Mornin’ friends.  How were your weekends?  Same old, same old?  Here too.  I had kind of a frustrating workweek last week – nothing too bad, but just frustrating, and despite a few glasses of wine and about two hours of ranting on the phone to colleagues, it bled over into my attitude this weekend.  I just felt cooped up and a little raw.  Probably a combination of this annoying work situation and the whole pandemic thing getting me down.  I don’t have the worst of it, by far – we’re all healthy here, and if the worst we’re impacted is having to deal with a few months of quarantine and some plans getting cancelled, that’s okay.  It’s just hard in the trenches.

Anyway, the weather was at least decent, so we got out a couple of times.  I did not go to the supermarket – we ran out of milk towards the end of the week, so I’d run out to the local organic market on Thursday, and picked up a few of the essentials – milk, eggs, yogurt, mac and cheese and cereal for the kiddos, that sort of thing.  Kept the impulse purchasing to just one head of purple cabbage and a pint of blueberries!  (I guess blue/purple foods were looking good to me?)  So we are pretty well set and I didn’t have to brave Wegmans, which I appreciated.  We did walk down to the waterfront and let the kids run out their wiggles at Founders Park on Saturday.  And on Sunday we wanted to get out for a longer stretch of the legs, but were spooked off the Mount Vernon Trail by the mobs of people out walking, running and biking.  So we drove back to Old Town, parked, and walked a stretch along the river (where I found an amazing inspirational rock on the ground), then found a green space for the kids to run around; Nugget invented a new game called “gobble tag” which is pretty fun.  (It’s like regular tag, but when you’re tagged you freeze, and then the tagger gobbles you up.  He’s pretty fast, but I caught him and used it as an opportunity to cover him with kisses.  I’m doing that every chance I get until he’s old enough to be embarrassed by the whole thing.)

Reading.  The longer this quarantine drags on (it’s been over a month now) the more distracted I am and the harder I find it to focus on a book, even a really good book.  Everything I read last week was wonderful.  I started the week off by finishing The Man in the Queue, the first Josephine Tey I’ve checked off my TBR.  And then the rest of the week was devoted to a wonderful surprise – I’d ordered To War with Whitaker, the latest Slightly Foxed Edition, but thought I’d have to wait until the U.K. quarantine ended before getting my package.  It must have been one of the last shipments the Foxes sent off before they departed for their various dens, and I was pleasantly surprised to receive a parcel from Hoxton Square containing not only Whitaker, but The House in Flanders and the 2019 edition of Wonders and Absurdities (the rest of the order I wasn’t expecting for months).  I immediately dove into Whitaker, and it’s absolutely wonderful and a total joy to read.  It’s just that… I can’t concentrate, and I find myself scrolling my phone despite loving every word, which is unfair to Lady Ranfurly.  Well – it just means more time in her company, and I won’t complain about that.

Watching.  It’s been a hodgepodge kind of watching week.  The kids watched Monsters, Inc. twice over the weekend (Saturday night and Sunday afternoon) and I watched with them.  (Steve and I saw it in the movie theater together when it first came out – I was in college! – and we still laugh at all the same jokes.)  And the kids and I watched an episode of the “America’s National Parks” series from the National Geographic Collection on Disney+.  (The episode on Olympic National Park, which featured lots of sea life, including close-ups of orcas and incredible ochre sea stars and pink anemones; Nugget enjoyed the show while eating an incredibly sticky open-faced PB&J prepared for him by his sister.)  I’ll tell you, I really resisted Disney+, but that National Geographic collection makes it all worthwhile.  I am loving the nature documentaries.

Listening.  Not really much of anything, actually.  Part (not all) of an episode of The Crunchy Cocktail Hour while running.  Part (not all) of an episode of The 46 of 46 Podcast: Summit Sessions while kneading bread dough.  And that’s it.

Moving.  Not the best week.  I got a few runs in as part of my “Love the Run You’re With” training plan from Another Mother Runner, but got into a funk later in the week and let a few planned workouts slide.  Shouldn’t have done that, I know.  My funk would have been much less if I’d gotten out and run.  I’ll do better this week.

Making.  A few things!  Sourdough sandwich bread (Steve’s request) on Saturday night.  I did a bunch of things wrong and it still came out well.  Either I’m getting better at this whole bread thing, or the recipe (“basic sourdough” from King Arthur Flour) is just that much of a winner, or both.  And then on Sunday I slow-cooked a big pot of lentil-vegetable stew; true to form, I’m sure I will be the only one who eats it this week.  And a batch of pumpkin spice dinner rolls, just because.  I made 24 knot-style rolls and gave half to the neighbors, as usual.  Not my best, but definitely worth another try.  I overproofed them, which I am learning is a problem.  They also got a little darker than I wanted on the bottom; I’m starting to think that our new sheet pans get too hot.  And I didn’t love the knot style.  The recipe gives an option for doing them as pull-apart rolls and I think I’ll try that next time.  There will definitely be a next time, because I personally don’t think you can have too many dinner roll recipes in your arsenal.

Blogging.  Spring list coming atcha on Wednesday.  We’ll see if I get to do any of it or if I’m stuck in the house until Independence Day (looking increasingly likely).  I was scrolling through some old travel posts recently and remembered that we’ve spent either Memorial Day or the following weekend on Virginia Beach, visiting my BFF Rebecca, for the past few years now.  That wasn’t going to happen this year anyway, since she moved to Florida a few months ago (SOB).  But I was hoping to find something fun to do around water, and it’s not looking good; we have a stay-home order extending into June.  And then on Friday, the last Poetry Friday of 2020 (and I promise it’s not another isolation-themed poem or about the depressing state of the world this time – it’s about BOOKS!).

