An (Un)welcome Distraction

Remember how I figured out my toothache? I spoke too soon. Yesterday (Friday) it ached a little again. By afternoon it was decidedly sore. Last night I slept about an hour, and that badly. I was in pain!
A good toothache can take your mind off of even Covid-19. All I could think of was contacting my dentist and finding relief for the pain, which wasn't responding to Tylenol and Advil. 
The long and short is this: my dentist did come through, I got good advice about pain relief, and I got some penicillin. I'm on the mend and so, so thankful!

While the world of humanity seems to be taking a hard punch in the gut and a left-cross on the chin, the world of nature is blissfully unaware. Do you see her out there, blooming away? The seasons turn and the world spins on, God's promise to us that He loves us in spite of the suffering that comes our way. I think this worldwide suffering will change us -- I hope. We needed changing.

 Our prettiest tree

As I sit here typing, Adam is recording his video he'll send out to our congregation tomorrow, full of Scripture. I've found that nothing else is as comforting as simply Scripture - not painting, not movies, not snacks, not music even, not naps. Scripture soothes my heart instantly.

I did another painting. Tried to record it, but flubbed it.

This is Priscilla Shellcrack. I'm beginning the long labor of repainting much of the art that goes in my little picture books. We need art that is better quality and is not on a page with the text.

After not sleeping last night, today has been unusually unproductive. I've lain on the couch watching Father Brown. Last night in the wee hours I finished reading Nine Coaches Waiting.

I am thankful for my dentist's help. All the other medical personnel everywhere are doing their best to help us too. We will develop better medicines, better treatments, we'll produce more PPE, and then we'll have a vaccine. All we must do is wait.

(Last note -- I JUST found a whole bunch of comments from various of you that I didn't know existed!! Yikes! I'm truly horrible at keeping track of comments. I apologize!)

Self-Care During Coronavirus

Folks don't necessarily like the term "self-care." They say, "Back in the good old days we were tough; we didn't bother with wussy things like self-care!" To that I say this: perhaps some self-care would have been advisable back in those days!

my reading this morning

Adam did some irritation to his eye, and it's all red. This morning I stumbled out of the bedroom and saw him sitting on the couch with a piece of medical tape across his closed eye. I, on the other hand, have been worrying with tooth-ache. My molars give me trouble, and I've been nursing them along for over a year. They'd been doing so well! Then about 2 days ago ... kabbam! And I really didn't want to go to the dentist office, with all the coronavirus floating around out there. Was the dentist even open? Yes, they were. Could I possibly avoid it? Well, last time I delayed going to the dentist it cost me a lot of money. 😒 (I just discovered that we can put emojis into a blog post. Who knew?!)

Adam made dinner using our fresh asparagus.

Adam hates it when I need to go to the doctor because I am quite slow in actually going. I got out the heating pad and held it to my face. I drank hot herbal tea. I took Tylenol every 5 hours. I moaned and groaned. But then I slowly realized it was better if I lay on one side ... and I wondered if it was (once again - I'd forgotten) my sinuses and my very poor drainage on the left side of my face and neck.  Then I recalled the facial massage techniques I'd used before, to assist drainage. This video is so good:

I've been doing this all day, and it's worked! My tooth pain is gone. I haven't had Tylenol since 8:20 this morning. I don't have to go out to the dentist office!

I'm involved in two stories right now: one that I'm reading and one that I'm writing. Both of them are scarier than the coronavirus. That may sound ridiculous, but it's true. I'm reading Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart. This novel is scarier than the last one I read by her. She does suspense -- kind of a nervous thriller story in which the first-person young female narrator is in danger of being murdered and is awaiting rescue from her true love. I have to read it in the morning, because if I read it in the evening I have trouble falling asleep.

I'm finishing the editing on Ten Days at Federal Hill. It's also a bit tense at the end, and I have only myself to blame, since I wrote it. Scary, tense stories are difficult to read during scary, tense times in life. They are a lovely distraction when life is sailing along and seems almost boring. As the mother in The Railway Children said to her youngsters after they'd lost all their money and their father was in prison, "Well, children, you've always said that you wanted something to happen, and now it has."

first iris in bloom

What's happening out in the world right now doesn't even seem real. We were all traipsing along, doing our thing, and then a pandemic hit Earth across the head. Isn't it strange and rather terrifying to think of the entire Earth reeling from the blow?

