for an echocardiogram, which had been rescheduled due to the previous week’s snowstorm. She took the opportunity to get a little grocery shopping done as she was out. Before she even returned home, the cardiologist office was calling her with results. After checking with them, we are pleased to announce that all is well, and her heart is even showing some improvements - the hard-heartedness is easing some - luckily for Mark.
Tuesday was a required fasting day as Mark was headed in Wednesday morning for his scheduled colonoscopy. We won’t bore you with the horrid details of this preparation. Suffice it to say that all went down without a problem. Wednesday morning’s procedure was completed and the report was good. We came home from the hospital in the early afternoon so Mark could shove down a sandwich and get some additional rest. The anesthetic used by those guys is wonderful - the best sleep ever.
We did finish the Longmire series on Tuesday night. If you have a chance to watch this, we can recommend it. Although, for such an unpopulated part of the country, there sure seems to be a lot of murder, mayhem, and Irish Mob types in the area. A good show that was very true to current condition of European white people versus Native American relationships. Another supreme example of white supremacist attitudes that seems to infest every area of our life. Our guilt is reinforced.
Deb is currently reading the book Caste by Isabel Wilkerson; a look at systemic racism, comparing the U.S system to the caste system of India and the horrendous Holocaust of Nazi Germany. If you have not read it, she recommends it - not an easy or comfortable read, but one that is changing her outlook on her own life and that of her ancestors. Her Irish immigrant forbearers suffered some of the same things in the past, but, due to the color of their skin, were able to overcome it. As her Dad told her, “Be thankful that you were born white.” She is taking her time finishing the book because she wants to remember it and learn what she can about how to change the belief system that is ingrained in so many of us.
Thursday morning brought another light snow here in Omaha, only perhaps 1/2 or 3/4 of an inch, but accompanied by blustery winds out of the northwest. Temperatures are predicted to drop precipitously over the next 10 days - next Monday the high is going to be 10ºF with an over night low of -3ºF. We will stay snuggled in our warm little House on the Prairie and not venture out.
On the food and cooking front, this week we made both chicken and beef broth with the Instant Pot. We had accumulated bags of chicken carcass bones in the freezer, and Deb had purchased some oxtail and bone marrow bones earlier in the summer. For the beef broth we even roasted the bones to get some deeper color and flavor from them. Pressure cooking them for 45 minutes for the chicken and two hours for the beef certainly beats five or six hours on the stovetop. The result is just the same and certainly provides the ingredients of some excellent soups and dishes in this cold, cold winter.
Thursday evening, we held a Zoom cocktail hour with our friends, Ann & Don Hosford, Jeanne & Frank Daharsh, and the Needelmans. This is as close as we can come to hosting a small cocktail party, and we don’t even have to make sure the house is clean, just that we look presentable from the waist up! The other “excitement” on Thursday was that we were able to schedule our COVID vaccines for next week, and the second injection for a month after that. We are so looking forward to helping with herd immunity.
Our forecast now calls for a high tomorrow, Saturday, of 10ºF and two to four inches of snow. That will keep us a safe distance from all, and we will continue to wash our hands and wear a mask if we don’t feel safe with each other! Stay safe and stay well. This all may pass at sometime in the future.
