Bad news, good cookie recipe

Mike’s sister has the virus. She’s a police dispatcher in New York, where they have hit 10,000 cases. Their brother is a police officer in the same department, and her husband is a fireman, so the whole bunch of them are right in the middle of this thing. It is not great. She’s recovering without it getting too serious, though. She’s got champion lungs, that one.

My dad’s wife lost her father to the virus a few days ago. 

Cases are still going up here, with clusters forming, but it’s slowing. Tourists have been trickling in and getting arrested almost immediately for breaking quarantine. Maybe don’t post geotagged Instagram pictures of yourself breaking quarantine, folks.

Here is the table.

Here is the couch.

And here is the cookie recipe the kids have been requesting on repeat. If you’re low on eggs and milk, this is a good one.

Cocoa fudge cookies 

1 cup flour 

1/4 tsp baking soda

Dash of salt

5 Tbs butter

7 Tbs cocoa powder

2/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar 

1/3 cup plain yogurt (or a little container of vanilla Activia, if that’s what you’ve got)

1tsp vanilla 

Heat oven to 350. Melt the butter. Mix in cocoa powder, then stir in the sugars, add the yogurt, mix in the vanilla. Sift in flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir until just mixed, drop in big spoonfuls onto baking parchment, bake 10 min. Let them cool for a minute before transferring them to the rack, they’ll be very soft and become chewy as they cool.

Waiting game

Still waiting on redeployment. In the mornings I’ve been shaking cats out of my sewing and knitting, and managed to finish the jackalope. Knitted an entire arm backwards. Calling it a design element.

Running dangerously low on a couple important paint colors, and finding them sold out everywhere online, in every brand. Titanium white is the toilet paper of painters, I guess.

Over the weekend, a hibiscus flower snapped off in my hand while I was looking at it in the garden, which made it a volunteer. Asked my tarot cards for a general sign of the times, and it gave me the Hermit. The Hermit represents isolation and soul searching, but, more importantly, it was used by Led Zeppelin to illustrate the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven, which makes this card mine. Instead of “2020”, I should have written “Zoso”.

The medallion is Saint Christopher, patron saint of bikers and bookbinders, warder of pestilence. The time turner is broken, so it can’t help us (Zenny and I have been reading HP). I had to paint all the line work on the card in one sitting and try not to make any mistakes. Screwed up the e in hermit, but OH WELL. There’s no erasing it, I just tried to clean it up with paint thinner and not make it worse.

Today I cut a gardenia, drew another card, and I’m doing another of these. At least this card (9 of swords) has no words on it. Just... a wall of swords.

More than a week after Easter, the chocolate situation over here is still out of control. I couldn’t make myself eat this small bunny because it was prettier than the others, so I painted it. Chocolate is as fun to paint as leather. And cheaper. And easier to chew afterwards.

The painting takes up about 2 hours of the day, while the kids are playing, and I paint at the dining table so I’m on hand to pour juice and make cookies. The rest of the day is spent on school work, gardening, cleaning, cooking, hugging chickens, and watching King of the Hill with the kids while knitting or stitching. Zenny was having trouble sleeping, so we added an hour of kids exercise videos in the evening, and that fixed things. Also, my pudding arms are becoming arm-shaped arms again. I’m poised to go back to work, concerned about pay and family health, but home is still my favorite place.

Masks, carnations, and the smell of alarm

I‘ve been put on notice for redeployment to a public office, so the time has come to join the sea of people making (and posting) face masks. My hand-me-down fancy sewing machine was being an asshole, so I pulled down my battered old Brother, scrubbed the roach eggs out of the compartments, spilled oil all over the rusty bits, and cruised through a stack of filter-pocket masks. Coffee filters, specifically, because that’s what I’ve got.

If anyone complains that beer fabric is unprofessional, I can ask them to kindly back the fuck up, they are standing too close.

Got carried away and stitched a messy cat face onto one of them. 

It is stupid enough to make me feel happier about wearing it now. 

The governor is talking about a 20% pay cut for state employees and 10% for first responders, starting next pay period. We are state employees. The unions will fight that down a bit, but there is some serious belt-tightening about to happen. We have a plan. Kind of. We have a squishy blob of a plan, anyway.

Painted some carnations while chewing on these things.

- - -

Easter landed like a guillemot.

The oven broke, the ham wouldn’t fit in with the turkey my mother was failing to roast, and we ended up eating bread and broccoli for dinner. My jello splatted out of the mold (“Hey granny, I found the blood you donated,” Gavin said) but the pies, at least, were perfect.

Mostly I just sat around drinking a Guinness and playing with an AI photo-to-painting generator. Maybe I’ll paint actual paintings out of the fake paintings.