I wonder if humanity will change its ways after this sobering distress, or will we go right back to our old bad habits. How will it impact our family's life? When today's children look back on it in thirty years, how will it make them feel? Will they simply remember it as the time when everyone stayed home together and they learned to play Monopoly, and the milk ran out?

Adam will nurse his eye, and I'll nurse my teeth, and we will make it through. I try not to think of it as an apocalyptic event, but as a sobering reminder of how flawed we are, that we can succumb to a disease just as readily in 2020 as they did in 1918. We are no better, no smarter, no more prepared, for all our technology. Our fast-connected world has only made it worse.

Stay home and take care of yourself. If you can't stay home and must go to an essential job, may God go with you and protect you. 

The Most Precious Thing Is What You Give Away

Yesterday I sat editing a video for an hour, intensely focused. When I stood to go outside and tend to my chickens and looked out the back porch window at the sunset, I was shockingly returned to the sad truth that the world outside -- all those other humans -- were cut off from me. I couldn't venture out. Our world has, for a while, become an alien world. I battle a sense of inner alarm and sadness.

Some truly believe this virus is being used by the world's governments (particularly our own) to strip us of our freedoms, to curtail our movement and rob us of rights and make us dependent on the government -- in other words, to lure us, using our fears, into deeper socialism. A conspiracy. I sigh when I read those posts and articles. Freedom is indeed a precious thing, a gift hard-earned. We take it for granted. But isn't the most precious thing the one that you willingly give up, for the good of everyone? It's one thing for the government to strip my freedom away against my will. It's quite another for me to voluntarily give it up, to save lives. I have the right to demand my liberty. I also have the right to give it up. 

We take this from Jesus Himself. "No one takes [my life] away from me, but I lay it down of my own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again." (John 10:18) That's true freedom, yes?

Christians follow Jesus in being impervious to loss of liberty. There is an inner world of the spirit where liberty is absolute and constraints of this world fall away. The greatest constraint is death, but we slip out of those shackles also, and enter the freedom of heaven. I refuse to be alarmed about the political vicissitudes of this world.

This struck home this morning as I watched this video from Chicago doctor Emily Rendon.

She comes across as an eminent professional and as the nation's mother, admonishing us all to care for each other. Be your brother's keeper! "We've made a lot of sacrifices," she says of her family. "Why ask so much of people?" "Now it's your turn to do your part." "The virus is taking what's left of our precious liberty." She said that. The government isn't taking our freedom away; the virus is, and rightly so.

I'm amazed at humans. We can be selfish, stupid, and cruel in crisis. But we can also be brilliant, loving, giving. Just this morning I discovered Patrick Stewart's facebook page! Guess what? Each morning he is reading aloud a Shakespeare sonnet, sitting at home in his t-shirt with his old-guy glasses on.

He was astonished at the response to his first reading, so he decided to do it everyday ... since he's at home anyway. Why not? Why not give?

Yesterday I had the pleasure of watching Andrew Lloyd Webber in his home, at his piano, playing a tune on Twitter for his fans.

His dog interrupted him half-way through. It was delightful to watch his hands find those familiar, luscious chords of the beautiful music he's written for us all. And he's giving it away, and inviting us into his home. No rehearsal, no make-up, no director. Just us and him. 

Look for opportunities to give of yourself. Social media can be a pain-in-the-neck, but during this time its value is shining forth! Aren't we thankful we can stay connected? See each other? Watch each other? Share each other's gifts and loves and Netflix recommendations?

Why did we think an event like this wouldn't happen in our lives, in our world? Certainly it will be a "reset" for all of us on how we live, what we do with our time, how we view home, how we view human contact, how we think of the simple gift of breathing. 

May we stay well and stay at home. May God give comfort and peace to those who are ill. May wisdom and not foolishness prevail. And if you need a little distraction, at last I made a decent video (with Adam's superb assistance) of myself painting something. I tried once before, but it's hard to paint while balancing a camera on the table. His equipment and expertise were a huge help. 

