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.

Yarn Along: Knit! All! The! Things!

 Greetings from Isolation Land!  How is everybody holding up?  We are midway through week three of house-bound homeschooling, and I'm not going to lie, it has been hard.  The school has been fantastic with lesson plans and teacher support, but it isn't the same as being in school, with the loving and patient work of the teachers and staff.

The walls close in on me a couple times per day, and I just want things to go back to "normal," whatever that is.  But I know that is impossible now, and am trying to get used to the new normal.  I remind myself of the hardships others have endured in the past, of the history of disease (something that is of particular research interest to me), as well as what this sacrifice is for: the people on the front lines of this war who take care of the sick and provide food for the hungry.

~knitting~

All the things, obviously.  I'm supervising my kids' homeschooling, and there is really nothing else I can do during that time except knit a bit here and there and try to keep up with housework.  By the time evening comes, I'm too done in for anything else.  

 

Knitting seems to be the only thing I really want to do right now anyway.  So I finished Ponchik's sweater in short order earlier this week, and immediately made a little version for her doll "Baby." 

Birdie immediately asked me to make one for her stuffed elephant, so I spent today working on that for her.  It is the reverse of Ponchik's because I'm running low on the orange yarn and have more of the blue.  Plus they will be easier to identify. 

I should finish it tonight or tomorrow and get it blocked.

I worked a few more rows on my languishing Sorbet Doocot, and am nearly to putting the sleeves on holders, by which point the body should fly along nicely.  I did drop the front neckline an inch or so, and I'm hoping my maths work out on it.  I'm still wearing my blue Doocot all the time, so I'm excited to have another one.  

 

I got this self-striping sock yarn for Christmas, not because I have any intention of making socks, but because I loved the colors and wanted to figure out some kind of shawl or scarf using the self-stripe pattern.  Anyone have a good one that actually utilizes the self-striping?  Most of the patterns I have found that use self-striping yarn aren't really utilizing the stripes as such.

~watching~

Not much, to be honest.  I have been watching season five of Outlander with some grudge, but I think episode seven might just have redeemed the season for me, which has been extremely uneven, and I feel has strayed too far from the book.  Actually, the problems really started in season three when the writers went off-book, and seasons four and five have been uneven where they've tried to course- correct the story line to make it work and bring it back to center.

Where the show hews closely to the book, it works spectacularly, and the performances by the actors are wonderful and nuanced.  Episode three was particularly good, but then, that episode was a direct lift from the book, dialogue and all.  But when the show strays too far from the book, it really goes off the rails for me.  I think there have to be a portion of the writers have not read far enough ahead in the series to know that if you change x or y you affect a major storyline in book five or six, and that all the roads leading to that storyline are going to be detoured as a result.  *cough* Murtagh* cough*

That said, episode seven was extremely well done, and the performance by Sam Heughan was wonderfully truthful and emotionally deep.  I know what is coming in episode eight, having read the books many times, and I'm now curious to see how the show will play it out.

I tried watching a alt-history drama called SS-GB in which the Battle of Britain is lost in 1941 and Britain is occupied by the Nazis, and Scotland Yard is called to investigate a murder.  On the surface, it was intriguing, but I had a hard time sticking with the storyline, even though I liked watching the actors and the production value was high.  Ditto for Babylon Berlin, which barely held my interest through the pilot.  Probably it is the stress of the situation and being so sick, but nothing holds my attention for long on a screen.

~reading~

I have been reading quite a bit though.  Nothing taxing, just a fantasy series by Sarah J. Maas, but I have gulped down the first three books in short order, and am now working on the fourth.  I still have to finish the All Souls Triology (I confess to watching A Discovery of Witches for a 3rd time...) but am kind of saving it for when I finish this Maas series.

~sewing~

Also not much.  I did get some mending and darning done, and got around to taking the front waistband of my green linen skirt apart so I can change the center box pleat into two side pleats, but haven't sewn it back together again.  I also need to cinch the elastic on my marigold linen skirt a bit since it has grown slightly too big.  I bought some rosy-ochre colored linen and some dark teal linen for summer skirts, but I need more time, energy, and mental space to make those up.  I was ready to take my blue and rust corduroy skirts totally apart to take them in properly but ended up wearing both this week instead, and while the fit is still not great, they are both wearable, so I'm inclined to leave them for now.  

~misc~

I started following a couple of excellent Instagram accounts in March, and would be remiss if I didn't share them!  

The first two are accounts that started during the pandemic by artists who have been recreating classic works of art with found materials.  They are: @covidclassics and @tussenkunstenquarantine

You won't regret it!  

 The other accounts are not recent, but are rather curated by medieval scholars, and I just discovered them.  The pictures are amazing, and the captions hilarious.

 

I mean, come on.  That's funny.  @medievalmarginalia, @middle_ages_history, @medievalbestiary, @_medievalart, @damien_kempf are all brilliant accounts.