Loving.  I’ve been drinking down the contents of my tea cupboard as part of an effort to use up as many consumables as I can before we move this summer.  And last week I was working my way through the Jasmine Pearls tea from The Spice and Tea Exchange.  Yum.  I forgot how good it is!  I still have three cups’ worth left in my bag, and I’m going to enjoy them.  And speaking of enjoying consumables, on Saturday I ordered delivery from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams in Old Town.  (All about supporting our local business folks!)  They were out of my favorite flavor (rainbow buttermilk frozen yogurt – so delicious) on Uber Eats, but I did well.  The pints of salty caramel and milkiest chocolate are already gone, and now I’m just hoping the kids don’t notice the wildberry lavender still in the freezer.  Also, I need to try “frose.”  Sangria sorbet made with rose wine?  Sign.  Me.  Up.

Asking.  What are you reading this week?

Morning, Peeps.  Happy new week, happy Easter Monday, and happy Passover to those celebrating.  How were your weekends?  Ours was pretty much as usual in these weird times.  Saturday was a big day – are you ready for this?  I left the house three times.  Can you even believe it?  I went (1) to the grocery store; (2) for a family hike at a nearby nature preserve; and (3) for an afternoon run.  Look at me go!  The rest of the day was spent bumming around, not doing much of anything – par for the course, these days.  Sunday was Easter and we started it in our usual fashion – the kids went tearing downstairs and spent approximately 30 seconds ripping apart the baskets that I painstakingly assembled on Saturday night.  What was different?  We didn’t dress up, go to church, or do the Easter egg hunt in the churchyard.  (Of course, I missed the egg hunt last year too, because a certain child – name withheld to protect the guilty – had a tantrum in church and had to be dragged home screaming, good times.)  The rest of the day was more of the same stuff as usual – we got out for a family walk to the waterfront, where Peanut parked in the grass and read to us out of her new unicorn book (courtesy of the Easter Bunny, a.k.a. ME) and Nugget ran around like a maniac to work off his excess energy.  They both crashed early, and so did I.

Reading.  I am having a hard time focusing, still, although the books were good this week.  I spent nearly the whole week with Elizabeth von Arnim – first enjoying The Solitary Summer in Elizabeth’s German garden, and then traveling by her side through The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen.  (Pretend there’s an umlaut over the “u.”)  Loved both, and the Rugen hijinks were hilarious, but it was in The Solitary Summer that I ended up marking passage after passage with book darts.  Anyway – all good things must come to an end, and I finished the Elizabeth trilogy on Saturday afternoon and pulled The Man in the Queue off my dwindling library stack.  I’m enjoying it, but am still having a hard time settling down to any book.  I blame the COVID Scaries.

Watching.  We’ve watched a couple more episodes of The Crown and I’m definitely liking it (and glad to report that Philip seems more tolerable this season, hurrah) but I’ve been in the mood for something lighter recently, so we’re also working our way through some of the Rock the Park episodes that we’ve not yet seen.  And now I’m planning a trip to Alaska, just as soon as… well, sometime.

Listening.  Podcasts, mostly while running.  I’ve polished off the Crunchy Cocktail Hour backlog I had piled up, and now I’m bouncing from here to there.  The highlight was an old episode of Those Park Guys Podcast, in which Jack, Colton and Tommy discussed their memories from the first five seasons of Rock the Park.  Currently in the earbuds is the “stuck in a rut” episode of Those Park Guys, which seems appropriate right now.

Making.  Mmmmm, not too much this week, actually.  There was no baking this weekend and we are mainly working our way through leftovers and pre-prepped vegetables, so very little cooking.  But I did put together a vegetarian shepherd’s pie for Easter dinner, alongside a pile of steamed broccoli – hit the spot.

Moving.  Lots this week!  I’m working my way through the “Love the Run You’re With” sixteen-week program from Another Mother Runner, and last week was week #1 in the virtual series.  I switched the days around a little, because I had such a busy workday on Tuesday that I wasn’t able to get out for the prescribed run – but since Wednesday was entered as a rest day, I just swapped them around and made Tuesday my rest day instead.  So the week looked like this:

• Monday: Run.
• Tuesday: Rest.
• Wednesday: Run.
• Thursday: Run.
• Friday: Cross-training (I did barre3, which I love).
• Saturday: Run (and I hiked, too).
• Sunday: Rest (went for a family walk).

So that was quite the active week!  The program includes four virtual races; I haven’t decided on the specific combination of distances yet, but they all start with a 5K the weekend of April 25-26, so that’s something to look forward to.  I’m really enjoying having something to train for again; it’s been a long time since I (1) had a race on my calendar, and (2) actually made an effort to train for it.  It feels good.

Blogging.  Winter list recap coming up on Wednesday (spoiler alert: work was busy and I didn’t do much of my list) and another poem on Friday.  Check in with me then!