Much love to all ~

Milk, Flour, Eggs ... a Pro-Life Issue

Adam says there was no milk at the grocery store. When he talked with his mom in Nebraska, she said she could buy no flour. However, in Mississippi, Anna said there were no eggs on the shelves. Don't you wonder about some of the surprising aspects of this Coronavirus event? Why? Why milk in one state, flour in another, eggs in another? I bet in a week all the stores will be well-stocked again. If anybody needs a job right now, truck delivery and store-shelf-stocking should be the places to look!

We got hens, so we got eggs. So many eggs.

I went to the post office a couple of days ago, I think my last foray into public spaces. Two men stood in front of the counter where Teresa, our local postwoman, served them in turn, in the little glassed-in serving area that most post offices have. A glass door separates that serving area from a room of post boxes, where I stood. I paused, not wanting to add a fourth person to that small space -- social distancing, you know. A woman came into the building after me. I hesitated and turned to her. I didn't want to open the glass door quite yet.

"I'll wait a second until they're done," I said to her.

"Oh, are you scared?" she asked. She wasn't being mean or insulting. I think it was an honest question. She was encountering another human in the public sphere, and she wanted to know what kind I was. Was I a scared-of-coronavirus person? Scared of contact? That's one kind of person. Others are bold and confident, claiming this coronavirus will not keep them from being friendly, from seeing friends, from supporting local businesses or buying what they usually buy. Our nation's personalities range from the 19 year olds  cavorting on Florida's beaches for their bonus week of spring break (thank you, universities ... NOT!) to prepper couples in their deeply rural cabins who feel vindicated in all their labors to stockpile resources and skills, justifiably so. Some folks have nowhere to go, and some are ready for a year of quarantine.

I smiled at the lady in the post office. "No, I'm not afraid, but I am careful." Perhaps I said, "cautious." Either way -- there's a big difference between fear, which is unproductive socially, and carefulness, which is another form of love.

Why should we stay home? So that we stay well? No, this virus is quite contagious, and a certain percentage of us will get it eventually -- 60% or 70% they say. Why do some countries have high death rates, and some have comparatively few? It all has to do with your hospital  ICUs. Deaths sky-rocket when there are not enough ventilators. Do we prevent this by quickly manufacturing ventilators? No, there's no time. We do it by slowing everything down, by making sure that we never have more ICU patients than we have ICU beds. Patients survive this who have good hospital care. When the critically ill numbers mount? When we have 100,000 ventilators but 200,000 critically ill Covid-19 patients? 100,000 of them die, more or less.

Stay home. You'll catch the virus later. Let's spread it out over 5 months. Our doctors and nurses will be tired, but not overwhelmed as in Italy. All those cavorting 19 year olds on the beaches? Many of them will be ill within the week. Let's hope they don't need the hospital beds that their grandparents will desperately need a week later. Because when exhausted hospital staff are forced to decide whether a 30 year old gets the ventilator, or an 80 year old does, guess which person is chosen to live?

This is a pro-life issue. Nurses shouldn't have to make that choice. Save other people's lives. Stay home, and eat your eggs and bread without milk, or whatever food is scarce in your area. We can all survive this, if we all sacrifice just a little.

Get Outside!

That's what I've been saying to myself since yesterday ... get outside! The sun is shining, it's warm and still. It's perfect weather, plus Adam and I have absolutely no where else to go. Yard work time! Here's what's blooming in the yard:

 The last of the daffodils ~

 The Japanese magnolia. You see below how the early blooms were zapped by frost, but the remaining ones are glorious.

 Our lemon and lime trees, coming out of winter hibernation on the front porch:

 My Lady Banks Rose is spreading out like crazy. I want it fuller - a huge mass of blooms like the one I loved so much at our house in Statesville.

 hyacinth:

 vinca:

 a mysterious, wild, and quite annoying rose-type vine:

Adam has planned to rework the front foliage border of our property this spring. Our house is really close to a 2-lane state highway. Over 4 years ago, he dug some weed trees from elsewhere on the property and put them across the front of the property as a noise and privacy barrier. Then we added a row of Knock-Out rose bushes. Then we stuck some elaeagnus (oleaster) shrubs up there too, for good measure. It was crowded. Today he began hacking out those weed trees. Photos of the carnage:

 Swamp myrtles going away -

 An awful crepe myrtle that the power company hacked off will also be leaving:

 These two bushes: camellia (foreground) and a cedar of some sort (background), both died from hurricane drowning. They'll be leaving too.

