Pandemic Life

A Month In Review: Making Glad, Staying Home, Doing Whatever

/ Ally Bean / 153 Comments

Let’s start with the facts.

April is my second least favorite month of the year*.  This is the last day of April 2020, the longest April on record. Ever.

We do not need to go in depth into why this particular April has been endless, ridiculous, depressing, frightening, annoying, overwhelming, underwhelming, disruptive, insane, inane, et cetera, et cetera.

To my credit, I do believe, early on I set my intentions for this month and have accomplished those three intentions to the best of my ability.

• + •  💜 • + •

FIRST, I made a point to not complain about our personal small inconveniences during this dreadful month and I give myself an A- on this point.

Article to read: “I’m Depressed, But Feel I Have No Right To Be”: Class Guilt During The Pandemic

SECOND, I made a point to have no opinions about how other people  handled their time at home this month.  I give myself a B on this point, having mostly not said a word about some of your more dubious behaviors, oh my friends and family + neighbors and numbskulls.

Article to read: The Psychological Reason Why Some People Aren’t Following COVID-19 Quarantine Orders

LASTLY, I made a point to be gentle and forgiving with myself, allowing my moods to swing, my thoughts to roam, and my sense of purpose to be redefined within the context of the times.  On this I give myself an A+ because, not to put too fine of a point on it, I’m still here, sane, and relatively happy.

Poem to read: Lockdown Manifesto 

• + •  💜 • + •

And with that I will turn the page in my calendar, putting April behind me and gazing into the glorious month of May, my second most favorite month of the year**.  I’ve nothing scheduled to do in the month of May, but certainly it’ll be better than miserable old April, right?

One can only hope.

* August is my least favorite month of the year.
** October is my most favorite month of the year.

[May 2, 2020: I’ve reworked the look of this post to do an experiment with images, fonts, and the way in which Twitter tweets a link to it. The content remains the same.]

As One Does Now: In Which Ms. Bean Becomes Mildly Exasperated With Her Husband

/ Ally Bean / 171 Comments

A story gleaned from our daily life.

The scene…

Husband and Wife at home, quarantined like many other couples.

Husband, working from home with his trusty laptop computer, having commandeered the kitchen table that is in the middle of everything at the back of the house.

Wife, writing in study at front of house.

Doorbell rings.

Wife sees FedEx guy leave small box on the stoop.

Wife goes to kitchen in back of house to get her gloves so that she may pick up the box, safely.

As one does now. 

Wife tells Husband, who is sitting at the kitchen table that is smack dab in the middle of everything at the back of the house, what she is doing.

Husband who is staring at computer screen appears to understand, nodding head in an affirmative manner.

Wife collects small box from front stoop, walks to kitchen at back of house, and wipes down small box with Clorox wipe.

As one does now. 

Husband sees Wife bring box into kitchen and seems to understand that she’s applied the proper ablutions to it, leaving it in plain sight on the kitchen counter because she’ll open the box later.

Wife returns to writing project in study in front of house.

One half hour later…

Husband strides purposefully from kitchen in back of house to front door, opens it, then expresses dismay that the box delivered by FedEx is not there.

Husband is flummoxed and queries Wife as to where said box is.

Wife explains all that transpired within Husband’s purview while sitting at the kitchen table that is smack dab in the middle of every stinking thing in the back of the house.

Husband looks baffled.

Wife says didn’t you notice what I was doing, hear what I was saying. Weren’t you interested?

Husband says: “Of course I was interested, but I wasn’t watching what you were doing or listening to what you were saying at all.”

Wife *sighs* LOUDLY, *rolls her eyes* DRAMATICALLY, and returns to her writing project, refusing to respond to Husband’s absurd, somewhat disparaging, comment.

As one does now.

Adapting With A Smile: Getting The Groceries, Trying The Recipes

/ Ally Bean / 184 Comments

Welp, it has finally happened even though I said I’d never do this.

You see, we’ve started using online ordering for our groceries, then we go, together, to pick up our order outside the store.

There’s no charge for this now and it does seem like a healthier way for us to get groceries.  Plus not to put too fine of a point on it, we have the time– and allow me to clue you in, it can take time to do this.

On our last adventure our assigned pickup time was for a 5:00-6:00 p.m.  We arrived at 5:03 p.m., got in a line with about 20 cars in front of us, and left the parking lot with our groceries in the trunk of the car at 6:58 p.m.

Yes, almost 2 hours in line to get food, safely.

Ain’t life a pip? 

• • •

The knocked over sign said: PICKUP LINE STARTS HERE  We laughed at the folly of it all, having been in line for an hour before getting to this *beginning* spot. From the look of the damage to the sign someone before us may not have seen the humor in that sign at that point in line.

• • •

We did have a weirdly good time waiting in line together.  