Loving.  I’ve been waiting five years for Nugget to really bond with one of his stuffed animals (he calls them “lovies” – awwww).  When Peanut was very small, she got into a committed relationship with a stuffed Peter Rabbit, and he’s still number one for her, but Nugget has never been a cuddly toy kind of guy.  When he was a baby, I was his comfort item, which was fun and wonderful but also exhausting after eighteen months of being summoned to his room multiple times a night.  Then there was a phase where he really loved his hard toys, and fell asleep every night for months with his arm draped around a recycled plastic fire truck.  But I’m pleased to report that finally, at five, Nugget has a best (stuffed) friend.  Meet Bear.  (Creative naming is not Nugget’s thing; for that, you want Peanut.)  The important thing to know about Bear is he is Nugget’s best friend and also his sibling, and he has to go everywhere with us.  We had a small crisis on Saturday when Bear fell into the couch and was missing for about 20 minutes.  But you should also know Bear’s history – by which I mean: how Bear came to be part of our family.  You see, you’ve heard of brown bears, black bears, grizzly bears, sloth bears – but have you heard of Squeak Bears?  Squeak Bears are very rare and they come from a beautiful land called Squeakalia, which is a mile off the coast of Antarctica.  (And now you know).  Nugget swam from Antarctica to Squeakalia; the experience was a prize he won after being the first student in his dive class to scuba explore every exhibit in the Baltimore Aquarium.  (Real news.)  And that is where he met Bear, and how Bear came to leave his home on Squeakalia and join our family.  Guys, I literally cannot get enough of Bear’s personal history.  I will sit on the couch for hours listening to tales of Squeakalia.

Asking.  Have you ever been to Squeakalia?  And what are you reading this week?

Good morning, friends – how are you holding up?  Everyone still healthy?  I hope so.  We’re hanging in there over here, doing our best.  The kids don’t really understand that they can’t just go running into the next-door neighbors’ house like they’ve been accustomed to doing.  And it’s not just them – it feels like half the neighborhood has recently discovered the bike path.  Anyway – another weekend in isolation here; I know you get it.  On Saturday we decided to have a big cleaning day – look at us go!  The house was starting to show the effects of several weeks of everyone being home 24/7.  I cleaned the downstairs bathroom and folded laundry, but my big project was the kitchen.  It got a full-on deep clean, and it is staying this way, dammit.  (A clean kitchen is essential to my well-being, and I almost never have one.)  In the afternoon, we escaped for a walk on the bike path.  Steve and I spent the walk dodging people who were not following social distancing guidelines; Peanut danced and skipped down the path, blissfully unaware of anyone else, belting out a song about nature and her “windblown and wild” hair; and Nugget followed in her footsteps, touching every stair railing and helpfully shouting out polite words like “POOP!” and “FART!”

Sunday was my big adventure day – are you ready for this?  I went to the grocery store.  And I wore a bandana face mask that I made with the help of YouTube videos.  (Still not convinced that does anything, but the CDC is now recommending that everyone wear “cloth face coverings” so I dutifully put it on.  More useful, I think: I also wore a pair of Steve’s disposable dishwashing gloves.)  Came home to find that the kids had strategically dismantled all of my hard work from Saturday.  The couch had been torn apart to make a “fort” and the kitchen was trashed… again.  So I rolled up my sleeves and cleaned it… again.  And as soon as it was sparkling, Peanut asked if we could bake a Victoria sponge.  And that’s our afternoon sorted.  As usual, the kids “helped” for a few minutes and then disappeared, leaving me to finish the baking project on my own; Steve was trying to work, and getting frustrated by the interruptions, so we ended up on the back patio, the kids digging in the sandbox and me sipping tea and attempting to read while listening to my stand mixer attempt to make whipped cream out of whole milk and yogurt (fail) and we ultimately ended up with something resembling a Victoria sponge.  I cut slices for the kids, waited until they weren’t looking, and passed half the cake over the back fence to our neighbor Robert (who deserves all the cake, because he is the person responsible for bringing our beloved Zoya into our lives).  Ended the weekend in our favorite way – FaceTiming with loved ones (first Grandma, and then Uncle Dan and Aunt Danielle immediately after).  And that, my friends, is a long writeup of a weekend in which we really did very little, so please accept my apologies.

Reading.  Pretty busy reading week around here.  I continue to surprise myself, because I’ve lost my commute reading time and am terribly distracted in the evenings, but still seem to knock out several books per week.  Not sure how that’s happening, but I’m not mad about it.  Over the early part of the week I blitzed through Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont – my first Elizabeth Taylor (the Important British Writer one, not the Hollywood Starlet one) then picked up Heidi, a childhood favorite I’d never revisited as an adult.  It was as cozy as I remembered, and as fresh as the Alpine air.  I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Switzerland after finishing Heidi, so I stayed there a bit longer through the Switzerland issue of Lodestars Anthology.  (The travel cravings are strong.)  Finally, I spent the weekend in Elizabeth von Arnim’s German garden – re-reading Elizabeth and Her German Garden on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, then turning to The Solitary Summer on Sunday night.  Whew!

Watching.  A bit of this, a bit of that!  A little Star Wars here and there – Nugget was watching the original trilogy over the weekend and I tuned in for some of my favorite, Return of the Jedi.  On Saturday evening, Steve and I were craving nature, so we fired up the Rock the Park episode about the San Juan Islands – ugh, I miss the Salish Sea so much!  And we finished off the weekend on Sunday night with the first episode of season three of The Crown.

Listening.  Podcasts, just podcasts.  Some good escapist listening with The 46 of 46 Podcast – an hour and a half of geeking out about hiking gear.  (I want snowshoes!)  And for company on my runs, an episode of The Vegetarian Zen Podcast about healthy coping strategies in uncertain times (so needed) and The Crunchy Cocktail Hour about greening your bathroom products.

