Day in the Life of an Idiot

Midway is quietly recovering, from what I can tell.

We are out in the streets every day with brooms and paint cans and, in Mason's case, bags of groceries. Yesterday, he spent the first couple of hours packing up food and the last couple helping people load up their cars. He was so cute when he came home, because he said to us, "You know what I learned today? Diapers come in sizes!" Shawn and I were like, "You're ahead of us. We only learned that sixteen years ago!" Because, seriously, both Shawn and I did stints as baby-sitters as kids, but there's so much you don't know until you have an infant in your house. I'm so glad that Mason is learning all this sort of stuff, especially as a young man.

I walked over to to my friend Theo's yesterday because they had painted me a protest sign at my request for me to put in my window.  There was ANOTHER charitable organization setting up a food give away at University and Fairview.  One of the women handing out stuff gave me a water bottle. She was a nice mom-type and when I said I wasn't in need, said, that I needed to hydrate. "It's hot, don't'ca know." 

They seem to be springing up everywhere, because, earlier, as I was coming back from picking up bagels, I saw yet another charity organization organizing a food/medical drive in the empty lot at Lexington and University. So, we are being inundated with help.

My coffee shop, Claddaugh, raised over two hundred dollars in tip jar money for Midway recovery, too. Their tip jar is going to a black artist organization today, I believe.

Meanwhile, in my garden the world continues to turn as though Minneapolis is not burning for justice. 


Image: thin-stalked blue irises in a boulevard garden (you can see the base of our street lamp.)

In the backyard, along the fence, the pink peony-transplanted years ago and so has gracefully agreed to be post-diva stage of transplanting--in bloom:

Image: peonies, still too heavy for their own beauty, flopped over in resplendent despondency.

Finally, specifically for rachelmanija , my orderly rows of radishes:

image: tiny sprouts in a row, nearly overwhelmed by tree detritus, including cottonwood fluff and maple tree 'helicopters.'

On that note, I shall leave you all with the hope of new life. There will be no peace without justice. We can rebuild.

Yesterday, after Mason took his physics test (school is still in session, technically,) he and I grabbed brooms, work gloves, a dustbin, and our masks and headed to the Lutheran church where we normally go to vote. We'd heard people were organizing a relief station there and there were calls for people to help clean-up. The church folks were gathering medical supplies to deliver them to street medics for the continued fight. I stayed and helped organize the food donations to distribute to folks whose only local source for groceries burned (and they have cut off our buses and light rail, so some neighbors are literally trapped without a public transit option to get food and water.) Mason stayed for five hours and kept the medical supplies in order and to put together kits for street medics who are tending people who may be injured in the coming protests.

I could only work for about and hour, myself. Between my asthma and lack of sleep, I couldn't cut it for very long.

Today, Mason is returning to the trenches. He left this afternoon for the church and will be doing, I suspect, more of the same all day.

I just got back from Dreamhaven Books. Dreamhaven was looted last night and was nearly burned, but a quick acting neighbor interceded and saved the store. Lisa showed me a book that started to catch fire, but simply refused to burn.


Image: a partly burned book or, as Lisa called it: The Book That Wouldn't Burn 

If you are local to me, you may want to stop by, as well. They had plenty of help when I was there, but if you are local to me and able to help they would appreciate people stopping by, even just to show support. I brought homemade blueberry muffins, because that's what I do in times of crisis: bake. It seemed to be appreciated. I would have stayed but they were wall-to-wall with able bodies at the moment, and my skills are the sort that I would likely get in the way more than help.

We lost Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's last night. The building was burned to the ground. My heart is broken for the loss. As I said on Facebook: These were both acts perpetrated by people who are not honoring the life of George Floyd, murdered by police. There will be no peace without justice, but these Nazis need to leave our streets.*

For context, I am not talking about protesters. We are hearing from our governor that of the arrests made last night 80% of the vandals were from out of state. Not just from other cities, but from other STATES. We are being infiltrated by unsavory, right-wing elements who want a race war. The FBI has been called in to stop these white nationalist terrorists. 