- - -

When I was a kid in rural Arizona, we went out hiking with a couple of the other young teachers my mother worked with. Just as we were realizing that it had gotten late and we should head back to the car, a smell surrounded us. Everyone went very still and silent. Thousands of years of being tasty morsels told us exactly what that smell was, without ever having smelled it before; mountain lion. My mother took me by the shoulders and put me in the middle of the group as we all turned to walk back. We found large paw prints on top of our own, just behind us. It became dark fast, and one of our friends had a pack of matches in her pocket. We followed the light of one match at a time, scared of the seconds of darkness in between, knowing there was something large stalking us.

This feels like the moment we smelled the cat.

Pear, gardenias, and rabbit ass

I painted a pear. And then I ate it, so there's no touch-ups if it looks wrong.

close enough

Made myself finish the gardenia painting that was in time-out because the petals were giving me a hard time. It turned out ok. What a jerk.

DONE WITH YOU

During my forage through the wastelands of Walmart I grabbed the last bag of fiberfill stuffing, which meant I needed to make something to stuff. So I started knitting a jackalope. There was no chart, so I just followed the instructions and trusted that it would turn into something.

“What part of the jackalope is this? It looks like an ass.”

Jackalope by Hansi Singh

It was an ass. I've knitted half the thing now, and it looks like something the cats ripped the skin off of. Just stick to the pattern and hang in there, knitters. It will looks cute in the end, probably.

Every year, the family gets new clothes for Easter. Something bright and refreshing for spring. This year I ordered myself a black cardigan. Which is really an improvement, because after buying entire outfits for three kids, I usually end up throwing a clearance rack sports bra into the cart and calling it an outfit. 

so Eastery, very festive

I kicked over some old ladies in masks for a dozen eggs, so there will be egg dying tonight. But the pie will be pumpkin, because that is what is left over in the cupboard from Thanksgiving. We will make this thing happen with what we've got, folks.

the wolves in the walls

The cases in Hawaii are only doubling every 6 days or so, which is better than a lot of places. Nobody I know has gotten sick, but the circle is tightening; friends of friends are dying. My cousin's step brother died yesterday. The wolves can be heard in the distance now. 

I bought a novelty pack of anime cat face masks for $2 as a joke back in February, when the robotics team was still planning to travel to Taiwan. Yesterday I opened one up and went to Walmart for Easter stuff. It was early, and the maze of fencing set up in front of the doors like a Disneyland ride to space customers was still empty. The fabric and craft sections were completely cleaned out (I'm looking forward to seeing all the face masks made out of damask upholstery fabric), the paper aisles were still empty, and the baking goods were all gone, but there was enough stuff in the rest of the store to make Easter happen. I threw all my clothes in the washer on the way to the outdoor shower to decontaminate, and grabbed clean clothes off the laundry line. Having half the house outside is handy in a pandemic.

Inside, there is baking and cleaning and making-of-stuff. Gavin made sword mounts for his room. Zenny has been mangling little dishes out of air-dry clay, Leif has been drawing comics, the kitten has been chewing up my sewing, and I knitted a cardigan nobody will wear because it's suddenly 80 degrees again. Been painting on wood circles that I coated with a few layers of linseed oil, and I love the feel of it. Even though it looks like I was painting a dead child. 

Felt the first stirrings of cabin fever yesterday. This might have something to do with the neighbor's rooster pacification methods; he plays the radio loudly all day next to his chicken coops so they don't crow, and this week he's switched the station from oldies to 90s R&B. I am going to have to get an air rifle just to take out his stereo from the roof like a sniper.

Antidote:

Oh good, another animal

This bronze incense holder has been sitting on one of the family shelves since before I was born. I've never seen it holding incense. It isn't one of my cursed objects - it might be one of the charmed ones. 

After ruining two paintings in a row, it was reassuring and annoying to have this one come off the brush in 2 hours without any trouble at all. Comfort zones are so nice.

Got back home from work in time to catch the across-the-street kids letting their dog chase a stray kitten. Spent two hours trying to get it out of the wheel well of the car parked in front of our house. The car owner came and popped the hood to help us find the cat, and eventually I pulled it free, holding it up like a baby lion for the neighbors to clap politely.

We can not have another cat.

Not happening, mister ginger britches.

But he’s a bit wild, and the humane society won’t keep feral kittens, so we’ve got to soften him up and find a sucker to take him.

Kitten and suckers

Animals get up to a lot of shenanigans when we’re not at home to bust them.

(Dartagnon is doing just fine, btw. He’s clucking around acting like being shot and stuck in a cardboard box was just another day at the chicken office. He deserves a promotion from #3 backyard rooster.)

it's a Mad Max world

Three days after digging a grave during a pandemic, I got a text. "Can you help me catch a chicken with a steel dart shot through his chest?"