Moving.  Bringing back this category, because one of those healthy coping strategies I’ve been putting into place – and one that I hope to stick with after things go back to “normal” is making sure that I get my time for movement.  I made it out for three runs and several walks last week, and hit up two online barre3 classes.  Felt good to take that time for myself.

Making.  Lots of home cooking again this week.  In addition to regular food prep tasks, I served up an elaborate dinner of vegan sausages, sauteed cabbage, and mashed potatoes.  Yum.  And of course there was the Victoria sponge on Sunday, which came out pretty well if not perfect.  (In place of the whipped cream, I used clotted cream and it worked out fairly well.)

Blogging.  Bookish week coming for you – my March reading round-up on Wednesday (buckle in, it’s a long one) and then another Poetry Friday post on Friday.  Check in with me then!

Loving.  Another baby is in the world!  My friend Connie welcomed her little guy over the weekend.  He’s adorable and I am hating this pandemic even more, because I so want to go over to her house and cuddle him.  I’m settling for pictures for now.

Asking.  What are you reading this week?

Morning, fellow hermits.  How goes the social distancing?  It was a long week of being stuck in the house, although I did escape for a couple of runs around my neighborhood, which helped.  I’m trying hard to be gentle on myself; my Type A perfectionist side needs to unclench and realize that she is not going to be the perfect parent, teacher and lawyer all at the same time.  I’m trying to do three full-time jobs here, and it’s tough.  I’m lucky in that I have a job that allows me to work remotely, and so does Steve (in fact, he works remotely all the time – so as he told his colleagues in an all-firm videoconference they had, the luxuries of working for a small boutique instead of for Biglaw, and I can’t imagine if all 900+ lawyers in my firm tried to Zoom at once – it’s just a regular Monday for him).  But trading off kid-duty, making sure they don’t murder each other or fall too far behind in their reading and math skills, and respond promptly to every email I get is… well, it’s challenging.  All the more reason I have been looking forward to weekends, when I only have one job (Mom) instead of three (Homeschooling Mom, attorney at law).

This weekend was much of the same, obviously.  It rained cats and dogs on Saturday, so going out wasn’t tempting at all.  Steve and I each escaped for a run, in turn, during breaks in the precip.  The rest of the day I spent baking bread and breaking up fights between the kids.  Sunday dawned misty and gloomy, but not raining, so we drove out to Manassas National Battlefield Park to hike a different bluebell trail (recap on Wednesday).  The rest of the weekend – again, more of the same.  Cooking up a storm in the kitchen; talking to our next-door neighbors from opposite ends of the porch; and curling up on the couch for comfort reading while the kids watched cartoons (this week: Miraculous!, and Jim Henson’s Word Party, neither of which excites me much).  Sunday Scaries hit hard yesterday afternoon, as I wonder afresh how I am going to juggle everything this week.

Reading.  I know we are all having trouble concentrating – tell me it’s not just me?  In stressful times, I always turn to books for comfort; that’s nothing new.  But it has been hard to stop scrolling through my phone, reading the news and checking in on folks through social media (now that’s the only “social” we have).  When I do read, I’m looking for something none too taxing.  I finished Lucia in London mid-week and then turned to Meet the Frugalwoods, which was on my library stack.  Not particularly urgent – with the library closed, all deadlines have been extended until late April – but some fast-reading nonfiction seemed right for the moment.  I ripped through Frugalwoods in a day, then spent another day on the latest issue of Slightly Foxed before returning to E. F. Benson’s perfectly-tuned comedic world.  I’ve been waiting four books for Emmeline “Lucia” Lucas and Elizabeth Mapp to have their cataclysmic encounter, and it has finally arrived.  A good way to close out the weekend and gin myself up for the coming week.

Watching.  I always say “um, nothing, just whatever the kids watched” but I keep forgetting to mention that I have been tuning into Miranda Mills’ delightful BookTube videos.  For true bookish comfort, there is really nothing better than watching Miranda wax poetic about her favorite reads, against a backdrop of her beautifully curated bookshelves.  I highly recommend the classics episode, and the episode on cozy mysteries.  I’m saving her latest videos, on comfort reads and books to read while social distancing, for when the situation gets more dire, as I know it will.  I also nominally watched – although I admit my attention was sporadic – the first episode of “Continent 7” from the National Geographic Channel on Disney+.  I’ve been dreaming of a trip to Antarctica for years, but for the moment, this is the closest I will get.

Listening.  A few podcast episodes – I finished up an old back episode of The Book Riot Podcast over a run this weekend; I may unsubscribe as it’s starting to feel repetitive.  I know they’re just covering the news, but there are other things that are more enticing.  Other than that, the main listening has been to Jim Dale reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – excellent comfort listening, and I’ve been putting it on while the kids do art projects midway through our homeschooling mornings (just about when Mom really needs a break).

Making.  The quarantine kitchen remains open for business!  This weekend I baked a loaf of rosemary sourdough bread (recipe courtesy of King Arthur Flour) and stocked the larder with leftovers for the week – tofu stir-fry with kale and broccoli on Saturday, and the kids’ favorite goulash on Sunday.  We’ll be eating well this week, but we’re getting low on green veggies – just half a family-sized bag of broccoli florets and one green cabbage left – so I foresee a trip to the grocery store in my future, wish me luck, friends.

