Notes from a Self Quarantine

The Harpoon 5 Miler is my absolute favorite road race of the year. And for many reasons: I love the course — you start at the brewery in South Boston and head through the industrial park, by the cruise terminal and down towards the harbor. There’s a section where you do a loop around a park and you’re right up next to the water and you can see Castle Island. It’s an amazing view.

I love the after party. After the race, the party starts outside the brewery — there’s a DJ, food, and, of course, Harpoon beer on tap. Everyone is just so happy and after running 5 miles on a Sunday morning, you feel like you’ve really earned that beer!

And it’s always the Sunday before my birthday, so this race has turned into my official kick-off to birthday week!

Also, 5 years ago today was the first road race that I ever did and it just happened to be the 5 Miler! So I have a lot of history with this race.

Due to COVID-19, today’s Harpoon 5 Miler was a virtual event. My husband and I registered for the event, received race bibs in the mail (I wore mine for a photo and then took it off, don’t tell!), and went out in our town to do our 5 miles. The one plus — we didn’t get up as early as we usually do on a normal race day to get into Boston and also didn’t start our race until 12 p.m.

5 miles isn’t a super easy distance. I definitely do better on a race day because the other folks running motivate me to go faster, be better. Today I was slow. I did the full 5 miles, but it wasn’t my best time. I felt slow and heavy for most of the race. And I really missed having water stops out on the course!

But my husband made sure to stand out at the “finish line” to cheer me on and take photos like he normally does at a race. And that made me feel good, and pushed me to the finish line.

Was it the best Harpoon 5 Miler ever? No, but it was good to get out and do a run even if I was by myself. And it will just make me more excited for next year.

When we were back in normal times, my husband and I used to walk up to a local bar on Friday nights. This bar tries to keep local craft beer on tap, so we’d hang out in the bar area and have a good beer (or two!) before we headed over to the Irish pub where we’d have dinner.

On a slow night, we’d be able to find two seats at the bar and I’d be able to partake in one of their other specialties — pub cheese. Now pub cheese is really pretty similar, right? It’s an orange colored soft cheese spread. And who doesn’t like cheese?? (I actually know SO many folks who don’t like cheese — my mother-in-law, a sister-in-law and the son of a good friend to name a few. Frankly, I just don’t understand it.)

Well, this restaurant does something fabulous to their pub cheese — it’s the typical orange color, but they add blue cheese chunks to it and something spicy which I can only guess is horseradish. Now I can’t vouch that this is the actual recipe, but let me just tell you — it’s amazing. It’s cheesy and a little spicy at the same time. I really don’t even need the crackers that they put out in beer glasses on the bar — I could totally just eat the cheese out of the little plastic lidded condiment containers they put it in. (C’mon — I would definitely use a spoon, not my finger.) It’s that good.

Now the pub recently opened back up to do take out orders. My husband and I have been trying to support all the local businesses on Thursday and Friday night by ordering take out (remember, Thursday night is always pizza night!). On the first Friday night this restaurant was open for take out, we ordered sandwiches from them. And I was so excited to see the pub cheese on their take out menu! Of course I had to order it, if only for the nostalgia!

It was listed on their website as a “generous portion” of pub cheese and a sleeve of crackers for $8. I honestly figured they’d give us two little condiment containers and a sleeve of Ritz crackers and call it a night. But I ordered it, because hey, I missed the pub cheese!

When we got back home that night, we opened the take out bag and there was a single serve soup container filled with pub cheese! Like the sized container you get at a cafeteria — there’s plenty of room for soup and all the crackers on top — that’s a 16 oz. container! Well, it’s also plenty of room for pub cheese! The sleeve of crackers only lasted us two nights, but we got four nights out of that pub cheese! And all for $8! There was so much pub cheese that my husband said that they should offer a $4 option. I don’t know what is wrong with him.

That was two weeks ago. We ordered from them again last night and of course I got the pub cheese! Don’t tell anyone, but I had a little bit of it before I went to bed last night. It is that good. I’ll probably dip into it again later.

I can NOT believe that I have been stuck at home self quarantining for 60 days! And the time has flown by — I really can’t believe that it’s been 60 days.