And finally, if you aren't watching Sir Patrick Stewart's #ASonnetADay

readings, you are really missing out on a lovely treat.  #shakespearemakesitallbetter 

 Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along.

Ippolitov-Ivanov

Another favorite piece of mine, Ippolitov-Ivanov's setting of Psalm 134, Come Bless the Lord.  His more well-known liturgical piece is a setting of the first Antiphon of the Divine Liturgy, but this piece remains dear to my heart.

Salvation is Created

Nothing profound to say, except to share this wonderful recording of a particular favorite of mine, Tschesnikov's Salvation is Created, by a favorite group of mine, Voces8 (pronounced "vohshus").

It was a salve to my soul tonight.

Postcards from the Edge

It's hard to know what to write.  We live on the East Coast, but I have family and friends in the interior of the country, and I think our lives are wildly divergent right now.  I live in a city that is on almost total lockdown, although we don't (yet) have curfews, and churches are still allowed to be open, although I expect that will change in the coming days. 

The city finally set up mobile testing units, but you can't get tested unless you have a doctor's order and a really good reason to get one, because they don't have enough.  The hospitals are running out of supplies already and are begging for masks.  (If you bought masks, please donate them to a hospital near you, as medical providers need them badly!)  There won't be enough ventilators for everyone who needs them.  It was a bad flu season already and the trees bloomed this week, so it is hard not to freak out with every runny nose or slight cough.

Lines at the stores are long and tedious, as the stores have implemented social distancing policies that only allow a certain number of people at a time, and seek to space out arrivals and departures accordingly.  The stores still open have begun rationing and have adjusted hours for cleaning and restocking, but I wish they had done so a few weeks ago when the panic started and shelves were stripped of paper goods, non-perishables, and hardy perishables.  Grocery deliveries are almost impossible to get now, unless you are able to wait for a slot that is two weeks out.  Given that we don't really know how long this will last, it is hard to know how best to plan.  The economic news is even more grim, and we are in for a lot more hardship in the time to come. 

It's a terrible catch-22, this social distancing experiment we're living in: keep people in isolation at home for week or months to slow the virus, flatten the curve, prevent some deaths, and the economy flatlines, or carry on as usual and 2.2 million people die in the U.S. as the health care system is completely overwhelmed, and many more suffer and receive inadequate care for other conditions.  It took 3 months to hit 100,000 cases, and just 12 days to nearly treble it. 

The isolation has been extreme, and I did kind of hit the wall with it on Thursday.  I've been homeschooling my kids all week, and having my daily schedule has been a big help in keeping a rhythm to our days.  The schedule posted on the wall helps the kids too, as they are all anxious and uncertain.  They know they are high risk and are worried.  Creating routines in the midst of uncertainty is one way of regaining some control.  We are still allowed to walk outside, so we've been doing so at least once during the day.  It helps keep the walls from closing in.

Our regular parish will close its doors after tonight's service because it is in a state that just went on total lock down until further notice.  We will live stream services from the monastery this weekend instead.

I hesitated to post this, as I know the news is not cheerful right now, but I also see some people still not taking this very seriously, and would hope that the message will get across loud and clear.  Please stay home as much as you can.  Take a walk in the sunshine or in the rain, but distance yourself from other people.  Have a dance party in your living room, do a zoom teleconference partywith your friends, but stay home.  It is hard, we are social beings, and crave contact.  I'm very introverted and I'm struggling; I feel for the extroverts out there who are likely feeling it more than me. 

But this is for all of us--to give more of us a chance to survive, to protect the vulnerable and elderly, to put the greater good ahead of ourselves. 

This is Lent.

The New Normal

*I started this post last week before the wide-spread closures began, but have tried to update to reflect the present moment.

Last week our school announced a two-week closure, so my kids came home Friday with all their books and will receive their assignments through e-mail.  It's a relief, in a way, because we've been waiting for it to happen, wondering when, and how, and now that it's here, we can just get on with things.  I won't say I'm not nervous about home-schooling four special needs kids for two weeks, or worried about the possibility of a longer-term closure; it is what it is, and we'll get through it.  I completely understand the reasoning (no one at our school has the virus, but the administration has decided in the interest of community safety and prudence, it was wiser to close now, ahead of the curve). *In the days since our school decided to close, the governor of our state ordered state-wide closures, and has also ordered non-essential public spaces to close and essential spaces to limit contact. 

I'm grateful for the foresight of our school administration, for thinking ahead and making plans.  We received detailed lesson plans for each kid yesterday, with additional resources to print out, plus more to come in the mail this week.  (From my own observations, it appears that a large number of schools across the country simply closed, either for two weeks or longer, told parents to school at home and good luck with that). 

It makes sense to flatten the curve of illness so that health care facilities can absorb the impact of large numbers of people getting sick during an already challenging flu season, and that means social distancing.  It's hard to think about the things we will all miss out on during these next weeks, but I was encouraged to read Nichole Roccas' post last week. 