Blogging.  Taking you with me to the bluebells on Wednesday – and local friends, take note, there’s a good week of blooms left – and sharing the first Poetry Friday post of April 2020 on Friday.  If you’ve been reading for more than one second, it will not surprise you at all to see that I am opening this year’s National Poetry Month posting, as always, with e.e. cummings.

Loving.  This will likely not interest ANY of you at all, but in a week that was mostly devoid of joy, the thing that brought the biggest smile was: Camp Little Notch, where I spent many a happy hour falling off boats, shared a copy of the camp songbook on Facebook this week.  I downloaded it and promptly spent several days walking around humming the theme song for Tall Timbers, the tent unit where my group nearly always bunked up (as it had its own private dock and was near the fleet of sailboats).  Somehow I didn’t realize that every tent unit had their own theme song – likely because Tall Timbers was home, so its song was the only song that mattered.  Little Notch belonged to the Girl Scouts when I was a camper there, but it’s now privately held by a foundation established by former campers when the Girl Scouts put the camp up for sale some years ago, and I have a newly-hatched dream of taking Steve and the kids there for one of their Family Camp weekends.  We will, of course, be sleeping at Tall Timbers, and everyone will be required to sing the song.

Asking.  How are you holding up, and what are you reading this week?

Well, friends, we have one week (and some change) of social distancing behind us.  How are you holding up?  I know we’re all under different strictures – depending on geography, some of my friends are under strict shelter-in-place orders, and others have just their own social consciences to go on, but it’s clear that staying home is the right thing to do right now – but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.  Steve and I worked from home all week, and the kids were knocking around the house, too; their school is closed until at least April 13.  (I’m guessing it will be longer, and Steve and I have started to wonder aloud to each other whether we will still be on the hook for tuition if we get to June and the school hasn’t reopened.)  I can’t say I had a very productive week, work-wise, although I did my best.  For the time being, Steve and I are working in shifts – he has the morning and I have the afternoon.  The non-working parent is in charge of the kiddos.  They’re nominally on “spring break” – they have distance learning packets to do, but the school has asked that we not start those until March 30, so I’m following a slightly looser schedule in the mornings and just trying to do some workbook pages and some enrichment activities, and otherwise let them spend a lot of time on art projects, which is what they prefer to do.  We’ll tighten it up once distance learning begins, but we’re just easing in for now.

That was my week – stressful, for sure.  I have some thoughts about the pressures of this quarantine, so stay tuned for a post in the next couple of weeks.  Anyway – the weekend was welcome, when it came.  Not because it was all that different from the week, but it was a relief to me not to have to juggle the kids and work.  Steve put in several hours on both Saturday and Sunday, and I mostly just kid-wrangled.  I did go out twice – on Saturday, I drove down to Wegmans to pick up some of the food we were running low on (most critically, coffee and ovaltine), and on Sunday we headed out for a family hike.  The trails were more crowded than I was expecting, and I ended up feeling guilty for going, even though I really needed a nature release.  Steve and I agreed that if we hike again during this quarantine, we are going to have to go somewhere much more remote.  I really hope I don’t have to give up hiking, since it’s such an important mental health activity for me.  I’d rather go quietly insane indoors than get COVID-19, but still.

Reading.  ‘Twas a pretty active reading week, which was to be expected (even without commuting).  On Monday, I finished The Mitford Murders, which was predictable but fun.  Moved on to Girl, Woman, Other, because it was a two-week book at the library – I couldn’t have predicted that before I finished it, the library would shut down completely and extend everyone’s deadlines to April 20th.  Oh, well – I finished it anyway, and it was astonishing.  Definitely not the comfort reading that I’m craving at the moment, but a really remarkable achievement and well worthy of the Booker Prize (and much better than The Testaments, which I admittedly liked very much).  Anyway, between quarantining and Girl, Woman, Other, I really needed my next book to be something that was going to make me feel good – Jane Austen to the rescue.  I read Sanditon, which is on my classics club list, so you can look out for a review in the next few weeks.  Fourth and final book of the week is Lucia in London, also from the classics club list, and just the kind of lighthearted romp that I so badly need right now.

Watching.  Lots of the kids’ choices, as usual – way too much of The Lion Guard, but more satisfactorily, Inside Out and Moana.  (This quarantine is brought to you by Disney+ and Pastabilities dinosaur mac ‘n cheese.)  On a more grown-up note, somewhat tragically, Steve and I are on the last episode of the current season of The Great British Bake-Off.  There are still the holiday episodes to get through, so we have that.  Once those are done, I will have to fight against my current overwhelming desire to go back to the beginning and start all over again.  Emma is calling my name, and I have a long queue of episodes of Rock the Park, and I’m not done with Grantchester, and I want to explore the National Geographic Channel section on Disney+, and it’s long past time for a Parks and Recreation re-watch, but I’m just going to watch Bake-Off over and over and over.

Listening.  The latest episode of Shedunnit, on romance in crime fiction, was the highlight of the week.  Not much listening other than that – I put on a bit of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for Nugget while he was building with Lincoln Logs one morning, and spent a little time with The Book Riot Podcast playing in the background as I baked pomodori al forno and sourdough crackers over the weekend, but that’s about it.

Making.  Right, so about that – not much over the course of the week; just some work product and a lot of yelling.  But I had a very soothing afternoon in the kitchen on Sunday.  I made a batch of pomodori al forno – slow-roasted Roma tomatoes, recipe courtesy of my mom’s BFF, Denise.  A double batch of my “Impossibly good bolognese” – vegan bolognese sauce with Impossible burger ground.  A batch of tangy sourdough crackers (not as crunchy as I’d like, but definitely edible and the recipe uses discard sourdough starter, so I’ll basically forgive all faults).  Several containers of sliced cucumbers and peppers for crunching during the week.  And a cleaned-out fridge, so it’s abundantly clear what we have in there.  No one is allowed to complain that there’s nothing to eat.

