Reading Notes - March, 2020

*Edit* My friends,  I had no idea what my March was going to look like.  My reading was all over the place but I did stick with my Lenten sacrifice and did not buy any new books.  And I was tempted.

This Reading Notes is going to take an odd bent for me, because it is Lent, and for Lent this year...I am not buying any books for myself.  I'm reading only what I ALREADY HAVE.  Don't weep too much for me, this needs doing.  So I present to you the things I read in March, all of which I bought in the past intending to read and never did.  Including the books I've started and finished this month in order to clear the backlog and generally become a better and holier person all around.

(I'm kidding.   This is as holy as I'm likely to become.)

Here are the ones I've started and never finished until now!  I'm quite proud of myself:

Eames was interesting and a good balance of background fact/Christie biography and narration of his own travel.  Well done, glad I read it.

Dillard was like eating an incredibly rich, decadent black forest cake.  I loved it, but I could only take small bites at a time.  My head is still spinning and I want to read it again and again just...just to try and peel back more layers.  I have a feeling it could be a different book each time I did.  I also feel my lack of Thoreau.

Ferguson was, you know, he was fine.  It was fine.  Honestly it sort of blended into my brain and I've forgotten most of it now.  Meh.  It was okay.

Still haven't finished this one but made more headway. ..

Smith was very much a missed opportunity.  The author could have produced a fascinating look at the secrets lying under England and instead chose to essentially provide a tour-guide synopsis of locations seemingly very well-known (I didn't know of them, mind you, but he mentions lots of books about them and finds guides for them easily and some of the caves have affiliated clubs,  for heaven's sake) and generally pretty straight forward to reach.  An underground art installation?  A well-known royal tunnel?  A submerged town???  Sheesh.

And I made it through several books that had been loitering on my shelves for some time now:

In my quest to read everything by Miss Read, I managed to finish Summer At Fairacre literally moments before dropping it in the bath.  If that isn't a metaphor for our times I don't know what is.

I'm also working through everything written by L.M. Montgomery,  so managed to add a few more titles of hers to the 'read' pile as well:

I really liked The Chronicles of Avonlea, which I wasn't convinced would be the case.  I've read Mongomery's short stories before in The Doctor's Sweetheart and found them trite and uninspired and sometimes very odd, but this collection was charming!

On the other hand, Kilmeny of the Orchard is my least favorite Mongomery book to date.  It was creepy.  The characters were entirely one dimensional and very poorly thought out.  The story was weak, and relied almost entirely on coincidence to make it work at all.  Ah, how handy to have a 'foreigner' to blame things on!  Well it's convenient that we have a famous throat doctor just hanging around when we need a famous throat doctor, isn't it!  She's beautiful AND she plays the violin?   You don't say!

Started but haven't finished this one either. ..

Good gravy but this was a simplistic bit of writing.  I'm sure I've heard of this book for ages and always thought I should read it because clearly it resonated with so many people but...wow.  That being said, I'm not much for the 'see your entire world illustrated in the curve on a conch shell' style of over-romanticized writing, but there are reams of devoted fans on Amazon for it - scrolling through the reviews I wonder if we were even reading the same book.

Gifts in the time of the Coronavirus

My 9yo recently became my 10yo.  Because we can't go into any stores, I had to do my shopping entirely online.  Here's what he got!

My goal was 'lots of little,  relatively inexpensive things that make it festive'.

And now my 7yo is about to become my 8yo, and again, it looks like I'm stuck ordering everything online.  So I'm following the same philosophy,  and here is what I'm ordering for her:

Fingers crossed the 5yo-soon-to-6yo can be shopped for in a store, but we're managing!

Nothing to say

I have absolutely nothing to talk about because I haven't done anything in weeks, but I still feel a deep need to write, so now we're just stuck with stuff that exists inside my head and/or recaps of television shows, I guess.  Hence, this list of things the plague of 2020 has taught me about myself.

1) I was a much better Christian back when I could leave my family for an hour.

2) I always thought if I just had the time, I would have a clean and organized house.  It turns out that time was not the issue here.