In a way, the flurry of homeschooling means I don't have as much time to dwell on all the commentary online about the current situation.  I'm troubled by the number of people who are flip about the value of human life, and feel they can say the current situation isn't that bad because "only the vulnerable and elderly will die."  My family is vulnerable.  I'm vulnerable.  We are not disposable or fungible.  Every life has value.

What I will say about the present moment is this.  It is completely understandable and human to be afraid.  I am afraid at times.  My children are at higher risk because of their airway malacia, and I have asthma myself.  We don't know how this thing will end, or the final toll, both in human terms and otherwise.  How our societies will change and adapt as a result.  Most of us today don't have living memory of these sorts of things, and the speed and scale of this pandemic is also new, particular to our time and age.  Some good may come of it, as people work together to support one another through these tough times, and certainly some bad, but living in the uncertainty is difficult.

In the meantime, we are staying home, having dance parties a few times a day (I've busted out my early '90s hip hop, plus some other tunes with a good beat), taking a good long walk midday, working through the lesson plans sent by their excellent teachers, doing puzzles, playing games, and waiting to see what happens.  (Hats off to our teachers!  They are the best!)  I'm building breaks for myself into our schedule because I'm introverted and I can't go all day with four small people who talk non-stop without losing my mind.  😁 

For now, I'm off for my midday CSI + knitting break, and the kids have requested a square dance party later. 

Peace be with you.

March Magpie Madness ~Yarn Along~

How's that for an alliterative title??

 

~knitting~

I worked steadily on my Sorbet Doocot...right up until I got magpie fever and decided to stash bust some orangey-yellow yarn on a raglan cardigan for Ponchik.  In fairness, she is outgrowing almost all her sweaters right now, and we still have several months of layer-weather, whereas I can get along without another sweater at the moment.

 I've had the yarn for ages (two skeins of Preciosa from KnitPicks in a discontinued color), but I'm not sure I have enough, so I might have to augment with another color somewhere in there.  The yarn is a funny wind--it feels almost like knitting with roving, but the hand-dyed effect is undeniably pretty!  The yarn does have a subtle twist to it, so perhaps it is single-ply?  I have some vintage buttons that I think will match perfectly and am excited to use.

I've officially hit the part of the year where my hair makes me crazy and have been wearing berets on the regular.  The two I have aren't quite enough, so I swatched my ample supply of Lava Heather Swish for another, and have plans to make a second out of the leftover yellow yarn from last year's Daisy Carbeth (now retired, RIP).  I'm all about the yellow accents this year--it's my new neutral.

(This is a purchased hat, because I don't knit particularly fast, and just needed something).

 ~reading~

Nothing worth writing about.  A fantasty triology by Sarah J. Maas called The Court of Thorns and Roses.  It's fine--light bedtime reading.  Still haven't finished book two of the All Souls Triology or cracked anything I got for Christmas.  All in due season, I suppose.  Fr. Alexander Men's An Inner Step Toward God is back on my stack for a re-read during Lent.  I confess I've started this Lent with absolutely nothing--no reserve, no emotional filter, very little energy for much beyond the bare essentials of keeping the household running.  

~sewing~

Kinder Chinners!  The violin teacher at my kids' school approached me a few weeks ago about purchasing these for the younger violin students at the school (I head the Parent Association, and these kinds of requests often come to me).  They are used with beginning violin students to make the chin rest more comfortable for them.  When I priced them out, it was much cheaper to make them myself.  

It was the perfect Clean Week thing to do, and I spent yesterday cutting and sewing in an assembly line while watching Henry VI Part II and part of Richard the III with Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard.  (I decided that I can't give up screen time for Lent for a variety of reasons, but am restricting what I do watch to a narrow set of options).

~watching~

The second series of The Hollow Crown is good (but flawed as history, given Shakespeare's position at Elizabeth's court and the need to legitimize the Tudor throne).  Cumberbatch gives a great performance, but I like the first series better, both for the plays and the performances.  Also, can I just note that Anton Lesser is a very busy man these days?  He's become the British character actor to watch.  

Just before Lent started, I watched Kenneth Branagh's story about the end of Shakepeare's life called All Is True.  It was a good thing to watch without close attention (i.e. while folding laundry).  Ditto Knives Out, which was a collection of great performances, although Daniel Craig definitely stole the show.  The film is what would happen if Agatha Christie and Guy Ritchie had a movie baby together--ha!

My husband and I have been watching The Crown on and off for some time, and are slowly working through season 2 (I know, I know).  We watched episode six ("Vergangenheit") and it was stunningly good, grappling with issues of forgiveness and reconciliation, both at a societal and personal level.  My husband noted that the writers could have parsed this a bit further, and I agree, but given the complexity of the subject matter, I thought it was handled extremely well.  If you want to go all tin-hat conspiracy theory, if Joseph Kennedy had won the U.S. presidency in 1932 instead of FDR, and Edward VII had stayed king of England instead of abdicating, the world would have been a completely different place in 1950 (and by extension, today).

That's all I got today!  Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along.