Blogging.  Book review on Wednesday, for the Classics Club (I’m on FIRE lately, people).  And a recap of our Sunday hike is coming on Friday.  I still feel a bit guilty about it, but I took a lot of good pictures and it seems like a waste to not show them to you.

Loving.  If you’re in need of a new hand-washing song, Nugget made up a good one.  Write this down: “Happy birthday to me, I’m one hundred and three, I smell like a monkey and I look like a donkey.”  (Note that it’s one hundred, not a hundred, and if you sing it wrong he WILL correct you.)  Repeat twice.  You’re welcome.  WASH YOUR HANDS, PEOPLE.

Asking.  What are you reading this week?  And how are you staying sane in the quarantine?

Hi, friends.  How goes the social distancing?  I’ll be honest – as I took stock of my bookshelves sagging under the weight of all my unread books; of my fully stocked tea cupboard; of the new containers of cocoa powder and bread flour in my baking pantry, I thought – I’ve been preparing for this moment all my life.  Fellow introverts!  It’s time for us to lead the people!  If only I didn’t have to figure out a way to get work done with two kids knocking around the house for the next few weeks, this would be a piece of cake.  Mmmm, cake.

So – yeah.  It was quite a momentous week in the world, huh?  It was pretty momentous for me personally, too.  About that: I started the week preparing for a huge project to come to fruition.  (I’ve been vague, but I guess I can actually tell you without divulging anything confidential: the big work thing that has been keeping me chained to my desk for the last month is a federal jury trial – my first, actually.  We rarely try cases, so this is a major source of work and nerves.)  But late Monday afternoon, we got word that the trial is indefinitely postponed, not actually because of COVID-19, but for unrelated procedural reasons.  It was welcome news, although I still found myself in the office, meeting with the trial team until after 9:00 on Monday night, just sorting through this new development.  So instead of spending last week getting ready to start jury selection this morning, I was catching up on other work.  Then toward the end of the week, the news started coming fast and furious.  On Thursday, I was notified that I am being promoted (not entirely unexpected) and that a bigger promotion (definitely unexpected) may be in the offing.  And then while I was still reeling from that surprise, my phone pinged with an email from the kids’ school notifying us that they would be shutting down effective today.  We were scheduled to go on spring break on the 20th, so they decided to close a few days early – we had no snow days this year, so I guess it was doable – and then revisit opening on March 30, when the kids would have been heading back.  They sent everyone home with distance learning packages just in case they’re not able to reopen, #gulp.

And that just gets us to Friday.  Wowsers.  Thankfully, the weekend was much more uneventful than the week.  We are being good community members and practicing social distancing as recommended by our Virginia health authorities, so we barely left the house all weekend.  On Saturday, I did walk to the library to pick up two books I had on hold, and Steve took the kids to run off some energy on the soccer field half a block from our house, but we were all careful not to touch anything and to stay several feet away from other people, and to wash our hands thoroughly when we got home.  (There were actually quite a few people out walking in the neighborhood, which surprised me a little bit.)  On Sunday, we stayed even closer to home.  Other than an hour with Nugget on a mostly deserted playground, I stayed in all day.  The kids watched movies and played games, and I cleaned and then baked up a storm in the kitchen (read on).  It was actually sort of relaxing, if you could forget for a minute why we had to stay home.

Reading.  My reading time tanked, rather, because my first concession to COVID-19 was to stop riding the metro a week ago.  I love taking public transportation, not least because it’s an hour and ten minutes, every day, when I just read.  But given that we have documented community spread of the virus in the D.C. area, it seemed like too big of a risk, so I’m either working from home or driving to work until things calm down.  That’s meant a dip in my page totals, and both of the books I read last week were on the longer side, so this is a short list.  I spent most of the week over The Priory, by Dorothy Whipple, and LOVED every second of it.  Review coming soon.  Over the weekend, I made it about three-quarters of the way through The Mitford Murders, first in a series by Jessica Fellowes (niece of Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey).  It’s a lot of fun, and I’m enjoying it – I’ll finish it up today and then be on to the next thing, which will probably be Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernardine Evaristo.  (It was one of the books I picked up from the library holds shelf this weekend, and there’s a long list of neighbors patiently waiting their turn with it, so I’ll have to prioritize it.)

Watching.  Not too much.  Frozen II again, of course.  (Benefit to a deserted playground: Nugget can belt out the songs while swinging to his heart’s content.)  That’s about it.  The kids watched some nature documentaries but I was in another room, so I missed out.

Listening.  The silver lining to my loss of commute reading time is: more listening time.  I started a new Great Courses audiobook (The Art of Reading), listened to a few episodes of The Book Riot Podcast, and sang along to The Book of Mormon while sailing down the GW Parkway.  But the highlight was The 46 of 46 Podcast‘s first installment in a new “ADK Campfire Stories” series, about a kayak fisherman who was stalked by a Bigfoot while camping on the Sacandaga River.  Shiveringly spooky!