We started watching shoppers, most of whom didn’t have masks, going in and out of the store.  We started making up back stories about them OR criticizing how they handled their groceries once they got to their vehicles.

Case in point, a woman wearing surgical gloves came out of the store pushing a cart, walked to her car, opened the trunk, put her groceries into the trunk, walked over to the trash container, removed her gloves properly.

Then USING HER UNGLOVED HANDS she opened the flap on the trash container, disposing of the gloves therein.  She walked back to her car trunk, shut the trunk, got into the car, and drove away– using her hands that had touched the trash container to do so.

ICK!

• • •

The shy sign said: PICKUP WAITING STARTS HERE We chuckled with mirth, but weren’t duped. We’d been in line for close to an hour and a half at this point. Clearly this sign saw what had happened to the previous sign and was taking precautions to stay safe.

• • •

Now that we’re dining in all the time we’ve been cooking and baking: carbohydrates are our friends.

In truth we’ve been having fun while trying new recipes and/or revisiting old ones.  In all cases we’ve adapted the recipes to work with what we have procured via said online ordering/pickup scenario discussed above.

Below is an alphabetized list of recipes we’ve made.  I’ve rated them and made a few notes about what we changed because of… oh you understand why.

Click on the title of the recipe to be taken to it online.

Alton Brown’s Shepherd’s Pie [A+] – used ground beef instead of ground lamb

Baked Cheese Grits [A] – used half & half instead of whipping cream

Bisquick Velvet Crumb Cake [B-] – added nutmeg to batter, cinnamon to topping 

Brown Rice and Corn Cakes [A] – used onion powder instead of fresh chives, white flour instead of whole wheat

Classic Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies [A+] – didn’t change a thing!

Classic Strawberry Shortcakes [A] – added 1 tsp vanilla extract, a pinch of nutmeg

Easy Bisquick Chicken Pot Pie [C-] – made as is, not bad but old-fashioned and blah

Grandma’s Anything Goes Strata [B] – used all milk [no half & half], used cooked bulk breakfast sausage instead of deli meat, added 1/4 tsp brown mustard

Lemon Curd [A+] – no changes to ingredients, cooked using double boiler instead of directly on heat 

Martha Stewart Spiced Walnuts [B+] – used 1 tsp chili powder for 1/2 tsp coriander

~ The End ~

Which Three Personality Traits Are Helping You Deal With Today?

/ Ally Bean / 151 Comments

Photo by Johnson Wang [@jdubs] via Unsplash

• • •

YEARS AGO I TOOK AN ADULT EDUCATION night class about managing your stress. The 4-part class was offered by a regional hospital and was taught by a woman with a background in massage therapy who was at that time working on a graduate degree in religious studies.

She was wise & funny. Delightful in her pragmatic approach to life.

To be clear this was not a class aimed at finding the causes of your stress or analyzing why you had this stress. It was a class based on the assumption that the sources of your stress were your own business, specific to your own life.

The class was about creating a “tool box” of positive coping behaviors;  that is, by learning to breath in the moment or detach from your ego or chant a soothing mantra or acknowledge your own worth, you could deal with your stress in a healthy way.

The premise being, quite simply, that if you know how to calm down in any situation, then you’ll do better at whatever it is you’re doing.

Is this not true?

~ • 💚 • ~

ONE OF THE TOOLS I REMEMBER FROM this class was the question I posed in the title of this post. We were encouraged to think about who we were based on our own particular personality traits. [List of 600 personality traits here.]

This was trickier to do than you might think it’d be.

To wit, we were NOT describing ourselves in the sense of our relationships so saying I’m a wife, a niece, a sister-in-law was wrong.  And we were NOT describing ourselves in the sense of our job titles/hobbies so saying I’m a manager, a writer, a walker was wrong.

While those descriptions of myself were accurate they weren’t the point of this mental health exercise.  They were considered a distraction from understanding yourself better, a way to gloss over who you really were.

NOPE, we had to state who we were based on our own self-awareness.  We had to acknowledge our individual personality traits whether they be considered a strength or a weakness, then accept the trait.

To thine own self be true, you know?

~ • 💚 • ~

I HADN’T THOUGHT ABOUT THIS CLASS IN a long time, but over the weekend I realized I was reminding myself each day to focus on three personality traits, allowing myself to feel empowered as a result of it.

I realized why I was asking myself this question and thought that maybe someone else might benefit from using this simple approach to stress management.

So in conclusion here is my answer to the question.  For me, most of the time my personality traits that are helping me deal with my days during the pandemic are: 1) I’m organized, 2) I’m creative, and 3) I’m perceptive.

• • •

What about you, kids? Care to share which three personality traits are helping you stay above the fray, cool in every way? Or if not cool, at least sane for most of the day?

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