COVID Isolation, Weeks 9-10, 11 – 26 May

Just rolling a few of these into one, because weekly updates got hard. I know we’re stuck at home but it’s like, a NEVERENDING BUSY AND EXHAUSTING stuck at home, ya know? Anyway, our neighborhood trails are finally greening up and I brought my camera along once this past weekend (more on that later), probably my last visit for awhile, OH YOU WILL SEE. In the meantime, let’s all enjoy the green.

COVID updates:

• New case numbers go up, and numbers go down. We’ve been tracking mostly down over the past few weeks, though.

• WISC struck down Stay at Home order. Assholes or idiots, you decide. This happened about two weeks ago from me writing this. Thankfully, several counties immediately enacted their own shelter-in-place orders (Dane County included). Others did not. SHOCKINGLY: numbers started sky-rocketing again yesterday, ~2 weeks after this happened, and mostly in the rural counties (i.e., those counties that did not enact their own shelter-in-place orders).

• That said: things were slooooowly (in a two-steps-forward-one-step-back way) going in the right direction, so the shelter-in-place orders moved to Phase II after Memorial Day. Everyone knew it was coming to that. And because of that: Memorial Day weekend it appears that everyone acted like the World is Healed and tossed aside their masks and crowded parks, beaches, lakes, etc. Enjoy the pictures I took when I walked on our neighborhood trail. It’s the last time I’m walking it for awhile, because: not a mask in sight.

• The dozen or so birders I came across? Not a one wore a mask.

• Families? Couples? Young adults hanging out?

• Nope nope and nope. This portion of the trail has 3 bridges over the creeks and every one was packed with people like this. No masks.

• In total, I passed two (two. TWO) people wearing masks. Here’s a picture of them. One had her mask pulled off her nose/mouth the entire time I saw them, while she never-ending babbled at her friend. Well done. Brilliant.

• Anyway, out of probably ~60 people I passed on the trail, a whopping two had masks on (or let’s be honest: one. It was really just the one). No one was distancing. People, lifting some orders does not mean “go back to your old life”. Read. Educate yourself. Learn.Here’s another good reference point. I mean, hey! Go ahead and start venturing out, friends, but please: do so safely, for everyone’s sake.

Cooking/Baking updates:

• Dana Cree’s rhubarb compote makes my life, every spring. Rhubarb is not something I braved until well into adulthood (Muzzy has a severely bad reaction to it so obviously it wasn’t something we had growing up) but I’m glad I finally gave it a try and don’t have the same issues as my mom. It’s so good in pies and crumbles and when roasted, but it’s also amazing when cooked down in this compote. We put it on plain yogurt, spread it on bread, or top ice cream with it.

• MUSUBI! I got all the goods and I’ve made them twice. The recipe makes a TON, but thankfully they are even delicious refrigerated (wrap ’em up and toss in the fridge until you’re ready to eat, just hold back on the nori until right before eating). Good with just teriyaki SPAM, or add egg, or some julienne veggies. Oh, and a healthy coating of wasabi. SO GOOD. Granted musubi is not the healthiest (I mean: SPAM). But it’s good as an occasional pick-me-up lunch for sure.

• This musubi journey has introduced us to furikake and let me tell you: game changer. Where has this magical stuff been all my life. We sprinkled it liberally on popcorn, and the boys gobbled down bowls of sushi rice with furikake mixed in for a quick meal. One night we coated salmon in it before baking and DAMN, so good. Also the leftovers (salmon and cauliflower rice), cooked up with scrambled eggs the next morning, made for a lovely brunch.

Us updates:

• Rain rain rain. It has rained most days, and a Wisconsin rain is usually an all-day affair. Welcome to spring in Wisconsin! In addition to that: our backyard adjacent neighbors cut down two trees, and now: ants. Ants in our house. And not the teeny tiny ones, but: those bigger black ant ones. We’ve put out traps and thankfully we’ve only seen them in one room thus far, but still. Gross. BE GONE. I feel like everything needs to be fumigated more often than usual now.

• At the same time: Linus’ favorite blanket (a big, fluffy, faux-fur number) is falling apart and it is leaving these dark brown little fuzzies everywhere. Ironically, also the same exact size as the ants. So I frequently walk into a room and see the fuzzies everywhere and immediately think it’s ants and it’s just not a fun way to live, is what I’m saying. I ordered him a new blanket and that thing could not hit our doorstep soon enough.

• Finally accepting that our 2020 is going to be drastically different, guys. We cancelled our California trip planned for August (California is asking all travelers to cancel summer travel and not bring/share their germs). I’ll miss seeing my sisters, but I completely Get It. And honestly, given how things are going: at this point I’m not sure if we’ll make it to Kansas in the fall, either. Man, what a weird year.

But enough of slogging through the daily bullshit. We’re all wallowing in it right now, and you’re tired and I’m tired so I’m going to stop the COVID updates, as they are, and focus in another direction. The Weird Times of 2020 have created some unexpected joys, like how Chicago had flooding last week and Lower Wacker flooded and all the power to the Sears Tower went out (er, that’s not great news admittedly) but MY POINT: the outage left the Sears Tower with only emergency lights, making it look like a giant murder robot.

Or how our local collegiate-league baseball team, the Madison Mallards, decided since their season was over before it even started, that they’d change their space into a drive-in movie theater for the summer.

Drive-In! On the baseball field! Leaving the house BUT NOT MY CAR, heck yeah! So we bought a ticket, packed the back seat with blankets/pillows/buddies, and off we went to give it a try.

We went to a showing of the Princess Bride, and while I wasn’t sure if the boys would really enjoy it, turns out they did. Linus moved up to my lap for the extent of the movie, which wasn’t the most comfortable thing in a sedan, but hey. We made it work.

And then Linus got squirrelly in the last half hour, but! Mostly it was a success, and I’m totally down for going again. Maybe for a more action-packed movie, though.

Also we got a state park pass (did I mention this yet? Probably? Anyway.). We plan to hit up as many as possible this summer, our version of travel during the Summer of COVID. I plan to bring updates on those as we go; we already hit up the state park nearest our house (a mere 10 minutes down the street) and kicked off the season by choosing what can only be described as the Most Boring Trail Ever. EVAR. But, that’s a story for another day and another blog update.

And that kinda sums it up! Hang in there everyone, try to come out of this shelter-in-place cautiously and slowly, and we’ll see each other again soon. Stay safe.