Making.  So pretty much all public spaces are shutting down one by one, but do you know what’s not closed?  My kitchen!  On Saturday I baked a loaf of chocolate banana bread, which is already pretty much gone – the whole household loved it.  Sunday was the big cooking and baking day of the weekend, though.  I made my first attempt at baguettes, which turned out fairly well; a big pot of butter bean soup with vegetables; and a loaf of sourdough sandwich bread.  Between the butter bean soup and the sandwich bread, we’re set for the week’s lunches.  This bread-baking hobby that I’ve been working on is a huge source of comfort.  When times are weird and scary, it feels good to do something analog and tangible – like knead dough.

Blogging.  Another bookish week, of course!  I have a fun quote about spring cleaning, from indifferent housewife Shirley Jackson, on Wednesday.  And on Friday, March’s installment of Themed Reads.  (I’m excited about the topic.)  Check in with me!  And wash your hands!

Loving.  This week on social media, I stumbled across Subpar Parks – how had I never seen these hilarious travel posters before?  If you’re as clueless as I was, here’s the concept: artist and graphic designer Amber Share was astonished to find one-star Yelp reviews of our country’s most beautiful places.  But once she shook off her shock, Share turned the park-panning reviews into funny posters, quoting some of the worst.  For example, Capitol Reef National Park: “Somewhat Bland.”  Zion National Park: “Scenery is Distant and Impersonal.”  Joshua Tree: “The Only Thing to Do Here is Walk Around the Desert.”  And the crowning jewel – Grand Canyon: “A Hole.  A Very, Very Large Hole.”  There are a lot more, and the art is great, so do check them out and buy a print, a sticker or a postcard if the spirit moves you.  (Share is planning to design a one-star poster for all 62 national parks, so I’m waiting patiently for my backyard park, Shenandoah National Park, and then I will probably buy a few.)

Asking.  What are you reading while social distancing?

I had a banner day at my library branch’s recent book sale.  After I went from shelf to shelf snatching up every British Library Crime Classic I could find (there were three!) I spotted a pretty orange Penguin edition of Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before.  Snagged that too, of course.  And as I stood in the maelstrom of library patrons elbowing each other aside to get to the $2 hardcover new releases, I thought to myself – I don’t have this one, right?

I knew I had The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum, Baudolino and The Prague Cematery.  But I was pretty sure I didn’t have this one.  Added it to the pile.

After lugging my haul home – all that for $12.00! – I started shelving and… whoops.  There it was, right with the rest of the Ecos.  The Island of the Day Before.  And I think that would be the first time I’ve ever forgotten that I owned a specific book and bought a duplicate copy – unintentionally, at least.  It goes without saying that everyone needs at least three copies of Pride and Prejudice and that the correct number of editions of Anne of Green Gables for a home library is “one more” – but that’s different.

Oh, well.  An extra $2 for the library is still money well spent.

Have you ever done this?  Please tell me I’m not alone.

Morning, folks.  How were your weekends?  Ours was busy.  The reason?  See above picture: this is Go Dog.  He’s a stuffed version of one of the dogs from the classic children’s picture book Go Dog Go (remember that? it was one of my favorites).  This Go Dog belongs to Nugget’s class, and each of the kids is getting a chance to take him home for a weekend.  This past weekend was our turn, FINALLY – Nugget has been talking about Go Dog and asking when his turn would come since September.  Go Dog has a travel journal in which each family contributes a few pages of pictures and text about Go Dog’s adventures while visiting them, and we were determined to show Go Dog a good time and give him some excellent material for his travel journal.  On Saturday, we had a birthday party to attend for one of the other kids in Nugget’s class – Go Dog came along – and then my dear friend Zan came over and we all headed out to the neighborhood St. Patrick’s Day Parade (yes, I know it’s early, no, I can’t explain why).  After the parade, we had pasta at Mia’s Italian Kitchen, walked around the waterfront, and took the trolley home.  Whew!  Go Dog was exhausted.  On Sunday, we took Go Dog to one of our favorite places – Great Falls Park.  Go Dog was impressed by the waterfall and rapids, and he enjoyed spotting birds with Nugget and tested out a whitewater kayak.  In the afternoon, we headed back down to the waterfront and had pizza at Pizzeria Paradiso – Nugget’s special request, since it was his birthday weekend – and rode the trolley home, again.  I think Go Dog had an excellent weekend.  I think the birthday Nugget had an excellent weekend, too.

Reading.  After several weeks of telling you I’m making progress on Daniel Deronda, guys, I promise!, I have a busy week in books to recap for you.  I finished Daniel Deronda on Wednesday (see, I told you I was making progress) – review coming to you this Wednesday.  Next, with a library deadline breathing down my neck, I flew through Olive, Again – Elizabeth Strout’s new collection of linked short stories about Olive Kitteridge.  For the weekend, I was in the mood for some comfort reading; it’s been a hectic few weeks, and it’s not going to let up for at least two more weeks.  And I was also in the mood to read from my own shelves, and not from the library stack.  So I picked up Ex Libris on Friday night, read that over the course of Friday evening and Saturday evening, then followed it up with Summoned by Bells (John Betjeman’s memoir-in-verse) in one sitting on Saturday night.  Ended the weekend with The Priory, by Dorothy Whipple – I’m about 120 pages in as of the writing of this post, and loving it so far.

Watching.  Nothing for myself, although I have had several more viewings of Frozen II out of the corner of my eye, and seen more than I care to admit of Trolls: The Beat Goes On!  Steve and I spent a lot of time talking about our viewing plans – we need to finish the current season of Great British Bake-Off, and catch up on Rock the Park, and watch the latest season of The Crown, and also I want to check out that CNN docuseries on the Windsors.  But as of this week, we’re all talk and no actual viewing.

