the wire

Posted on April 8, 2020 by is there any more pie?

Better late than never.  This was a huge HBO hit from 2002-2008.

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HBO is giving free access to many of its hit shows during the pandemic, and THE WIRE is one of them.   You can check out HBO NOW to stream it.

We’re in the middle of season 2 and we can’t get enough of it.  It’s a stressful show to watch (sort of the anti-Hallmark Movie Channel) but we love the characters.  I worry about everyone, from my favorite policemen drinking too much to a beloved drug addict to the strangely sweet and brutal character who robs drug dealers for a living.

I have to remind myself they’re not real people and I don’t have worry about them, but it’s not easy.

We are so glad we don’t live in Baltimore.

We are glad we’re not dock workers, drug dealers, kids growing up in the projects, or policemen.

We are glad we live in the country and can go outside without worrying about bullets or car thieves or trash.

And..we’re learning a new language.  When we hear a particularly intriguing and colorful statement from one of the drug gang, we repeat it to each other until we get the accent right.

And because we’re quarantined, and because the threat of the Evil Virus hovers over our lives, repeating strings of X-rated language in the privacy of our own living room is highly satisfying.

Yo.

 

 

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is it May yet?

Posted on April 7, 2020 by is there any more pie?

Emails, conversations and texts with my friends have begun to center around food.

Several friends have sent me pictures of their loaves of homemade bread.  I love pictures of bread.

I have also received photos of masks.  And they have been impressive.  Everyone is making them and each day online there are more patterns, more innovations, more solutions to the shortage of elastic and cording.  I saw a great tutorial this morning and I’m going to find that football-themed fabric I tucked away and make masks for my four Texans.

I am going to cut up one of Banjo Man’s t-shirts to make ties, because the world is out of elastic and soft laundry cording.

On Saturday I started my own mask project by cutting up a new cloth diaper.  I overcast the raw edges, but that was as far as I got.

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My enthusiasm for mask-making is very, very low despite the encouragement of the friends who are producing them at a rapid pace.

I look at these rectangles of organic bamboo cotton and I feel nothing but despair.

We aren’t going anywhere to get groceries or prescriptions, but we do need to drop some things off at the Post Office today.  Good thing we still have some paper masks.  Banjo Man will wear his goggles.  He won’t go inside unless the parking lot is fairly empty (it’s a very small Post Office).

I’ve put off going to the bank for necessary financial transactions for my mother, but it has to be done.  So one of those diaper masks will be crucial, according to the experts.

In Rhode Island we are being bombarded with “models” and “predictions”, almost minute-by-minute.  Are 324 of us going to die in April?  Or do you believe the newest model that predicts close to 3000?  Will the virus peak on April 15 or April 29 or mid-May?

Mid May?  I cannot.  I just can’t.

Where are the car keys?  I’m heading West.

 

 

 

 

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prayers for john prine

Posted on April 6, 2020 by is there any more pie?

Nothing has hit me harder during this time of the corona virus than the news that John Prine was in the hospital with the virus.  John Prine is very ill and in the ICU for what may be his 10th day on a ventilator.  He has pneumonia in both lungs but, according to his wife Fiona, his condition has been upgraded from “critical” to “stable”.

I check her twitter account every morning, praying under my breath that he is still alive and still fighting.

I found this on Fiona Prine’s instagram page.  I absolutely love it.

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I’m playing a lot of John Prine lately.  Trying to send all those healthy, healing thoughts to one of the best songwriters of our time.

May all the angels, from Montgomery and elsewhere, watch over him.

 

 

 

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our daily bread

Posted on April 5, 2020 by is there any more pie?

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Yesterday was a Big Event here in the Land of the Evil Virus.

Banjo Man loves the sourdough bread from Panera’s and buys a loaf every Saturday, after his weekly trip to the dump.