We have our own fight to fight, we do not need to be inflamed by outsiders. 

Pray for peace, y'all, but fight for justice.

For whatever reason, my first day at WisCON was my best day at WisCON. That's not to say that I had a bad time the rest of the weekend, more that I kind of mostly didn't participate? Or... was very random in my participation level?

I did end up having lunch with jiawen and naomikritzer, on jitsi, which was lovely, but I didn't do a lot of other con events on Saturday. In the morning, I wandered around the various Discord channels, but never really settled into any particular conversations. I listened to people discuss the merits of Clarion on the # writers-octarine, but I mostly lurked because the time for which Clarion would have been helpful for my career is kind of passed... and when I did know a lot of people still going to the workshop, there were still two of them (East and West)--so that was some time ago. I bring this up because I found most of the online conversations I dropped into to be like this? Like, people were saying interesting enough things, but I didn't manage to connect to anyone for whatever reason.  The opposite was true with the hang-out. I'm swapping manuscripts with a woman I met there, already. But, this may be a function of a couple of things for me--namely, my age. I am an oldster, for the Discord crowd.  But, also I am the kind of extrovert that makes face-to-face connections far easier than I do text based ones.

I didn't manage any panels until Sunday, but in all fairness that happens to me at Real Life (tm) cons, too. I guess I'm glad that I didn't end up paying the highest tier price for the con, if only because otherwise I would feel guilty that I didn't manage to do more with it.  I definitely felt that  what I got out of the con equaled or exceeded what I paid for, and, in my case, that wasn't nothing.

It is a little easier to wander away from the con, alas. I probably would have been busier at the con, but two weekend nights randomly became family game nights at home. I would have loved to have done a few more meet-ups, but so it goes.  Part of this, for me, is figuring out what I like in an online con, too.

I still say it was well worth it, and I'm very grateful that duskpeterson sent me a link to other online cons that are planned this year, because I am signing up for All The Cons!  (For others looking for the info, it's in the comments of my first WisCON report.) 

Otherwise, our Memorial Day was pretty rainy here, at least in the morning. I did do a little social distance hanging out in the backyard with a friend which was great until he got called back to work.  

How about you? Do anything special for the holiday? How was YOUR WisCON, if you went?

 As an old cyberpunk writer, I have to say that I'm deeply fascinated by how online communities are built and how things like Virtual WisCON work/don't work.  

So far? I'd say that it's working for me, on the whole. 

Yesterday, I interacted with the con in a number of different ways. I hung out on a couple of different channels on Discord, I 'went' to the You Tube stream of Rebecca Roanhorse's reading and Q&A, and joined a spontaneous jitsi meeting for writers.  I will detail my experience with each, below.

Discord:  I should preference any discussion about my interactions here by saying that I am an experienced Discord user. I have been on it for a couple of years already, having shifted to Discord to chat with a friend when Skype started acting up for her. I've created my own servers and joined existing ones. My profile on Discord is fannish, because that's exclusively what I use Discord for. My son uses Discord even more than I do, using the voice channel option to talk to friends, etc. So, even if I didn't know how to use a Discord function, I have another expert in the house.

So, my experience might be a little different from others, because I'm extremely comfortable reading and participating in conversations on Discord.

When you click on the WisCON link, it automatically dumps you into the "new arrivals" channel.  From there you can navigate out to other channels. I did what I always do when I'm new to a Discord server, which is I immediately went to read their rules or code of conduct channel, because some servers are very strict about keeping channels on-topic and I want to know what the culture is, obviously. 

WisCON seems pretty chill about the channels being on-topic. Administrators and moderators show up on your feed in a different color and I didn't notice one monitoring any of the chats I checked into, with the exception of # lobby-con.  Interestingly, I had my best experience in the lobby. I actually did that thing that happens at cons, where I happened to be in the channel when a couple of people I know dropped in an said hello.  So, I actually chatted with them (and a few other people I didn't know) about the Madison farmer's market, cheese curds, and life.  So, that felt very much like Con, honestly. 

