Notes from a Self Quarantine

What do you do when you are in the middle of a public health pandemic and you won’t be able to see your family and friends for the holidays? Well, in my house, we decided that the only way to get through the holidays during this really awkward year was to laugh.

And yesterday, we did just that! My fun turkey party hats were a big hit (not with my husband, but he’s a crank, so I knew he wouldn’t wear one), unfortunately I only had four hats for 6 people because one set didn’t arrive on time. My sister-in-law, her two kids and I wore our hats proudly at the table! Sorry to my brother-in-law for not having a hat for him, hopefully he’ll come back for dinner next year.

And I got my dining room table back!! My husband packed up his home office for the day. He kept saying that I would have to set the table for Thanksgiving around his desktop computer and honestly, I wouldn’t put it past him…but he picked everything up (and stuck it in my office so now I have to walk around all his crap), and I got my table back:

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Oh, how I have missed you dining room table!! I haven’t seen all this space since mid-March… And how adorable are those turkey hats??

My sister-in-law told me she’d bring a game for us to play after dinner. So after Thanksgiving dinner and before dessert, the six of us sat around my beautiful clutter-free table, some of us wearing turkey party hats, and played “Cards Against Humanity”…with my 13- and 14-year-old nephews. Now if you have never played this card game, I would describe it as a blend of the drinking card game “Asshole” and old school “Mad Libs” — you know the one where you take a random selection of words and use those words to fill in a story with blanks. “Cards Against Humanity” is like that and the words on the cards can be crass and downright filthy. My nephews were pretty embarrassed by some of the cards, there were a few times they were laughing so hard that they couldn’t even read the cards out loud.

But the laughter helped — we laughed for hours playing a silly, dirty game while wearing stuffed turkeys on our heads. Sure we missed our family and friends that couldn’t be with us on the holiday. But we made the best of it and actually had a damn good time. Laughter always helps.

My sister-in-law told her kids to leave the turkey hats at my house so we could use them again next year. And my 13-year-old nephew walked out my front door with his turkey hat sitting on his head. No one stopped him. I wonder if he wore it the whole way home — he’s pretty tall, his dad might not have been able to see out of the back window. Hopefully he’ll remember to bring it back next year…

And my pie turned out just fine.

Sure Thanksgiving is going to look different tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still make an excellent meal!

Our Thanksgiving turkey never seems to fit in our refrigerator — we learned years ago to not even bother trying, we now stick our brining bird in an extra large Ziploc bag, then put the bag in one of those orange Home Depot buckets. (Don’t worry, we buy a new clean one every year.) Then the Home Depot bucket sits in a large cooler packed with ice, which spends the night outside:

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We’ve spent a bunch of time perfecting this technique and it works. The 24-hour wet brine makes the turkey so moist (ugh, I hate that word! But there’s no other way to describe it…), the skin is perfectly crisp, it’s honestly my favorite thing about this holiday! OK, I like to see family and friends too, but you get the point.

I made my pumpkin pie and my cranberry sauce earlier this afternoon. My pie crust looked fabulous:

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But I spilled a little bit of the pie filling when I put it in the oven, and then I think I might have overcooked it…hopefully it tastes OK tomorrow! My sister-in-law is bringing a blueberry pie so we won’t be pie less! Although my husband and I really don’t know how to cook for a small group, so no one will go hungry if my pie is just awful. But even an overcooked pumpkin pie will probably taste good, right??

I am so excited for turkey leftovers! I’m already thinking about turkey sandwiches filled with cranberry sauce and stuffing…

Thanksgiving is this week and it’s so obvious that the holidays are going to look really different this year. My husband’s parents aren’t comfortable flying up here for the holidays, and my parents have pretty much bunkered down at their house for the next 3 weeks. My my dad stocked up at the grocery store and my mom mentioned she went to CVS and bought wine over the weekend — they’ll be fine. And I can’t imagine getting on an airplane right now — you know one of those tin cans where you’re forced to breathe the same recycled air as every other passenger for 3 hours? Yeah, no thanks.

My husband and I have hosted Thanksgiving dinner for the past 8 or 9 years — it’s completely normal for us to have 15 people crammed around my dining room table. It involves setting up a 6 foot folding table at one end of my regular dining room table (you just make sure you have two matching table cloths — no one can really tell the tables don’t match!), renting folding chairs and making sure everyone uses the restroom before they sit down to dinner because once you sit down, you’re probably not getting up for awhile!

In my house, table space is merely a suggestion — “table seats 6 comfortably” — that’s a challenge if I ever heard one! I can get 12 people around that table, they might not be comfortable, but they’ll all have an actual place to sit (with a chair!), a complete place setting and access to tons of food. They might have to ask 6 people to get up from their own places if they want to go grab something from the other room, but again that’s why you use the bathroom before dinner!

This year will be much simpler. And I’m not sure how my husband and I will like that. We like the crowd, we like the noise, the mess that comes from having a bunch of people over for a meal. And after 9 months of it being just us at home, I think we are craving other people.