Listening.  Lots of podcast potpourri – a couple of episodes of Shedunnit, a couple of episodes of The 46 of 46 Podcast, snatches of The Mom Hour and Tea or Books?, an episode of A-Pod…cast for Killer Whales and an episode of Outside/In about penguin-counting in Antarctica.  Well-rounded or all over the place?  You decide.

Making.  Nothing in the kitchen this weekend and nothing in particular on the needles, either.  I made a lot of pictures of Go Dog having adventures, though, and a five-page essay about our weekend fun to add to Go Dog’s travel journal, though!

Blogging.  I have a book review (of Daniel Deronda) for you on Wednesday, and a funny post about a dubious bookish milestone I experienced recently(-ish… back in December) on Friday.  Check in with me then!

Loving.  This article about a young girl who established read-aloud libraries in her local NICUs (part of her Girl Scout Silver Award project) is so wonderful.  I can vividly remember my days sitting next to Peanut’s isolette, reading to her from Emily of New Moon.  The kids are all right, you guys.  The kids are all right.

Asking.  What are you reading this week?

Morning, friends.  How were your weekends?  Mine was better than last weekend, but that’s a low bar to clear.  It got started late – for the third week in a row, I worked until after 10:00 on Friday night.  But at least I didn’t have to work the rest of the weekend, other than a few minutes on Saturday morning to knock out one task.  The rest of the weekend, I mostly drifted around.  On Saturday morning we were out the door early for Nugget’s teeball assessment.  The poor little guy was nervous about it, but once he got going, he had fun – I knew he would.  That was pretty much the only thing we did on Saturday.  It was cold, and we just ended up staying home all afternoon; I don’t even remember what I was up to.  On Sunday, we headed out for a hike at Huntley Meadows, one of our favorite local spots.  It’s a quick and easy loop trail, but it was a beautiful bluebird day and we saw lots of wildlife – including four or five red-headed woodpeckers, a great blue heron, and (very exciting!) a pileated woodpecker.  When we got home, I made a quick run to the grocery store for the week’s lunch supplies, then came home and whipped up some green soup and a batch of soft pretzels – yum.  Ended the weekend by FaceTiming with my brother, which is always fun.  It all went way too fast, and now it’s a new week, and I am not ready.

Reading.  Consistent with a week in which work was absolutely crazy – not quite 70 hours, like the week before last, but upwards of 60, and totally exhausting – I did not get much reading done.  Some days, like Friday, I didn’t read at all (gasp).  I knew that I would probably be late in the office, and rather than take Metro home I drove into the city, so obviously that takes the commute reading out of the day.  And if I’m working until after 10:00 you can bet I’m not taking lunch breaks, either.  So I’m still on Daniel Deronda.  If I was reading anything but George Eliot, I probably could have gotten through at least a book and a half even during a hectic workweek, but Eliot requires time and attention, which are two things that have been in short supply recently.  I have about 240 pages left to go as of the writing of this blog post, so I’ll definitely finish it this week, no matter how the work schedule looks, and have a review for you next week.

Watching.  I’m glad to report that I have finally seen Frozen II – and then seen it five more times.  I missed out on it in the movie theater, but now that it’s out digitally, we downloaded a copy for the kids, and they watched it six times this weekend.  My initial reaction was a lot of “WTF is this” and some Jack Sparrow-style “I wash my hands of this weirdness” but it’s grown on me and now I… think I kind of like it?  The best part, clearly, is Kristoff’s 1980s-montage-style music video, sung without even a hint of irony.  I laughed until I was literally sobbing.  Please tell me that part was supposed to be funny?

Listening.  I was on a major outdoor podcast binge this week, because that was about as close as I was going to get to a day in the woods.  I listened to about seven episodes of The 46 of 46 Podcast and am now all caught up.

Making.  Aside from reams and reams of work product, I made some velvety green soup to take for lunches this week, and – this is very exciting – pretzels!  I used this recipe from King Arthur Flour, and found it surprisingly easy and not at all time-consuming.  Pretzels are one of those things that I thought would be super difficult and complicated to make, but they weren’t at all.  Eight minutes of kneading, a 30-minute rise, and no boiling – and they tasted incredible, like NYC street pretzels.  The recipe made a batch of eight, and we only have one left – Peanut and Steve ate most of them yesterday.  Aside from the fact that a few of them came out looking like elephants (note to self: only one twist) I was really pleased with them.  And Steve told me he thought they were as good as the traditional German pretzels made by our friend Stephen (who grew up in Switzerland and worked in a bakery in Bavaria) – I don’t think that’s true, but it was a very nice compliment.  And a lesson learned: don’t assume a recipe is going to be difficult or complicated, and just try.

Blogging.  Another bookish week, per usual.  February’s reading recap is coming atcha on Wednesday, and I have another book review – E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India this time – for you on Friday.  Check in with me then!

Loving.  It was a total delight to FaceTime with my brother this weekend.  We decided back in January that we were going to have a standing FaceTime date for the first Sunday of every month, but then we missed February’s appointment (it was Superbowl Sunday, and we both forgot).  We talk on the phone frequently, but he usually calls in the evening after the kids have gone to bed, and we have both wanted Peanut and Nugget to see their uncle more often, even if a phone screen is the best we can do – at least until we are all together for vacation this summer.

Asking.  What are you reading this week?