3) It isn't pretty, but I am apparently capable of eating a family-sized bag of cheetohs.

4) Being able to open the windows is literally saving my sanity.

5) Apparently,  up until this point, we haven't been homeschooling or something because my children have reverted to astonishment that school is currently being expected of them.

6) I am the only one who thinks it is funny to answer the phone "Hello, I don't have coronavirus. "

7) This house is too small.  But to be fair all houses are probably too small for quarantine.

8) Gosh, it's weird inside my head.  Really weird.

Weird Community Ramblings

So, here's why it's unreasonable to think all people *should* just have big stockpiles of things we eat and regularly use, in this day and age.  Or that it's okay to make pokey pokey motions at people finding parts of this whole international debacle challenging.

First off, guys, society has spent the last X years or so encouraging, then forcefully insisting, that people 'move with the times' and become steadily more connected.  First you have an industrial revolution, bringing people off the farms in search of jobs, then you keep them in increasingly paved-over cities for generations, then you make fun of them when they can't fathom growing their own food.

Society has prioritized certain skills over certain other skills, which is not actually a problem.  I'm grateful that we've put the effort into making clean drinking water more accessible, for example, and if that happened at the expense of everyone naturally absorbing the skill of reed weaving well, so be it.  Of course, though, it isn't that linear.  There were always non weavers in society, and those people did other things.  You grow the vegetables and I raise the meat and you make the clothes and I build the barns and so forth.

No, the problem is two-fold.  1) We romanticize the pastoral lifestyle.  2) We all focus on the same skills.

There's really no easy way to avoid #1 ~ I mean, people always romanticize the 'exotic' and unknown.  All people, not just boring Western people, if reading travel writing has taught me anything.  People want to know 'that place you're from/the place you visited, is this thing I've heard about it really true?'  Romanticizing the past or the unknown is nothing new and, honestly, the truth is an afterthought.  I buy my eggs at a farm.  It looks like a farm.  There is broken machinery on the property.  The farm wife answers the door, and she looks like she's sweaty.  Sometimes the eggs have chicken poop still on them.  This is not because this is a bad place to buy eggs, it is because this is a farm.  Farms with crops and animals look like places where birth, death and poop happen.  They smell like that, too.

It's #2 that I think we might have a chance at changing.  All this fuss about people who aren't prepared for a pandemic is avoidable.  Start by encouraging individual talents and not insisting on a Victorian ideal one-size-fits-all class society.   Embrace the differences!  Some people are not going to make their own yarn!  Some people are not going to program computers!  This is wonderful news because we need the yarn makers and we need the computer programmers. The yarn makers aren't  'better prepared ' than the programmers.  The programmers aren't 'more important ' than the yarn makers.  They serve different needs, each of which has its moment.  If you are in need of a cabbage, you don't go talk to your plumber, but you're probably not going to ask a farmer to unplug your sink, know what I mean?

This mass flattening out and sanding down of society will be our ultimate downfall.  Not this pandemic,  I hope, but sometime, someday, we will need a cabbage and all the world will be filled with plumbers.

Aggravation From All Sides

Me: "What is with these articles online that keep saying people aren't staying home?!  What is WRONG with these people!?  Gah, humanity is so stupid."

Also me: "I am out of food!  We have to go to the grocery store!  It's fine, it has to be fine, what?  We don't EAT?"

Me: "Seriously, the Internet is driving me crazy, all anyone is talking about is this virus.  I need some escape, I need to talk about something, anything, else.

Also me: *Googling Covid-19 statistics by province* 

Me: "The problem here is that people are HOARDING STUFF and I CAN'T BUY WHAT I NEED! !!"

Also me: "While you're there, buy all the things.  Buy everything."

Me: "If I make a schedule, everything will be fine!"

Also me: *hides with computer*

Un-normal (or how we're managing)

Short answer?  Everything is fine.  Long answer?