So my sister-in-law, her husband and their two kids will come over on Thursday for Thanksgiving. I know that we’re supposed to only be celebrating with folks in our own household this year, but if my husband and I spend one more day just the two of us… We’ve seen his sister and her family a couple of times in the past 3 months, so maybe it’s not bending the rules too much…

This year will be simpler, that’s for sure, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be fun. I ordered 6 Thanksgiving party hats. They arrived today:

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Now that’s Thanksgiving fun! I’m sure I will be the only one who will wear a hat, but I don’t care, these suckers will make me smile! And my family better be careful — I might just make everyone pose for a photo while wearing these hats! Maybe this will be the year I do a photo Christmas card!

My husband has been complaining about a glare on his computer screen in his home office, which is in fact my kitchen/dining room area. I guess clients have commented that there’s a bright light coming in through the window behind him. Duh, that would be the sun folks!

I have sheer blue curtains over that window — it’s a dining area for goodness sake, no one cares if there’s sunlight coming in! It was never supposed to be a work place. He’s been sitting at my dining room table since mid-March, but I guess the glare has been annoying him for the past month, so last week we tried this out:

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The ratty old bath towel clipped to my curtain rod wasn’t my first choice, but I wanted to see exactly where the light was coming in so I knew what kind of curtains I needed to buy. I thought this was a pretty creative solution — I used two chip clips to hang the towel! And it was never supposed to be a permanent solution, just a temporary fix. Well, my husband complained that the green towel didn’t match the blue curtains. There’s a critic in every crowd…

I finally made it to Target today on my lunch break to pick up two blackout curtains. (OK, so I actually went yesterday and bought one blackout curtain during lunch, I hung it up last night, realized one curtain was too small for the entire window space and had to go back again today to purchase another curtain. My work is never done.)

I think it looks good:

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Wow, that picture looks a little crooked…

I decided to use this opportunity to wash the two sheer curtains and the valance, because I have absolutely no idea when I did that last… I washed them and hung everything back up this evening. The blackout curtains in the middle can be opened for light and closed when my husband has a meeting, and I hung the sheer curtains back up so they match the curtains on the other windows in the dining room.

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I was pretty proud of my creation! My husband said the blues don’t match. I just can’t win…

I follow a book promoter on Facebook — back in normal times she used to do in person events and I’d always try to go when the events were in my area. Once COVID-19 happened and the world literally shut down, she moved all of her events online. And that means that she can host so many more new book events and I can add so many more books to my “to be read” list! Which definitely sounds like a good thing, but last week my local library’s app told me that I had reached my limit for putting books on hold. I guess 17 books on a hold list was a definite red flag. I tried to submit the new book to my hold list anyways, and it worked! There are now 18 books that I want to read sometime…not really soon because I still have to work my full-time job.

Maybe I should quit my job so I can read full-time? Where does one get a job like that?? Asking for a friend…

My favorite book promoter hosted an event this past weekend — 36 authors with new books coming out during the first few months of 2021. She interviewed each author for 30 minutes spread out over Saturday and Sunday. That’s a ton of books to talk about! And she did it all for free — they were taking donations for a charity (which I donated to), but you didn’t have to, you could just sign on and watch for free.

I started out good on Saturday morning — I watched the first 6 events and then decided that I needed to walk away from my computer and actually DO something during the weekend like laundry and dishes and maybe get outside for a little bit. I logged back in a few times on Saturday to catch a few more events and did two on Sunday. I can always go back and watch the events that I didn’t get to, because they are all recorded and posted on her event page. I think some folks watched every 30 minute event live — that is some dedication!

But for now I have a long list of books that I want to read when they come out in 2021. Don’t tell my husband, but I pre-ordered three of the books! They won’t show up at my house until May, which is good because at this point my bookshelves are packed and there is absolutely no room for more books! Not that stuffed bookshelves will stop me from buying more books…

Maybe I’ll start working on the unread books I have at home — I have 5 checked out from the library and then there’s those 18 books on hold…I might have to start getting up earlier each morning!

This morning I went to my typical Sunday morning yoga class at a local studio. I’m sitting at the traffic light waiting to turn into the parking lot, singing loudly along to the radio. I heard this weird snap, like I’d stepped on a piece of plastic. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, so when the light turned green, I drove into the parking lot.

It wasn’t until I turned my head to grab my bag with all my yoga stuff off the passenger seat that I felt a pinch on my face. The bottom frame of my cheap plastic sunglasses snapped in half! While they were on my face!

Now these sunglasses are just an inexpensive pair that I picked up at Target years ago, so I definitely got my money’s worth. And the broken plastic didn’t cut my face, there was no red mark and I wasn’t bleeding — that’s a win especially in 2020! It was pretty cold this morning, but cold enough to break plastic?? Or is my head just too damn big for these sunglasses…don’t answer that.

And I totally wore the broken sunglasses to drive home (and to walk across the parking lot to the studio) — it was bright out there this morning! I’ll have to go to Target later on and pick out a new pair of cheap plastic sunglasses because I am definitely not spending a ton of money on really expensive glasses, I’ll just lose those. Sure, my cheap Target glasses tried to maim me this morning, but I survived and I’ll just go pick out another pair.