We got to my mother's house to find her sitting by the back door holding a string attached to a stick propping up a milk crate.

"This is what the Humane Society told me to do. They wouldn't send anyone," she said.

We took away the milk crate and set up our more advanced and sophisticated chicken-apprehension contraption; a dog kennel with a string tied to the door. It immediately filled up with hens, while this guy, lower on the pecking order, strolled around looking for bugs. He seemed fine, clucking around the yard as if it were perfectly normal to be run through with a steel dart. We could see the orange cone on the end of the dart poking out from behind his wing, and the tip coming out of his breast. After the hens cleared out all the bait, he came over to see what was going on and we had him.

There is one vet on the island who treats chickens, and luckily they were still open. 

"But we can't take surrendered wild animals right now, we can only treat him as a pet," they said.

"Okay, let's do that. He seems fine, except for the razor sticking out of his chest," I said, "And screw that guy with the dart gun, you know?"

"What name should I put down for him?" 

My mother yelled, from the kitchen, "DARTAGNON."

An hour later, we were sitting outside the vet's office with a chicken in a cardboard box. There were signs taped everywhere to wait in the car. A vet tech in a face mask came out to take the box and said it shouldn't take long. While we waited in the car, they popped the orange cone off, cleaned the rod, pulled it out through his chest, and glued the punctures shut. My mother walked around the corner to the grocery store to pick up dinner, and we were sitting in the car eating fried chicken when they came back outside with Dartagnon. "Oh my god, don't let him see this," my mom said, hiding the evidence.

They gave us the dart for a police report. The receptionist was fuming as she signed us out, curbside. 

"I tell you, if I caught the person shooting chickens with darts, I'd take that blow gun away and shoot them. The police could sort it all out later." 

"That's the plan," we agreed.

fucking evil

We put the chicken back in the kennel to recover. My mother looked at the packet of antibiotic pills, unsure about how to get them into a wild rooster. I cracked one in half, wadded them up into little balls of bread, and dropped them through the bars onto his head. He ate them all up in half a second. Easy.

bucket of chicken

My chicken karma is reset, after losing that little black hen. Now we get to figure out who's walking around shooting neighborhood animals. A QUEST.

How’s the pandemic going? 

I love isolation so much. We have tiled the bathroom, brewed beer, baked and knitted and sewn. Zenny has a desk for school. For Christmas I subscribed the kids to 6 months of craft boxes, and Leif got a very timely soap-making kit. It’s been a much-appreciated recharge.

But the call came in, and I’m back at work this week, half-time. Evidently the building needs to be cleaned every day even though nobody is in there using the toilet, and our janitor has called in sick, so we're taking turns going in. I am just happy to have job security, even if it means scrubbing urinals for no reason.

The tourist quarantine started on Friday. Only 200 people flew in for the entire day, most of them residents, so I guess it’s working.

We had the first arrests for breaking stay-at-home orders - two people who refused to leave the beach park. One of them threw rocks at the police officers. This is not a good line of reasoning to take with police, folks. Don’t do that.

We had our first stuck-in-close-quarters murders; a young mom and her baby, stabbed by her boyfriend.

First confirmed case of the virus in our town came from an employee at the hospital a minute’s jog from my house. Today a few first responders downtown tested positive, too. This is no good.


At least I get to bring home a wagonload of books from work this week. The kids have requested books on home science experiments. Oh no.

Make do

Outside of the house

Went out once to a grocery store over the weekend, turned around and left without touching anything. The small-store shoppers were finally taking things seriously and walking in unnerving 6-foot bubbles through picked-over shelves with masked employees. You could almost hear everyone holding their breath as they passed each other. Feels different out there, I’m going to stay home until we’re down to rice and MREs.

On Monday Mike’s office-mate’s sister was sent home for showing symptoms and was tested for the virus. Mike still hasn’t been approved to work from home.

In the middle of the night on Tuesday, someone set fire to our town’s welfare office. I’m guessing case processing hasn’t been going well over there.

Inside the house 

In the spirit of austerity, I pulled out all my yarn and fabric for inventory. I’m not a stash collector, so it’s mostly scraps and garbage yarn people passed off to me, but there were a few nice skeins and a pristine package of flannel I bought at Purl Soho when I was in New York 10 years ago. Zenny and I sewed it into a simple quilt top. We don’t have batting, but we have heavy backing, and we’re working on our running stitch. It’ll do.

I went downstairs to look for eggs (the neighborhood chickens like my basement)  and found a dying hen. For the rest of the day, I soaked her and coaxed her and consulted the internet for advice, but there isn’t much to be done. They die of it quickly. We tried, though. I deleted the post about this; I don’t want a cry for help with a dying chicken sitting in my archives to run across later. Poor thing.