The other channel I lurked on was # books-and-reading and read/"listened" to a conversation about the anti- culture of fan writing fandom. That one ended up feeling a bit cliquish, honestly? One of the users broke into the conversation to write something like, "If this were real life, I'd introduce [name 1] to [name 2]..." which is good socialization in real life, but on-line had the weird effect of making me, as a lurker, suddenly feel like I was intruding on a conversation between friends? The conversation then very much devolved into people they had in common, the places they lived, etc., and so I left the channel.  I mean, this is the sort of thing that happens at a con? But, it's different on-line because Discord does not let you know that people are 'in the channel' and not active. The only way you know someone is part of the "conversation" is if they post something.  So, this person couldn't have known that I was lurking and that I suddenly felt a little awkward when it was clear they were all real-life friends?  In other servers, this is where an active mod would come on and ask people to either stay on topic or move to a socialization channel. But, WisCON seems to be going for a very organic, make-your-own con on the fly vibe, which is perfectly okay. Like I say, things like this happen in real-life cons and I don't expect there to be someone on hand there to make sure conversations stay on topic. The # birds-of-a-feather area is clearly supposed to be informal. So, I'm not criticizing, just explaining my experience. Real life cons are like this, too.

YouTube:  So, one thing I really do love about the virtual con is that I have my phone set to beep me when WisCON sends out a notification of an event. I was in the middle of a late dinner when Rebecca Roanhorse started her reading, but I was able to jump in online about fifteen minutes in. I went to the Discord and went to # links-to-streams and clicked through to the reading there.  

Watching that reminded me that I'm not actually a giant fan of readings, in general.  But, I LOVED the Q&A session, so that was worth it.  Tempest did an excellent job as interviewer/moderator, IMHO.

I honestly thought the YouTube thing would be weird/distancing, but it was fine.  

Jitsi:  There is a section of the Discord for meet-ups spontaneously generated by anyone. It is in the # spontaneous programming channel. A con-goer named 'W' posted that they were hosting a jitsi for writing, and I asked if it was a hang-out for writers or if we would be hanging out and writing. Since it was at 10 pm CST, I did not feel like I could stay up to silently writie, so I was happy to discover that W was planning on conversation unless people really wanted to write together. I had a little trouble joining it because I wanted to switch over to my new iPad and for some weird reason clicking through from Discord didn't launch my app and so it never properly connected my microphone? But, when I opened my app and plugged in the jitsi address it worked perfectly, so whatever.

I should also note that I'm also extremely comfortable on jitsi as it is the video-conferencing option of choice for my regular RPG group. So, it was weird for me to have so many problems connecting.  I blame my own unfamiliarity with my new tech, the new iPad. 

Jitsi is just like zooming or Google hanging out so I had a lovely time chatting with my fellow writers in the meet-up.  We all used the chat function to exchange Twitter handles so now I'm Twitter friends with a half-dozen new people, which is wonderful.  By CHANCE I ended up in a room full of people who either loved cyberpunk or quirky religious stuff and so I did a thing I never normally do when not on panels, which is I pitched my own writing. I had the very weird experience of people saying, "Oh, I've heard people talking about Archangel Protocol before," which... only at WisCON, because, seriously, no one else has ever heard of me.

I have really discovered that I have no problem whatsoever connecting with virtual strangers on the internet any more than I do in real life. This is where being an uber-extrovert comes in handy. 

So, I ended the evening feeling like WisCON was a really fun con to be at virtually. It will be interesting to see how today progresses.

I wonder, however, how other people are doing with it? 

 My friend naomikritzer tipped me off that "Mother Earth Gardens" over in Minneapolis had basil of all varieties. Since we needed to go to the bank to deposit some checks, anyway, Mason and I headed out this afternoon to check it out. Actually, Mason stayed in the car and I donned my mask and headed in.