Oh, how we’ve missed it!  Our local Panera Bread is closed, but I discovered that some of the stores around the state are open for online ordering and parking lot pick-up.  I put in an order (two loaves of sourdough, one focaccia and one ciabatta) for Saturday morning at 10:30.  It had been almost a month since we’ve had a loaf of Panera’s sourdough.

I will try to describe how exciting it was to leave the house, but you all have most likely experienced the same joy.

We showered.   We put on clean clothes.  I put on make-up, a necklace and earrings.  I even wore a bra.

Banjo Man shaved and looked quite spiffy.  We looked like we were going out to a special lunch…and sadly, of course, we never got out of the car.  But the thirty-minute ride was a thrill.  I pretended we were actually going somewhere nice, where we could eat lunch and then go buy stuff.

Once in the near-empty parking lot, I texted a code to Panera and within minutes a woman came across the lot with our bag of bread.  We rolled down the back window and she set it in the back seat.

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We drove home slowly.  There was nothing much to look forward to now.  We talked about having bread and olive oil for lunch, but clearly the thrill was gone.

Remember the Narragansett sea wall I’ve blogged about?  A great place to walk and enjoy the ocean air?

Here it is now:

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If you live nearby, you can walk on the sidewalk.  But no one can park.  I have very mixed feelings about this.  On one hand, it’s hard to “social distance” on a sidewalk when you pass each other, but people need fresh air and the comforting view of waves and ocean.  We need exercise.  Beach parking lots are all closed, so no one can walk on the beach unless they live nearby or have someone drop them off.

We keep hearing that in these next two weeks the infections will peak and Rhode Islanders will be experiencing our own version of hell.  I pray that everything we’ve done will “flatten the curve” and the rate of infection won’t be nearly as devastating as expected.

Are we–as a state–prepared?  I don’t know.  It depends on which politician or which radio station I listen to.  Testing finally began Friday.  A little late, in my opinion.  How can you have accurate infection numbers if you’re not testing?

Supposedly we will hit the “peak” on April 19.

Until then we will enjoy our bread and continue to have our groceries delivered and take walks around the driveway.

Stay safe.  Stay home.  This can’t last forever.

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A long winter and an even longer Spring.

 

Posted in family, rhode island, shopping | 2 Comments

year of wonders

Posted on April 4, 2020 by is there any more pie?

year of wonders

This an absolutely wonderful and inspiring book about the Black Plague.

Now granted, you may not be in the mood…or this might be perfect timing.

From the back blurb:  “When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated mountain village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges an an unlikely heroine and healer…as her fellow villagers make an extraordinary choice: convinced by a visionary young minister they elect to quarantine themselves within the village boundaries to arrest the spread of the disease.”

As Oprah wrote:  “Year of Wonders is a vividly imagined and strangely consoling tale of hope in a time of despair.”

This was published in 2001 and based on an actual event.

The Black Plague has fascinated me ever since.  During one visit to London, I convinced my mother and daughter to go on a “Haunted London At Night” tour.  We went to the lower regions of an elegant bar to visit a very spooky and supposedly haunted cell from the days of “debtor’s prisons” and also tiptoed down to the basement of a definitely seedy pub that housed the ladies room where Jack the Ripper killed one of his victims.

My mother and my daughter were less than thrilled with this tour–aside from drinking wine in the fancy bar until the goosebumps left our arms.

But we also parked in back of a church where plague victims had been buried stacked on top of each other in the cemetery, which was still there.  Spooky, as cemeteries at night always are.

And nearby was a large empty round mounded field that once was known as a “plague pit”.

Yes, this was how I spent my 50th birthday.  I was mesmerized.

I’ve thought about this book a lot lately.  Even though I’ve purged my bookshelves many times, this novel has stayed with me.  I intend to read it again.

Here’s the amazon link if you’re interested in reading more about it.  It’s also $2.99 on ebay.  And free at the library if you have an e-book account.  Let me know what you think.

 

 

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learning something new

Posted on April 3, 2020 by is there any more pie?