We made a plan to self-isolate that is as close to isolated as we can manage.  My husband has made the decision to cease church services to protect our elderly congregation.  We've cancelled the dentist appointment, told my parents not to visit, moved doctor stuff to telephone consults, postponed piano lessons indefinitely and so forth.  We're not driving into the big city, we're not seeing friends.  We haven't travelled outside the country, or even the province.

On the other hand, we don't live anywhere with grocery delivery, we can't order food and have it brought to us, and Amazon is sold out of practically anything healthy.  So there needs to be a certain amount of dashing into a grocery store so, you know, we can eat, but we're trying to keep it to the bare minimum.  We also own a dog, and not a fenced backyard, so again, we have to walk around at least a few times a day.

It isn't full isolation is what I'm saying, but it's the best we can reasonably accomplish.

We're fine, though, and we're continuing on with homeschooling and trying to entertain ourselves.  There are many who aren't so fortunate.  My anxiety is terrible of course, but that's to be expected.  When I clear my throat, I panic.  When I have to blow my nose, I panic.  Are my shoulders sore?  Muscle aching is a symptom, right?  Ack.  Ack.  And so forth.  I wipe down everything with bleach and grill bathroom-exiting children on their hand washing habits and mentally plan out meals with the food left over.  I'm exhausted at night from too much worry.

I expected this, because that's just who I am, but I'm also disappointed in myself.  I was very calm, despite everyone flapping around me, and then the constant barrage of awful wore me down.  And here we are, with me trying to decide if my throat might twinge if I swallow in a certain way and whether that means I am dying or if I just ate too many salt and vinegar chips.

Welcome to anxiety.  It's a crummy vacation destination.

Now, all that being said, we have created a fun schedule that allows me the calming sensation of order while really not taxing the children at all.  There is a time for playing outside, a time for eating, a time for showering and a time for chores.  An hour for Morning Time, which is plenty of time, and an hour for reading and math together.  There's a time to play board games and a time to watch an educational tv show, and most importantly there is plenty of time scheduled in there when I can hide away and not be talked at.  This is very important.

The dog is going to be deeply appreciative of everything returning to normal because one of my self-soothing mechanisms is meticulously combing her, which she hates.  On the other hand she looks like a fluffy, floofy little brown cloud of anger.  Look at the angry dog.  LOOK! 

Food I can't forget...

There was a hole in the wall Thai restaurant in Ottawa, and it served a clear soup with tiny mushrooms floating in it.  I went in on a whim and sat alone when that was a daring-young-woman thing to do.  I still remember it.

A chain restaurant where I discovered, (at maybe eight?) that you could order Earl Grey tea in a restaurant.   Game. Changer.

This strange diner that served pizza with butter chicken on it in an age when spinach on pizzas was really avant-garde.  It's possible that was the first time I'd eaten butter chicken.

The Guinness I drank in a pub in West Halton, England.   I ordered it because I didn't know the name of another beer.  You could practically make a meal out of it, I discovered.

A strange breakfast place near my university that made a green lentil salad.  I've searched high and low for a recipe for that salad.   The owners were Middle Eastern and apparently thought green lentils a satisfying breakfast food.  They were correct.

Years later, same city, a now-long-closed Eastern European deli and their pickled mushroom salad.  Oh my gosh, that salad.

Another city, this time with Vietnamese pho and deep fried spring rolls.  I always go with A.  She gets the chicken, a medium bowl.  I get the rare beef, a large.  We bicker over who gets the bill and have the same debate each time - should we try something new or stick with what we love?  I've never tried the new.

Out for a meal with the people who worked with me.  It was a restaurant that served Portuguese peri-peri chicken.  It remains the best chicken I've ever eaten.

The take-out Starbucks tea I ordered when I went to browse in the bookstore as an angsty teenager just trying to get out of the house.  Tazo Passion.  Sour, fruity and floral and it made me cough.

That bakery with that bread, the one my parents used to buy.  We ate it right out of the paper bag, smeared with butter.  I can taste it.

That other bread, the European one, with all the fruit in it.  It sold out so fast you could never buy it.