It actually was surprisingly uncrowded. Most people seemed to know what they wanted and so grabbed that and didn't really browse. That gave me a chance to check out their native plant section. So, along with the basil, I picked up:

Native columbine (this is a photo from this website: https://wimastergardener.org/article/eastern-red-columbine-aquilegia-canadensis/  My garden it not nearly this tidy.)


I have always loved columbine, since coming across it wild at Y camp as a teen. I've tried to grow this in the past, but I'm a bit more hopeful this time around because I have the time to fuss over it. Apparently, it likes things moist and I should be able to provide that where I put it. 

I also picked up some prairie pussy toes, which apparently need male and female plants and I have no idea what I got. I suppose that once they sprout and show off their flowers, I can go back to the nursery and pick-out whichever sex I did not get. The females look like this (photo credit: https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/flower/field-pussytoes):



I also picked up purple cornflower and wild indigo, both of which need full sun. I don't have a lot of that, but I think I found them a good spot on the south side of the house. 

I should really get out and go for a walk today, too, but I am exhausted from waiting to get through the bank drive through. I could NOT believe the line.  There were cars jammed in all three spots and I bet I waited a full twenty minutes? Maybe longer? When I got up to the camera/teller box, the teller told me that it's been like this since the stay-at-home order. They closed the interior of the bank, obviously, and so everyone is being funneled through the drive through. A lot of people, apparently, have never done the drive-through (which isn't complicated, but which does take some figuring out the first time) and so often they spend ten minutes or more on each customer, just walking them through the process. I was starting to lose my sh*t, however. 

Since we were sitting there for so long, Mason and I decided to order take-out from My Burger.

It's been a big driving day for me, honestly, since I also started my day at the grocery store. I was able to find all the flour again, but now the shelves are absolutely picked clean of chicken. I picked up some white fish (cod, I think?) with the thought of trying out a fish taco recipe, since my family will eat some fish. 

Thank goodness we decided to thaw a 17 pound turkey last week. We made it on Sunday and so now we have all the poultry we could eat for a few weeks, at any rate. Because my wife is who she is, we have another 20-some pound turkey still frozen in the freezer. 

How have you been? What are the shortages where you are? How does YOUR garden grow?

 We finally pulled the trigger, as it were, and ordered me a new interface with the outside world. I am now eagerly awaiting a new tablet. 

We decided not to buy a new laptop for a number of reasons, but most of which distill down to: they don't make them like they used to. What I need for writing, I already have in my ancient Gateway. HOWEVER, what I need for the era of Zooming, I do not have. So, we compromised and bought me a fancy new, high end tablet so that I can use that for all my various video conferencing needs.

Now, I'm just waiting on FedEx to cough it up!!

This is particularly germane because I recently signed up to attend WisCON virtually.  I also had such fun at a virtual party that I'm suddenly looking at ALL the cons and would love to know which cons y'all are going to try this year, virtually, and I will sign up for them ALL!!

Right, it's too nice out not to go for a walk, so I will write more about my life tomorrow. 

 I still wish it would rain, partly because my hose broke. 

We have a decent-sized yard and so if I want to water all the gardens I really need at least two 'regular-sized' hoses put together. So, of course, the connector bit to my longest hose decided that yesterday was the day to RUST CLEAN THROUGH. When I noticed it leaking precipitously, I went to tighten it and BAM! Off it came in my hands, water everywhere (except where I'd been aiming it.)

With everything happening, we can't exactly rush out and replace it. 

I mean, I am hopeful (knocking on ALL the wood)  that we WILL be able to do a Menard's run sooner rather than later, so, in the meantime, I am filling up my watering can and walking around to all of the thirsty plants. Luckily, my hose reaches to where the clover and self-heal seedlings are, so I can give them their daily soak while they are smol. The nice thing about this rather tedious method is that I am carefully observing the continued growth of all the things. I noticed a few late starting hosta poking up, for instance, and my sulking peonies continue to sulk very dramatically but have conceded to lifting their stems skyward.  I am starting to think that my back shade garden is as full as it can be and it's probably going to be time in the fall (or late summer) to start splitting some of those hosta and moving them into the side garden, which had initially been an inspiration to the back garden but I accidentally let it go to seed/weed one year when I wasn't feeling very 'garden' and it never fully recovered.