We have run out of canned beans, which meant staring down the bags of dried beans and girding ourselves for the soaking and rinsing and cooking (I confess, I dislike the smell and it lingers in the house for hours) of the beans before they can be used in one of my bean soups or casseroles.

So in a burst of brain power, I decided to google “cooking beans in a crock pot without soaking” and found this website:

How to Cook Dried Beans in a Crockpot or Slow Cooker

She describes exactly how to do it (unless you’re using kidney beans–they need boiling).  So I picked over, rinsed and dumped half a bag of dried white beans in the crock pot.  I covered them with water (about 2″ above the beans) and cooked on high for about 3-4 hours until they were done.  The smell was minimal.  Easy as pie!

Have you been doing this for years?  (And you didn’t tell me?)

I then drained the beans (tossed out the cooking liquid) and put them back in the crock pot.  I browned about a pound of pork sausage (not Italian), sauteed a chopped onion and a teaspoon of garlic.  That went into the pot along with about 7 cups of chicken broth.  Next came four leftover baked potatoes, peeled and cubed.  Two pinches of thyme leaves.  A couple of whole bay leaves.

I cooked it all afternoon and about half an hour or so before calling Banjo Man upstairs for dinner, I added a can of evaporated milk, a cup of frozen (and partially defrosted in the microwave) chopped spinach and 3 TBS of instant potato flakes (I use these a lot because I like thick soups).

This “thrown together” soup was really, really good.  I think it would be easy to make it “vegan” just by eliminating the sausage and using vegetable broth instead of chicken broth.  The potatoes really added a nice touch, though.

These chilly gray days cry out for soup, especially hearty ones.  We need comfort food–especially the kind that comes with healthy beans.  I probably make a bean soup every ten days in the winter.

And this still feels like winter, despite having turned to “April” on the calendar.

Today I am going to “ZOOM” with two of my favorite people, fellow retired writers Pat and Sharon.  Sharon has talked us into it and I have registered for the app.  I thought–fleetingly–about showering and washing my hair for this big event at 11 AM, but the three of us agreed we wouldn’t bother.

So…pressure’s off.

Stay safe.  Stay home.  This can’t last forever.

hand sanitizer sistine chapel

 

 

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moving day amidst the virus

Posted on April 2, 2020 by is there any more pie?
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A very quiet Main Street meant plenty of parking spaces.

This day took weeks to accomplish.  In the time of the Evil Virus, nothing is easy.  We all know that, don’t we!

The administrators of my mother’s former home, a lovely studio apartment in an assisted living complex, eventually agreed to let me and a couple of movers empty her place of her furniture.  Daughter Nancy, who works at that facility, was (thank God) able to pack up everything that could be put in a car and had been delivering it to me for sorting and storing.

It had taken weeks to find a moving company willing to take the job.  I was getting pretty frustrated, as time was running out and there was no way Banjo Man and I could move a small couch, entertainment center and bed by ourselves.  Even if we had a truck, which we don’t.

It all worked out.  And I will be eternally grateful for how nice everyone was.  In these very stressful times, I think it might be hard to be nice.  But it’s more important than ever, of course.  And the two sweet young men who agreed to the health protocols (temperatures taken, forms filled out, wearing masks and gloves) were nothing but helpful.

As were the nurses and housekeepers and CNA’s.  Such kindness and caring is appreciated more than anyone could imagine.

Nancy and I led the moving van to her second-floor apartment (she was giving the couch and a dresser a home) and then to my house to drop off the rest before heading to the dump.

It was a gorgeous day.  I’d expected something to go wrong, but nothing did.  So over the next couple of weeks I’ll go through Mom’s stuff and see what can be donated (when the stores start taking donations) and what she will need in the nursing home.

Here’s something funny that was on Bonnie Hunter’s website yesterday:

fabric stay at home

One of the last remaining quilt fabric stores within an hour radius of my house announced its closing yesterday.  Driving to Mystic, CT to look at fabric and enjoy a lunch out and a view of the estuary was always a treat.