Got mad at the big painting and put it in time out. Back to small bites.

Almost out of milk. We have a 10lb bag of goat milk powder from the feed store that was being used as kitten formula. Pretty sure feed store kid milk is safe for humans, if it’s safe for kittens. We will find out.

The winds from the volcano shifted and I’ve picked up a dry cough. I don’t like that.

Grounded

Got the call on Thursday that library staff needs to stay home, but "be available" (no day drinking or flying away to a bunker in Utah). I pulled out a bigger canvas to work on for a couple weeks.

On Friday I went out for milk, and the local grocery store was totally normal, except for the paper towel and pasta shelves. The music on the overhead radio paused long enough to mention the 9pm curfew starting that night, and everyone completely ignored it. It was weird that nobody noticed that things are weird.

The governor is tearing his hair out about all the people going to the beach and having cookouts, the line at Costco is still wrapping around the parking lot, the entire island of Kauai is closed, and residents on Molokai are standing around with protest signs at the airport. In my neighborhood, things look normal, but there has been some distant drunk screaming and whiffs of weed. I wonder how many people are going to be murdered by their domestic partners by the end of this.

Our house is busy and comfortable, with chickens to feed, yard work to do, renovations to work on, beer to brew. We've got fresh eggs and fresh bread. The kids have been choosing different workout videos to try in the evenings, and I feel like I've been beaten with a bag of rocks. Working on my post-apocalyptic battle physique, one 10-minute yogalates video at a time.

Over on instagram, artists are posting paintings of toilet paper and toaster ovens. "Paint the beauty in the things around you! Anything can be a painting!" So I painted a big dead cockroach.  I'm about to lose all the new followers I got with those cute cat paintings, I thought, and posted it anyway.

Sorry. Here is a chick.

Working on a larger painting of some dying gardenias from my garden. Withered flowers have more character. I appreciate the down time, but friends are getting sick, losing jobs, and my nonverbal cousin picked up an ominous fever from his group home and is back with my aunt now. I'm worried about a few people. But I'm not clicking on those articles on "how to survive being at home with your kids" (wine and video games LOL). Stop it, already.

Seven

On Friday I got a whisper in the ear halfway through toddler time to say all library programs were cancelled going forward. We finished quacking and I said goodbye to my babies for the foreseeable future.

On Saturday morning we were lining up containers of sanitizing wipes and counting our boxes of gloves, reading a 6-page list of directions from the state librarian. “Throw away inter-office envelopes instead of reusing.” But handling books someone has coughed into is still fine. Got it.

On Sunday I went to Walmart at 6:30am for birthday stuff and had a look at the panic shopping; all the grains, cereals, canned goods, and snacks were gone, but they were still stocked on baking goods, dairy, juices, and coffee. The paper aisles were bare, but the party section was full of paper plates and napkins as usual. By Sunday night, schools were canceled. My car decided to groan and die. Oh no you don’t, I am not getting trapped in a pandemic, I do not know how to steal a motorcycle yet.

On Monday the car reluctantly started and I took it to the shop early in the morning. One employee was running the place, and I was the only person drinking from the Starbucks thermoses while the battery was changed. I knitted and listened to podcasts while PANDEMIC 2020 filled the giant tv in the lounge. It was weird. By afternoon I was getting texts about an employee testing positive at Kualoa Ranch - the employee’s family member works with Mike, and the kids of ranch employees go to my mother’s school. The testing station was inundated and had to turn people away, they’re still waiting on the first wave of results while asymptomatic dumbasses like me are sneaking to Walmart and hanging out in the VW service center.

It’s Tuesday, and the governor just announced that the libraries are closed. It doesn’t even matter because I took vacation leave anyway - today my girl turns SEVEN.

This kid is lawful neutral. She’d be lawful good if she were sweeter, but she’d lock you out of the bunker to save the group. She might send someone out to get what’s left of you later, though. She is quick to laugh, but sharply aware of insult, and she’ll stomp away to be by herself if she’s mad. She‘s a benevolent enforcer - everyone gets a portion before we eat, everyone takes a turn - but she’ll think hard and ask for an explanation if the rules don’t seem right. She reads Calvin and Hobbes in the car, and lays on my arm while we read a chapter of Harry Potter every night. She is more sociable than I am, quicker to hug, easy to cuddle up to. She hates blood - even the word blood - but she tries to hide it. She’s smart and funny, and I love her so much. I look forward to her growing out of the knock-knock jokes, though.

And while all this has been happening, I painted an iron horse. “I need a meaningful object,” I told my mother, snooping around her cabinets. The iron horse with the tiny leather saddle is not a meaningful object, but it’s an object I am inexplicably attracted to and always trying to steal. So I painted it. There, it’s mine now.