 In two years, the elaeagnus has gone crazy! We'll pin some of the longer branches to the ground with bricks, and they'll start new plants there. Eventually we'll have a true elaeagnus hedge with roses in front of it.

Brown Sugar Caramel Pound Cake

This is not your usual pound cake! 

You can find it at this website. (Many thanks to Key Ingredient for this recipe and the photo above.) It is a fabulous recipe, although the ingredient list is a little confusing. (Ignore that heading, "CARAMEL DRIZZLE." The drizzle is only the final four ingredients in that list.) I'll retype the recipe here:

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups light brown sugar, packed
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 5 large eggs
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 (8-ounce) bag toffee bits
• 1 cup pecans, chopped
• 
  
• 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 
  
• *NOTE -- I decided to make a half recipe because we don't need a whole bundt cake in the house, seriously. It was wonderful. I used an 8"x8" cake pan. I also only needed to bake it for about 50 minutes or so.

Preheat oven to 325°F. Spray a 12 cup bundt pan with nonstick baking spray with flour. Set aside.

Beat the butter until creamy. Add sugars, beating until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. [I don't bother with this combining because I hate to dirty an extra bowl.] Gradually add flour mixture to butter mixture in thirds, alternately with milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat until just combined. Stir in toffee bits and pecans. Spoon batter into prepared pan. Bake until a wood pick inserted near the center of cake comes out clean, 75 to 85 minutes.

Spoon caramel drizzle over cooled cake.

Caramel drizzle:
In a medium saucepan, combine condensed milk and brown sugar; bring to a boil over medium-high heat, whisking frequently. Reduce heat, and simmer for 8 minutes [I didn't do it this long.], whisking frequently. Remove from heat; whisk in butter and vanilla. Let cool for 5 minutes before using.

NOTE: Make sure you drizzle the caramel while it’s still hot. When cooled the caramel does somewhat harden.

Here are photos of my cake from today.

Granny Marigold, I thought of you and your love of baking. This cake really tastes like something - the toffee bits and pecans give it real flavor beyond just "sweet." That caramel topping is perfect; it hardened a little, but is not a hard shell. The cake is moist with deep brown/caramel flavor, and the toffee bits make it chewy. Oh my.

Adam is allergic to pecans, so I'm in charge of eating the entire half-cake. So I cut it up and put it into containers for freezing, and will eat it slowly as the days go by and we are all inside from the coronavirus. Methinks humans will grow a bit tubbier during this time of affliction.

But this cake is worth it, believe me. If I'm gonna gain a pound or two during quarantine, I want it to be done while eating something fabulous. Enjoy, friends!

For Your Viewing Pleasure --

Like us, some of you are cooped up at home for the duration of the Coronavirus event. I hope you're doing more than watching your various screen devices, but we will all need entertaining things to watch in the coming weeks or months. (Oh, let's hope it's not months!) Anyway, here are a few few suggestions, things we've been watching lately:
1. The Famous Five -- on Youtube. This kids' TV show from the 1970s is just fun and slightly adventurous. They get into scrapes, and then get themselves out.
2. Liziqi -- on Youtube. A young Chinese woman has the most gorgeous channel with so many videos of her farming, building, sewing, gardening, and especially cooking. Relaxing background music, plus meals with her elderly grandma. This is relaxation!
3. James Townsend -- on Youtube. Adam loves this fellow's videos. He's a history buff with elegant shows. He cooks authentic early American food. Adam even bought Townsend's version of Ben Franklin's eyeglasses!
4. What's Cookin'? -- on Youtube. I love this series of cooking-from-around-the-world videos in English. The music is delightful, and the culture is enriching. I may have recommended them before.
5. Jeri Landers of Hopalong Hollow - on Youtube. Do you love felting, richly illustrated children's books, herbs, gardens, and other comforting homey things? Jeri is amazing. You'll find her little art cottage a cozy, comforting place to visit.
6. Dr. Westbury - on Youtube, a lot of videos of gorgeous music sung by Cathedral choirs. Very beautiful, very British.
7. English Heritage - on Youtube. English Heritage has an amazing Youtube channel. Homes Through History, What Was Life Like?, and other great playlists to explore.
8. The Repair Shop - on Netflix. A group of restoration experts welcome challenging projects from Brits, family heirlooms that need tender fixing.
9. If you have yet to see The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society movie, or read the book, you should probably do it now.