A wealthy friend's mother comes to town and insists on taking us for supper.  I have no idea where to suggest but finally come up with the name of a monstrously expensive trendy new sushi restaurant.   She cavalierly sweeps us off.  We eat $200 worth of sushi.  I've never had anything like it before.

I'm lonely at university and my father comes to town for a business meeting and takes me for supper at a very old-school steakhouse with tuxedoed waiters and old white politicians in kind candlelight and heavy red drapes.  I order the capon.

Another solo meal, in Toronto's Chinatown.   A bustling restaurant,  a menu entirely in Chinese.  I just point to something and when the plate comes it is tiny, tiny birds, deep fried.

My boyfriend is house-sitting, I think, the only thing I really remember is the duck.  Another Asian marketplace and it's roasted with the head still on.  We buy a whole one.  "This is not going to be enough duck." I tell him.

My parents leave me alone at home.  I'm maybe 17.  They tell me I can have friends over for supper.  I dig through the freezer and find tiny little lamb chops.  I've never used the gas grill outside by myself but I figure it out.  A bunch of 17 year olds sit around the backyard eating teeny lamb chops.

My grandmother is dying and we go in November to celebrate Christmas.   I'm very young, but the Greek restaurant has this baklava, and I am shocked no one has ever explained how fantastic this stuff is.  It drips with honey.

I'm married and there's this place across from where I get off the Subway from work.  They serve forgettable food and an astronomical baked rice pudding covered in creme bruleé.

We find a Turkish flatbread pizza place where you can get a fried egg on top and a heaping pile of raw onions, parsley and tomato on the side.

Family comes to visit and we buy chicken sausages at the Italian grocer.  We cook them over a fire in the backyard.  They might be the best sausages I've ever eaten.

The weird chili wings with a sort of milky sauce.  I don't understand why they are good, but they are good.

The children stand around me as I feed them escargot in garlic butter out of the cast iron fry pan.  Even when they find out what the escargot are, we can't stop eating them.

It's the end of high school and everything is bubble tea and gelato.  You get the bubble tea at these odd internet cafes and the gelato at the place downtown.

Someone suggests breakfast.  I order the fruit plate and it comes as an elaborate peacock style platter of carved fruits.

My soon to be husband and his parents go with me to a place called House of Lasagna.  It revolutionizes lasagna for me and I'm not kidding.

Long before we were anything at all, this cute guy and I sit together at a work function and slide food onto each other's plates.  He takes my baby carrots and I eat his shrimp.  Twenty years later he eats his own shrimp. 😊

We're in Montreal and we have to visit Schwartz's Deli.  It's great, but I'm upset because they don't give you mustard when you buy a few pounds of smoked meat and a loaf of bread.  You want me to eat it plain!?!  My fiancé runs across the street and goes to a grocery store to buy me some and gets yelled at by a homeless man.

We are at the homemade ice cream place and my sister in law says "oh, I just saw someone go by with ginger ice cream!" This necessitates some rummaging in the store fridge and finding the last pint.  We stand outside with a couple of spoons and break into $9 worth of ginger ice cream.

A small town, and sour cream peach pie.

A gas station, and this amazing bottled water that tastes like iceburgs.

My parents complain that I drink an unreasonable amount of milk.  It occurs to me that I could just...buy my own milk.  The thrill of drinking all the milk I care to purchase.

First year university and there is a kitchen.  I make up a dish called 'a sliced eggplant fried in tonnes of oil and covered in this Greek style spice from the store'.  I feel brilliant and eat a lot of eggplant.

The Mennonites make jars of pickled eggs and we sit in the car and eat them.  Also huge hunks of dried summer sausage and buns made with tomato paste.  It's the taste of summer.

I'm learning how to can and I make jardiniere for the first time.  It's the best thing ever and I eat every single jar.

My mother and I are standing in a basement apartment and trying to recreate this lime ginger syrup a friend has gone on and on about.  When we figure it out I realize I can never again not drink this in soda water.

A friend introduces me to Chicken Marbella and it is what I make for guests for years.