One Lent to Rule Them All

I don't know about you, but I have been regularly hitting the wall in the past week or so.  Some of it is that we have been on legit quarantine since 3/20 and haven't been able to leave the house.  (It's not that I'm not stir-crazy. We've all had sickness and I've been dreadfully ill; I'm still not well and not feeling at all myself.  Forgive me if this is scattered).   

Grocery deliveries (or any deliveries, really) became impossible around the same time, and we were okay for the first few weeks, but fresh food had begun to run low toward the end of last week.  I had hoped to be feeling well enough to go to a store this past weekend, but it was not to be, and I'm still inside, managing ridiculously low energy levels and brain fog.  

I know intellectually that we are not in any danger of food insecurity (not even close), and that I have friends who are eager to help with these things, but it was hard not to feel crazy about it all with six people to feed three times a day.  I also know that these are largely first world problems and all that, but I've lived desperately poor, and food insecure, and don't want that for my children.  Some of the stories I've read from WIC recipients unable to purchase their monthly allotments due to panic buying and are in danger of running out of formula or other necessities for their babies have made my heart hurt.

God provides even though my faith is small; by a miracle, I was finally able to get a delivery slot for Pascha afternoon (4/19) on Monday morning. A Pascha miracle, thank God!  I cannot tell you what a weight is off my mind.  (It's unlikely I will receive everything I've ordered, as shortages continue, but I'm hoping to get some Pascha treats to break the Fast).  I also discovered that a local produce-only shop was offering delivery and was able to secure an (expensive but worth it) order of much-needed produce yesterday, just in time for our festal meal of Annunciation. 

 

 

The whole thing has made me think a bit harder about thrift and economy in the house, as well as how I shop for the household.  I've long been uncomfortable with amazon's growing creep in our economy, and how that affects local stores in particular, but also unable to escape it since there are very few places within walking or public transit distance that provide household supplies at a reasonable price.  

(Yes, I know I could drive 30 minutes or more to a big box store, but then we have to get it all home and park again--if we can.  To do that regularly is very stressful and time-consuming, and I find it is better to do things on foot or by public transit with the smaller stores that are naturally on my daily paths, but that also means I can't get everything we need for the house.  It is also not very efficient or cost-effective, to be honest, since we can't easily store Costco-size quantities of things anyway, and I feel very ambivalent about the whole Costco consumer model). 

So grateful to have a full bowl of fruit again!

Amazon's deliveries of even regular stuff are now running 2-3 weeks out, so I'm looking for alternative ways to supply the house.  The city announced they would only collect recycling every two weeks instead of every week, and I expect trash collection is going to get spotty in a week or two, given past history, so it behooves us to further reduce what is going out the door.  Interestingly, our recycling is considerably less since the lockdown, for no reason I can discern, since I'm making roughly the same amount of meals from the same things I usually cook with.  Our trash output is relatively low for the size of our household and is mostly unchanged.

In any case, I'm also considering how I can better use what it is already in the house, reuse or re-purpose things, or make my own as my energy improves, God-willing.  Necessity is the mother of both thrift and invention.  I made my own vegan mayo for the first time yesterday and won't be going back to store-bought!  We're using cloth napkins at the table again, after a lapse of many years, and while I have more washing to do as a result, we're not running through paper napkins (which are in short supply) like they are going out of style.  

I've had this bread maker for quite a few years, but don't use it much, and was almost ready to get rid of it earlier this year, as it takes up an enormous amount of cabinet real estate, but I'm so grateful for it right now!  I don't have enough flour or yeast to make bread every day, but having it with soup a few times has been a treat.

The tree-hugger in me is happy about those small things even if it is just a drop in the ocean of environmental issues.  Those things are so often a zero sum game anyway: use less single-use paper or plastic, but use more water to wash everything...potable water access is an invisible environmental issue, but it won't be for long.

What with everything, I've been unable to settle to anything for long, to relieve my mind from the heavy weight of everything.  Knitting seems to be the only creative endeavor I can work on, and I've done a lot of it.  I just started the ribbing on the body of my Doocot as well as dashing off a few quick doll accessories for my girls.  I doubt I'll be able to wear it much this season, but at least it will be ready to go in the fall when it cools down again.

Yesterday, I squandered a few of my spoons of energy on taking in some transition- and warm-weather skirts, but I'm glad I did it in the end.  The weather is mostly getting beyond wool-skirt temps, and even though I'm in the house, I can feel the shift outside.  I spent the rest of my dwindling energy on the festal meal, and am feeling it today.

So.much.darning.  It seems like every load of wash I do, I have to take a few socks for repair.

This morning I used my allotted energy to fold laundry from the weekend and get the kids' sheets in the wash.  I had hoped to make vegan pancakes for dinner tonight, but I think that shall have to wait to tomorrow and we'll have leftover shchi instead (thanks to my friend Claire for bringing an enormous cabbage last week--I am going to get three meals out of that batch of shchi!)  I confess to feeling frustrated about this energy lag.  With everyone home all the time, there is a lot of household to manage, and feeling ill and exhausted all the time is not helpful.

If I add more broth and another potato, we can definitely get a third meal out of this. (The container is bigger than it looks)

I watched a documentary about the Black Death over the weekend and it was strangely comforting to me in my infirmity.  To remember that humanity has faced this sort of thing before on an even more devastating scale and come out the other side.  In the nine-month plague outbreak of 1348-1349, 6 in 10 people died in London alone.  A town in Italy that had been 120,000 was reduced to 20,000 during that same period.  During the months of February and March 1349, the city of London was burying more than 200 bodies a day.  King Edward III made sure that burials were prompt and done with dignity despite their mass nature, as well as ensuring the peace during the chaos of death and destruction.  Social distancing was normal and expected, as people hunkered down in tiny homes in fear and worry.  It's strange what can be a comfort.

For fiction drama in this direction, I recommend Restoration, a 90s-era film starring a pre-Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. as Charles II's court physician who falls from grace during an outbreak of plague in the city.  It is the journey of a man toward redemption in many senses of the word.

Limiting my news engagement and social media (Instagram, mostly) has been helpful to my mood, but I could do better with it.  I finished the fourth book of the Court of Roses and Thorns series, and finished book two of the All Souls Triology this week, and made quite a bit of headway into book three.  I have enough on my stack not to be concerned about running out just yet, but I could see re-reading both of these series sooner rather than later anyway.  They have been diverting in a helpful way.  

Anyway, a long ramble about nothing really.  How are things in your neck of the pandemic woods?  Inquiring minds want to know.