Take that, 2020!

Last Friday, we had a snow storm. This Friday, it’s almost 70 degrees, the sky is bright blue and there’s not a cloud in the sky. It’s beautiful out there, and believe me, I’m not complaining, but this weather is just damn odd. It’s the beginning of November and the 7-day forecast shows sunny and high 60 degree temperature. But we had snow last week…

And I am NOT complaining, I would much rather have these warmer temperatures than what this time of year usually throws our way. But is this global warming — is this climate change in action? It just seems so weird that we can have almost 6 inches of snow one week and the next I’ve broken out my flip flops again. And I get that I live in New England where the saying is always “don’t like the weather, well just wait a minute”. It just seems weirder this year. Maybe because we are in the middle of a global pandemic. And I am home all the time and without my daily commute in and out of the office I just seem to have more time to think about all these things.

I’d much rather be wearing a light jacket in the evening. Outdoor dining should be pretty busy tonight! I know that tonight’s walk up to the Irish pub will be much more enjoyable than it was last Friday in the snow!

But all this weird weather changes just make me wonder — are the murder hornets coming next??

Last week’s snowstorm really bummed me out — it was way too early in the season for snow and I lost the last of my tomato crop. I’d been hopeful that if I left those little green tomatoes out for just a little bit longer, they’d grow bigger. Now my poor little green tomatoes look like little tomato mummies (they’re totally white now too, it’s creepy).

It was warmer again today, thank goodness. And I’ve been thinking about my flower garden and wanted to share a few photos I took at the beginning of last week before snowmaggedon 2020 ruined everything.

My Gerbera daisy plant was enjoying the warmer October temperature (so was I, buddy!) — it even grew a new flower!

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Even the Zinnias were holding on! I planted these from seeds in late spring, they were a tad slow blooming this year.

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And I was so proud about how well the Nasturtiums did this year! I planted them from seeds in late spring as well — I had them in a hanging pot and then in several other standing pots. They just kept blooming all season!

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Still going strong, even in October!!

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I’m really going to miss my garden this winter — I learned a lot this year, and of course some things were successful and obviously some other things were not — like why did I only get one zucchini?? And I had a ton of flowers on my cucumber plants, but only got two pickle-sized cucumbers that my husband wouldn’t even eat because he said that they were too small. He’s so picky…

It’s supposed to be warmer this weekend as well, which is good because I need to break down the rest of the garden and store everything in our basement for winter. This is my least favorite time of year, it makes me sad to toss out potted plants and take down all my tomato cages. And we still have to rake up leaves which might be the most thankless and mind-numbing task when you are a homeowner…

But for now, I am just going to enjoy that it’s 70 degrees in November! Take that, 2020!!

Sure, that title sounds a little kinky, but don’t worry, this post isn’t at all. What really happened is that I walked into our bedroom this afternoon and found this:

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What is that? you ask. Well, that would be all my husband’s workout t-shirts and gym shorts on our bedroom floor. I guess he couldn’t find what he was looking for in his bureau drawer, so he decided that the best option would be to empty the contents of the entire drawer and toss them on the floor. He must have found what he was looking for because he went to his class at the gym, but he left everything else in a heap on the floor.

Now I’ve already washed, dried, folded and put all those workout clothes away in that drawer. And I’m certainly not doing it again. Sure, it’s pretty packed in there, but that’s because he refuses to get rid of anything — there’s tons of t-shirts in there that he doesn’t wear because he doesn’t like the fit or the color. Why not just get rid of them?? Then there will be tons of room in the drawer and then he can easily find the items he wants.

This makes total sense to me, but obviously not to my husband. He obviously thinks that there’s a laundry fairy that sweeps into our house every night just to re-fold clothing and return it to where it belongs. And I refuse to be that fairy even if he buys me a sparkly tiara, wings and a magic wand. Those clothes are going to sit right there where he left them!

I might re-fold them for a sparkly pair of flip flops…or a funky beaded bracelet…

OK, I actually did this project on Saturday, because who has the time to do craft projects during the week — I’m supposed to be working! And then after work I’m just too tired to do anything really creative…I’m sure that I’m not alone in feeling this way!

But check out my finished project:

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It’s an autumn-themed book banner! This was one the free projects sponsored by my local library — it was really fun to do! The craft bag included the different colored paper, the cutting templates, the cord, even a glue stick! I am terrible cutting paper with scissors –my lines are never exact, even with a template, but this was supposed to be fun, so I just went with it!

And it was fun! The bag included photocopied pages of a book that we cut into shapes to glue onto the different colored pages. At least I hope that they were photocopied book pages…but I can’t imagine a library promoting destroying books…

My finished project isn’t perfect, but it fits exactly over the window in my home office! It adds a little bit of color and style to the room, which I need since I’m spending all my damn time in here during the past 8 months…

And a little creativity goes a long way when you’re stuck at home during a pandemic. Already looking forward to the next craft!