Part of my delay in getting to this blog today was the fact that I decided, Given The Current Situation (as A. A. Milne might write,) I should probably consider signing up for a CSA.  I had worried that they'd be all booked, but I was able to sign up for a Hmong Farmer's Association share and I'm ridiculously delighted with it so far. Obviously, I have not yet received a box; they start in early June.  BUT, one of the things I have hated about CSA in the past is the "Oh, I see. An ENTIRE BOX of tomatoes." Which, for most people, I suspect, would be an absolute joy, but for our family leaves us thinking... "so, do we compost the whole thing now or just stare at the tomatoes woefully until they actively rot?"  Look, I know you think I'm insane, but I don't like tomatoes. No, trying heirloom or homegrown or YOUR FAVORITE tomatoes isn't better.They taste MORE like the taste I hate!!

And, yes, this means I hate pizza.

The only way in which I tolerate tomato taste is in soup. I'm not sure why, but I can add tomato to a sauce or a soup and I won't actively hate it. Nine times out of ten, however, I WOULD STILL PREFER SOMETHING ELSE.

I know you're still in shock about the pizza. Listen, you heathens, I went to Rome. They don't put tomato sauce on their pizza, either. That's a Sicilian thing. FIGHT ME. I will happily eat all the pizza bianca in the world!  I would put an egg on my pizza, too, JUST LIKE THE ROMANS.

Sorry, I have had this fight on and off my whole life. I mostly just put up with pizza as a kid because I like most of it? I just don't like the sauce? And I honestly didn't know that you could eat pizza without the sauce, and, holy crap, that was a life changer. I was finally able to get excited when people ordered pizza. More and more pizza places offer "white" pizzas now-a-days, too.

The point is, the new CSA I signed up for let's you check your preferences, so I could put a giant YUCK, NO THANK YOU to all the tomatoes while putting a giant smiley on okra because I'm weird like this. 

Other things that have happened? I had a lovely chat yesterday with jiawen where we literally did that Minnesotan thing of not being able to say goodbye and so did so about seventeen times. The only reason I think I was able to actually do it is because I really, finally had to go to the bathroom.  To be fair, I could have talked all day with her because we had just gotten into a virtual tour of her neighborhood (via Google maps) and I love that kind of thing? If I were actually there in Taiwan with her I would probably spend seven weeks just enjoying every detail of every corner, ESPECIALLY the whole hidden shrine stuff! But, I'm like that. I'm literally entertaining myself during this pandemic by taking photographs of houses I find neat in my neighborhood(s) (I consider all of St. Paul my neighborhood.) I'm only sad that those are on hold until we hear back from the testing place. 

We are doing okay on supplies. The only thing I screwed up (and which naomikritzer has already remedied for me) is cat food and a cabbage. I really wanted to make pot stickers the other night and discovered we were out of cabbage. I  had daikon for crying out loud, but NO dang cabbage!! This could wait, except the pot sticker wrappers actually get kind of sticky and unusable after being defrosted if I let them sit too many days. I'd already had them moved to the fridge, so... and cat food was just an oversight. We'd put in an order with Chewy.com, but it's not coming for a couple of days yet. Our young cats could survive on dry food for a few days, but our elderly isn't having it. And she's already got skinny cat syndrome. She needs her wet food.

So, that's us. 

For those following the Covid toe drama: ( Nothing much of interest as we are all good, but some people also like the minutia? )

I should probably wait to post an update, as Mason and I will be driving down to Hastings in about two hours to get his (our?) COVID-19 test. Quick update on how we are all doing for those who do not want all the details beyond the critical: no symptoms, though some curious speculation (under the cut.)  

( Mildly COVID related, but mostly about auxilary symptoms  )

So, file that under curiouser and curiouser.