I’m afraid this is just the beginning of small shops closing down.

Quilters are good at staying home.  There are all sorts of online “quilt-a-longs” via blogs and websites and online shops to keep the sewers entertained.  Many groups are making masks.  I watched a video on how to make them and intended to sew my little fingers off for local fireman, etc. but discovered there is no elastic.

Ordering online means waiting until mid-May or later to get a spool.  And I refuse to believe that things won’t be greatly improved by the middle of May.

My mantra:  This can’t last forever.

Hang in there.  Stay safe.  Stay home.

 

 

 

 

 

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oh, my goodness, she’s 40!

Posted on April 1, 2020 by is there any more pie?
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Very proud of her dad’s fish.

We wish you a wonderful birthday, dear Nancy!  Although we can’t celebrate together, we will eventually, when the Evil Virus has dissipated and peace returns to the land.

Even though our birthday trip to Austin had to be cancelled, we can make plans for another time.  The Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco awaits!

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Happy reunion with her big brothers.

 

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i get by with a little help…

Posted on March 31, 2020 by is there any more pie?

…from my friends!

Harley Chick’s son works at the local supermarket.  (Can we have a round of applause for the grocery store workers, please?  These folks are keeping the food on the shelves and making it possible for us isolated folks to eat.)

So Harley Chick asked her hard-working, exhausted son if he could please find flour and sugar for her friend More Pie to purchase.

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Come to Mama!!!

It took several days, but her son kept his eye out for a new delivery and sure enough, success!  You are looking at a four-pound bag of sugar and a five-pound bag of flour.  Such a beautiful sight on my kitchen island!!!!

It was like Christmas.  I kid you not.

Now I can bake again.  And wanting to bake something is such a normal reaction in times of trouble.  We need a little comfort, a little treat with that afternoon cup of tea or our mid-morning chat with fresh cups of coffee.

Banjo Man has stopped getting on the scale.  He has also asked for chocolate chip cookies.

We put in another grocery order for Friday, but yesterday the employees of Instacart went on strike.  I selfishly hope it’s resolved before Friday so I have a shot at getting milk and vegetables, but if it’s not?  We’ll survive.

And that’s what we’re all trying to do:  survive.  With grace.  And hope.  With kindness.  And by helping each other.

Little things, like having flour and sugar, have become big things.  A ten-minute visit with Harley Chick–through a basement window– becomes the highlight of the week.

Phone calls and emails and texts keep us connected, thank goodness.  Everyone I know is self-isolating, following the rules, and waiting patiently for this to be over.  It’s going to be a long month, but there’s a bright and gorgeous and virus-free summer ahead.

 

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Before Corona.  And what will be again.

 

 

Posted in family, food, friends, rhode island | 2 Comments

day 17 in the house

Posted on March 30, 2020 by is there any more pie?

In honor of a new week I am wearing a new sweater.  It’s not new new, but it’s different from my thread-covered ivory wool cardigan.

I’m in a cowl-necked maroon pullover now and feeling quite spiffy.

And no, there will not be a selfie.

But I will be Face-Timing with my 93-year old mother this afternoon.  She moved to a nursing home in the midst of the Evil Virus and has been quarantined along with all of the other residents.

They are being kept safe, which is such a comfort and relief, but the lack of contact with family and friends is taking its toll despite the staff’s best efforts.

I don’t know if my mother will know who I am.  This is a new, heartbreaking development and I am still trying to cope with the sadness it brings.  Because I can’t see her or talk to her (she is too confused to make sense on the phone) during this isolation period, I’m afraid her descent into dementia is increasing rapidly.

Let’s hope this afternoon’s “visit-by-I-phone” is comforting for both of us.

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Romance Writers of America conference, New Orleans, LA  1990 (or 1991)

 

 

 

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