So today I “celebrated” by planting seeds in one of my new raised garden beds:

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How amazing does that look?? Six rows of seeds planted BEFORE Memorial Day — that is an absolute first for me! Usually I am still raking leaves out of the garden the last weekend in May!

So here I am — two weeks ahead of schedule! I have a few more seeds to plant in one of the other beds tomorrow, then I need to hit up the plant store (Home Depot) to get some tomato and pepper plants. And it’s supposed to be beautiful weather all weekend! This makes quarantining almost worthwhile!

Yes, it is! My husband did a fabulous job on the three raised garden beds! He finished them last week, and then we (or he because I didn’t do a good job the first time) leveled out the garden enclosure and placed the three beds in their new home.

On Tuesday, I ordered compost loam from a local farm — 3 yards! They showed up same day with a cool dump truck! And dropped the loam in our driveway (don’t worry, we told them too.):

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Look at all that dirt! My husband gets annoyed when I call it “dirt”, but that’s what it is. He also gets annoyed when I refer to our town’s recycling/compost center as the “dump”, but dude, that’s what it is, call it by it’s right name!

Next, we needed to buy a wheelbarrow to lug the dirt, excuse me loan, from our driveway into the backyard garden enclosure. Did you know that you can’t purchase an already assembled wheelbarrow from Lowe’s or Home Depot? Well, neither did we. So my husband bought the wheelbarrow on Tuesday afternoon and spend a really long time putting it together — he even had to go back to the store and purchase an extra bolt because he was short one. It was certainly a fun experience for him putting this wheelbarrow together! There was a fingernail accident that he doesn’t want me to mention, so I’ll leave it at that.

On Wednesday, with the wheelbarrow assembled, he started lugging the loam from the driveway into the backyard. He had to make a ton of trips! Three yards is a lot of dirt! Um, loam.

He had attached chicken wire to the bottom of the raised beds in hopes that those darn oak tree roots don’t find their way into my garden beds again this year:

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Look at that chicken wire! Hopefully it will do the trick!

He lugged a bunch of loads into the garden yesterday and I broke up the big clumps with a rake and spread them throughout the beds. We (he) finished lugging all the dirt this afternoon, and it looks amazing!

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I am going to have SO much room to grow vegetables this year! I already have some seeds and if the weather is nice tomorrow afternoon, I am going to start planting! My husband told me he expects a bumper crop this year. That’s certainly a lot of pressure for me. Hopefully the new beds and better soil will work well and I’ll grow some awesome veggies! And the weather will continue to get better!

Yes, we are! Tonight we did a virtual beer tasting sponsored by our local Irish pub and Founders out of Michigan. We picked up 4 different Founders beers and two meals from our local pub and logged into Zoom for the tasting at 7 p.m.! Look how fancy we are!

Even though I have been totally anti-Zoom the past couple of weeks, we had a good time, got to see some folks virtually that we haven’t seen in awhile and actually learned something about beer! It was a win all around.

Although my husband, the eternal cranky pants, decided he wasn’t a huge fan of the beer provided and just started pouring his own from our fridge. But that left more tasting beer for me!

It was something different to do on a Wednesday evening in the middle of a pandemic and I am happy that we tried it! Now I have to remember that I actually have to get up tomorrow for work…I keep thinking that it’s a Friday evening…

Ugh, it’s been so darn slow — I walk away for a little bit and it freezes up, it’s been so annoying!

Anyway, so today I was scheduled for a cleaning at my dentist’s office. My original appointment was at the end of March, but when COVOD-19 hit big time, they called and rescheduled it to today. I didn’t get any reminder texts or phone calls, which is out of the ordinary for this office. So between that and what’s going on out there in the world, I honestly didn’t expect that the office would be open.

But I did make sure to call them first thing in the morning just to check. I didn’t want to stand my dentist’s office up! I figured that I would get their outgoing voicemail message explaining that they were closed. But someone answered! And I can’t remember the last time I was so excited to speak to someone in my dentist office! For a second I thought — OMG, this is the day I am going to be able to go out in the world and SEE other folks besides my husband! I thought about what I would wear! What time I would leave my house to drive the 2 miles to their office!

