Food and Cats Will Get Us Through This

Wrapping up week  -hold on, give me a minute here-  six? Does that sound right? The weeks seem to be flying, for what it’s worth. The days, workdays in particular, crawl, but when you say out loud that we’re finishing up week six right now, it’s bizarre how quickly time is going.

My sourdough came out well, thanks for asking. It wasn’t as crusty and artisanal as I would have liked, but overall I was satisfied with my first attempt at bread sans yeast. 
I haven’t jumped back into another starter, since I’ve been baking a lot and feel like my limited flour can be better used elsewhere. Read: these brownies. 

Just kidding, these are flourless. They looked beautiful but tasted like soggy bread covered in cocoa powder. If that sounds like it might not be too bad, let me be the first to tell you it is. 

I have a confession to make: I left the house yesterday. I went downstairs and joined our neighbors for the first happy hour that wasn’t virtual in six weeks. Brent and I were watching a show I had no real interest in. I was pouting over my sweet potato brownie flop. Our neighbors texted to see how quarantine life was going and to invite us down for a beer and I jumped right on that train. The way I see it, we’re living in the same building. They have a dog and are outside all the time; we’re outside frequently for our beer runs. If the virus can live for up to two hours in air particles, we’ve all been exposed to each other. Jenga and charcuterie outweigh any risk at this point. 

Besides taking a lot of food and cat pictures, I’ve been slowly making my way through the giant stack of library books sitting in the living room. 12 down, 3 to go, and at this rate, I’m going to run out of books before anything reopens. I should write a book post; or you can follow along with my bostonbabbler ‘gram account and hear my thoughts on some of the books so far #shamelessplug 

I read something this week about a woman who is a therapist, admitting she’s one of the lucky ones.....but. That really resonated with me. I feel like I have no legs to stand on if I feel anything other than gratitude. I can work from home. Brent can work from home. We don’t have to worry about our house being seized or where our next meal comes from. We don’t have children to babysit or home-school. 

But. 

I’m annoyed. I’m frustrated. I’m a planner and like to have some semblance of control. Not being able to know -to have even a shred of an idea- how and when things will go back to normal is really hard. Accepting that things will probably never be “normal” again is even harder. 

So that’s where we are at the end of week six. I’m going to try to look to these yin and yang cuties for some inner peace in week seven.