As mentioned above, under the cut, I spent a good portion of the weekend in my garden transplanting stuff that's just in the wrong place or not flourishing. When we first moved into this house we had a lovely stand of pink peonies along the garage wall.  When we unadvisedly planted hops to cover the fence, they took over that garden and, I can now tell you, actually entangled their rhizomes with those of the peony and slowly strangled the peonies. They've been looking poorer and poorer as the years have gone by, so I finally got out my shovel and unearthed them. I took a picture on my phone of the size of one of the peony roots, but I haven't posted it anywhere that I can quickly grab it for you. It was the size of my fist and twice as long. And I could pull the hops roots out through spots that they'd invaded, the little bastards. (The whole hops fiasco is one I will probably regret my whole life. Pro tip: hops are insane growers and will take over anywhere.)

Peony are notoriously difficult to propagate, so we'll see if they actually survive my efforts to find them better spots. Of course, NOW I read that I probably should have done this in the fall. Though I guess my only consequence of having moved them in the spring is that they will fail to bloom this year (and, that's fine. All I really care about is if they will survive and thrive EVENTUALLY.)

I am happy to see that the Virginia Bluebell that I moved a couple of years ago from its terrible spot is actually doing quite well:


Image: blue bell with nearly mature blooms

I still have another blue bell in the "bad" spot that I'd like to also transplant. For some weird reason, when I first planted these I put them beside a trellis that I had climbing roses on. OF COURSE the roses took off and crowded out the blue bells, but because the bells come up so early in the spring I noticed a couple of years ago that they were still struggling, but alive. So, I grabbed a clump of them and moved them to the shade/spring garden. There's another clump still hanging on, though, and I should find a good place for those, too. 

In other news, I'm not sure how my roses are doing. They have been struggling, too (that spot, it turns out, is very shaded by the neighboring house). I see a few shoots coming back, but I have my doubts. I may have to replace them, finally, too.

I do hope the peony survive in their new spots. I've had some luck moving a few of them to a spot beside the house and into another garden not far from their original spot, so, fingers crossed. It would be neat if they got bushy and full because, not only do I love them, but the ants that they attract would be equally beneficial for the bloodroot.

Which blooms SO EARLY that it is already now to seed:


Image: bloodroot--flowers already gone.

I am also excited by the fact that the clover and self-heal seeds that Mason and I scattered in the front under the maple is starting to sprout. I should, in fact, water them a little here before we take off for Hastings.

Well, speaking of that, I should rattle my son's cage and see if he's getting up and getting dressed. He's been super vigilant about self-isolating within the house. We've even been doing All The Things, like making sure that we disinfect all the doorknobs and other things he might touch in the upstairs bathroom.  As I say in the cut, I'm really becoming fairly convinced we have all HAD this already, but it pays to be extra cautious with this thing. After all, apparently, you can be reinfected. 

CONSTANT VIGILANCE.

But, enough of that. Tell me how does YOUR garden grow?

This continues to be a very weird time in which to have a small press book come out, but I was interviewed by Salon Futura about Unjust Cause the other day and it has been posted as an audio file: https://www.salonfutura.net/2020/04/interview-lyda-morehouse-tate-hallaway/

If you are interested in such things, please check it out. And, of course, if you are so moved (and haven't done so already) please buy my book: https://www.wizardstowerbooks.com/shop/unjust-cause/

Or buy one for a friend! Or several friends. Better yet, buy it and Precinct 13 as a set!

/advertisement.

In other news, the sun is shining today. I am hoping to go out for an early morning walk to enjoy all the bright light and bird sounds. Mason has a physics test that he has to get up for in about an hour or so. Shawn is dealing with continued bad news at work, so I'm just as happy to have an excuse to get out of the house. In fact, I may also brave some grocery shopping in a bit because we are running out of the basics: milk, eggs, and flour.