But unfortunately they are only open for emergency appointments and they’ll call to rebook my cleaning when their office is allowed to open back up for routine dental care. I can’t believe how disappointed I was that I couldn’t go to the dentist today to get the crap scraped off my teeth. Looking forward to another day hopefully soon…

So at 4 p.m. this afternoon, my husband looked out our front door and the male house finch was sitting on our outside front door light — yes, where the nest USED to be! Where it’s been for at least two weeks without anyone sitting in it or visiting it. And now 24 hours after my husband took it down and “gave it back to nature” as he told me, the darn bird is back!

He sat on our light fixture for a few minutes chirping and hopping around where the nest used to be. Was he looking for the nest? Did he forget that they’d abandoned it? Should I go find the nest and put it back because they finally came looking for it?? Did we make a rash decision by tossing out the nest?? Or did they just forget about it because they had too many other things on their mind? I mean there’s a pandemic out there for goodness sake!!

My husband said if they try to build another nest in the same spot, he’s going to be angry and take it down immediately. I am just annoyed that I didn’t have my phone with me when the bird showed up this afternoon, that would have been a really good photo!

It’s the end of another weekend, and I’m not exactly sure what I did this weekend. I slept in a little bit (how are we so tired?? It must be boredom!), did my usual weekend chores, went on a run this afternoon, called my mom for Mother’s Day…oh, I did clean out two drawers of my bureau and a shelf in the linen closet. Where does all this crap come from?? Sometimes I honestly don’t remember buying this stuff — is someone else hoarding their items in my bedroom closet?? I swear I found a few tank tops today that I must have bought when I was in college. And that was a really long time ago!

So I guess that I did get some things accomplished, but this whole stay-at-home thing just makes me feel like the days go by and today is the same as yesterday. I can’t be the only one who feels this way…

Oh, and my husband took down the house finches’ nest this afternoon — I didn’t see him do it and I didn’t ask what he found in the nest because I just don’t want to know. She hasn’t been back, and I have really missed watching them. I think I saw them in our neighbor’s tree the other day and I instantly got jealous. Obviously I was a little attached to them. And what do I do if they try to build there again next year? Maybe the second time will be better? Hopefully we’re all not still self quarantining this time next year! Ugh, that’s a terrible thought!

And now I feel a little bit better that tomorrow is Monday.

My back has been hurting all week — who knows if it’s from a workout I did in the past couple of days, our old mattress that we so need to replace or the chair in my new home office where I am now spending all my days.

So I bought myself a present:

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Ta da!! Hopefully this will make my crappy office chair a little bit more comfortable. The seat cushion is really awesome, but I’m not sure about the back part yet — do I have it on upside down?? There were no instructions. And I feel like it is pushing me too far forward. Maybe I’ll flip it and see how that feels. My husband said I now need to get something to put my feet on. Oh, to be short! Or maybe, oh, to be in your 40s! My husband totally made fun of me for ordering the cushions — he’s been calling it my doughnut all day. Hey, buddy, if it makes my back feel better! I still like to think I am in my 20s, even though I do know I’m not anymore. So seat cushions it is!

Yes, it is! And what are we going to do this weekend?? Looks like a bunch of the same ol’ thing! Yay!

The temperature is going to drop into the 30s tonight and some areas might get snow. I have no idea how that happens in May, but I guess it’s happening. Just another oddity in a really odd couple of months!

The college I work for was supposed to hold its Commencement ceremony tomorrow — I can’t even imagine an outdoor ceremony in 30 degree weather with possible snow! Folks would have freaked out. No one will be wearing sandals tomorrow!

So today one of my co-workers hosted a virtual fitness class (don’t worry, he’s also a certified instructor). It might have been one of the only times that I was happy to participate in a Zoom meeting in the past couple of weeks. It was so nice to see folks — we actually spent the first few minutes chatting instead of working out. Sorry, I’m always the chatty one! And it was nice to have a little mid-day exercise with people that I know!

And tonight, my husband and I used the new online ordering system for our typical Friday night Irish pub. It’s almost time to walk up there to grab our messy burgers! Yum! (please still be warm, burgers!) Thank goodness it’s Friday, right??