We've watched lots of other things, many of them rather indifferent, and some that I can't remember! But these will give you some interesting choices. 

Today, I also:
*cleaned two crystal candle chandeliers that sit atop my piano,
*wrote to our Compassion children in Africa,
*sent a package to a friend in a hard-hit virus city,
*played the piano and sang and made a youtube,
*planted peas
*took a nap
I still plan to:
*make 1/2 of a cake. We don't need a whole cake in the house!
*edit a chapter in my book. Maybe. Maybe not ...
*go into the garden. It's been so rainy!

I hope your time of enforced being-at-home is a joy to you in many ways. See it as an opportunity to enrich your home life, not an opportunity to worry or be frustrated. And for all of you who cannot stay home, who must go out, God go with you and protect you! It's a nasty virus, but still just a virus after all, and many of us will get sick regardless of how careful we are. It's all about how we behave in the middle of it, right? 

If staying home saves the life of, or the health of, only a single other person, or assists our healthcare professionals as their work load becomes heavier, then I'm glad to stay home. How thankful I am that I have four acres to walk around on, and not just a balcony in a high rise apartment! And I'm thankful for all of you, dear friends out there. Let's all share our love and comfort in the coming weeks and remember that it's a BIG world, and God is in all of it.

Home, Sweet Home

Hello, friends. Adam and I went to Chattanooga for a visit with the kids (AND ISAAC, OF COURSE!!), and now we are home again. Like you, we're wondering how much "home" will play a part of our lives in the coming weeks, or even months. Coronavirus seems to have taken the mind of the world by storm. Some things seem certain though:
1) It will spread, and then it will decline.
2) Many of us will get ill. Very few will die.
3) We want to slow down the spread, for the sake of our hospitals and everyone.
4) We have to adjust our lives for a while.

For a while. This too shall pass. Life will go back to its usual: Hectic. Boring. Routine. Same old same old.

One thing's been bothering me -- why is it that I get the feeling that humans somehow like a good catastrophe? I don't mean we have a death wish, but just that we really want (enjoy?) the occasional massive disruption to our lives. The way we rush to shop. The way we seem to come alive for a disaster. It reminds me of Y2K. I knew a family, who had never before canned anything, but for Y2K they canned meat. Meat! They were united in their anticipation of a good hunkering down and were deflated when it came to naught. I remember the wife's dismay when she realized she'd be throwing out all that canned meat, because they weren't eating it -- it was nasty!

Of course, Covid-19 is already much worse than Y2K, and I think it is indeed a worldwide emergency. However, not all areas will be impacted. Every square inch of the U.S. is not going to be like Milan or Wuhan or Kirkland, WA. High-density populations will be hit harder. A certain percentage of the population -- 40%? 60% -- will get the viral illness. Some will end up being protected by herd immunity as it passes over us like the Angel of Death in Egypt. 

We've stocked up. We're hand-washing. But for now, we're also still going to our local eateries to support them at a time when some customers might avoid a restaurant, even one in a county with no virus cases where only 25 people can fit in the dining room. I never thought there would be an advantage to having a church with only 20 people on a good Sunday, but now I know -- it's a good number for a time like this. We'll have our service tomorrow and evaluate week by week. We'll wash hands. We'll pray.

Can we get all the sick people to stay home? Can we get testing and accurate information? Can our economy coast through the coming weeks? Will our hospitals be overwhelmed? I'm glad to be home. Here's some photos from lately -- I've been quite bad about posting on the blog!
A few cards:

 This one was for my mother for her birthday:

 Chattanooga:

 I love this photo of Kara and Isaac, looking at cars out the window.

 Beau was exhausted by his week with dog-cousins.

Y'all stay healthy. Wash those hands. 

Stay home within reason.