Yesterday, I took some extra yeast over to a friend (for a no-touch drop off) who has run out. I also hived off Vera, fed the new bit, and brought it over in disposable Tupperware in case my friend would like to try her hand at sourdough without the hassle of starting it. It occurs to me that if anyone else local to me would like a cup or two of sourdough starter, mine is very, very robust and healthy. I would happily make deliveries. The more I hive her off, the healthier she remains. Bonus: once you start feeding it, the starter is yours to name as you wish. My friend is going to be thinking up gender-neutral names and has informed me that the starter now uses they/them pronouns. Vera and I are very proud parents (Vera)/grandparents(me) of this To-Be-Named new starter and hope they have a long and productive life.

Another friend of mine, who I talked to on the ACTUAL PHONE the other day, told me that he didn't want to be part of this whole 'meme' of naming sourdough starters. I told him that was fine, but that he should not be mistaken in thinking that naming sourdough is in any way a NEW fad. Tons of my cookbooks from the 1960s suggest that naming sourdough is traditional--or at least was something people were already doing back then. It might be a fad? But it is an OLD fad, not a meme.

What seems to be new-ish is out-clevering one another with pun names. Though, somehow I doubt even that's really all that new.

I found myself a new pen pal on Facebook yesterday, and this is a continued reminder that if you would like mail I am happy to send you some of the really terribly cheesy greeting cards I have picked up over the years at estate sales. I am, what they call in the pen friends fandom, L/L: a "long letter writer." So, drop me a note in my PM or at lyda.morehouse@gmail.com.  I am also what is known as: A/A, "answers all," because I have no requirements for pen friends, not even that you write back, necessarily. 

At this point, consider it if only to help save the USPS.  

Interestingly, my Canadian pen friend informs me that we have significantly slowed down in our correspondence. Only a day or so ago, did she receive a letter I sent in early April. We used to be about two weeks delayed (which is only funny because I could drive 8 hours and throw a letter over the Canadian border,) but now we seem closer to a month. She actually figures the delay is on Canada Post's side, because they did some kind of massive layoffs. But that may be happening here, too, if we can't figure out how to keep supporting our postal carriers.

Right.

I should gird my loins and head out to the grocery store. Wish me luck!

 This is not probably going to be a very long journal entry today. The sun is out and Mason would like to go off for a walk after he finishes his Stats quiz. 

I just wanted to catch y'all up on a couple of things. Do you remember when Shawn had suddenly very dark and scary urine? This was not the bloodclot or any of the other small (and large) dramas around that, but had happened right about when all the COVID-19 stuff had only just started to make it impossible to get in to see your general doctor? ( cut for medical stuff you might not care about and some covid talk )So, that was my morning.

I was grateful for last night's rain. I have been waiting for rain because my garden is looking pretty parched. I also spread a bunch of cover seeds and I am anxious for them to begin to spout. We are supposed to get rain on and off this week and I very much hope we do (even if it means I can't go for my daily walks.)

This weekend I seem to have inspired a bunch of my Facebook friends into remembering the pie crust cookies their grandmothers/mothers/parental unit types used to make for them that involved taking scraps of leftover (or screwed) up pie crust and dusting them with cinnamon and sugar and baking them for a few minutes.  I normally just do like gramma did: leave them as misshapen scraps, brush them with a bit of water, and throw cinnamon and sugar on them, but I got fancy this weekend and pulled out the cookie cutters and the colored Christmas sugars:

Because: DINOSAURS

Image: dinosaur and star cookies with an egg wash and Christmas sugar.

I feel like both my grandmothers would be rocking this apocalypse. For certain my grandma Mouse had already lived through the Spanish flu pandemic, having been born in 1909. I remember her birth year because it was, apparently, also the first year they issued the Lincoln head penny.  Of course now that I am so certain of it, 1909 could very well have been my grandpa's birth year.  Memory is like that.  

The point is, however, they were already doing like a lot of people who had lived through the Great Depression were doing: saving all the things and never wasting ANY food.  Hence the recipe where you even use the sort of dull pie crust leftovers. 

Did your grandparents/parents do anything like this you've been thinking about later? I'd love to hear some wisdom from the elders, as it were.