closing in

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So the hospital here is sending a team of volunteers down to NYC, because with their electives all cancelled the hospital is down at about 50% capacity, when usually it’s operating at 110% on any given day, and while that’s important and good and necessary, a lot of the medical staff are understandably stressed and bored and horrified and just want to help. so, participation is entirely voluntary, but they’re assembling a team. my friend isn’t going even though his parents live down there and he’s afraid for them, because well, his family here needs him, and also he’s one of only three doctors in this entire city who can do some of the things he does, so.

Lots of the ones going are young, residents even. They just want to help. And they need help, down there. The problem is, they need equipment too, and there’s not really any to spare. 

I wasn’t aware of this but the USS Comfort and the convention center they’ve converted down there are going to both be reserved for non-virus cases. It makes sense, it’s just– well, if you have a non-COVID emergency in NYC now, you’re going out to that ship in the harbor, godspeed and good luck. (how many babies are going to get born on that thing, imagine it.)

anyway. in other news I read Dealing with Dragons to the kids today– well, started to– and they’re not used to having longer things read to them so they’re pretty excited but also confused. I said “oh i’m gonna stop here because the chapter’s not over but this bit of the story is, there’s about to be another thing and I’m gonna save that for later” and they’re like ????? because they’re used to chapter books with like, 300-word chapters. I’m like nah kids, I’m here to Educate you. 

We also ran around like total weirdos outdoors for a ridiculously long time. It looked like it was gonna be gorgeous out but then it was precisely the temperature of the interior of the fridge, out there, despite the sun. Ah, March. It’s supposed to be shitty tomorrow so we’re gonna stay inside and bake cookies, there’s no junk food in this house and it’s killing me slowly. Sugar cookies, and then we’re putting icing on them. It’s going to be a disaster and an enormous mess but I’m willing to face it. it’s the least I can do, I’m the Fun Auntie/Godmother/Whatever I am.

I also maybe finished Little Fishie. I gotta proofread and decide if that’s a reasonable ending. I wanted to post it today but it wasn’t done, so. I should stop writing this and go work on those edits. Ok OK bye.

raccoons

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oh i forgot but the rustling and thumping just reminded me

so my friend’s house where i’m staying is super nice, like, oldschool upper middle-class dream, like, inner-ring suburb, built in the 30s, kind of genteelly falling down in a few places but with nice recent work done (new furnace, weird 80s Great Room off the back), it’s very tastefully decorated in the eclectic people-with-some-taste-and-modest-spare-cash kinda aesthetic, antique furniture and sensible color scheme, some actual wood paneling and leaded windows, and coordinating but mismatched dishes and such, it’s really nice and just 0% pretentious, and it has its own creek that’s really a drainage ditch that goes straight thru the yard but it’s landscaped with these cute lil bridges across it perfect for tag and Pooh-sticks, and i’m not describing it well but it’s cute as hell, really, and absolutely the opposite of cookie-cutter. I’m in the spare room which has a brocade-upholstered love seat, a bookshelf full of how-to-knit books and physics and engineering textbooks on one wall and a bookshelf full of classic sci-fi novels on the other and a folding wooden screen concealing a 1910s roll-top desk full of glitter unicorn stationery with a glass pen and inkwell. right? this place is great. also literally five bathrooms and yet somehow there are never enough, that’s the miracle of life with kids.

And there’s this family of raccoons that climbs up the garage drainpipe and commutes across the lower roof just outside this bedroom window every night around 2am to get to the creek to wash their food and then afterward they come back across the roof to get back to the pine hedge where they sleep all day. I woke up the first night and was like i am hallucinating and the second night I was like no that’s definitely someone walking on the roof and today my friend was like no that’s our trash pandas, I’ve watched them climb the gutter and I know it’s them, what am I supposed to do about it, they were here first

so, there’s just a raccoon highway outside my window.

infinite-mirrors: the first of the pandemic prompts! i took the...

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infinite-mirrors:

the first of the pandemic prompts! i took the liberty of making it a modern au because i can. requested by raventaire (x)

donate to my ko-fi :)

Pandemic sourdough waffles

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Pandemic sourdough waffles:

Pandemic Sourdough Waffles, on BoingBoing [https://boingboing.net/2020/03/21/pandemic-sourdough-waffles.html]

Ingredients:

½ cup unfed starter

½ cup flour

½ cup milk

1 egg

¼ cup oil or butter

1 ½ tsp baking soda

1 Tbs brown sugar

a splash of Grand Marnier

Mix the starter, flour, and milk in a large bowl. You can let them sit overnight if you want to be fancy. You may also use the sort of milk known as buttermilk for the milk addition and have buttermilk sourdough waffles.

Add the egg, oil, baking soda, and brown sugar. If you like, and I certainly do, I recommend adding a splash of Grand Marnier liquor to the batter.

I made a tripled version of this recipe– left the starter, flour, milk in a bowl on the counter overnight, let it get super bubbly, mixed up the rest this morning, and made it according to the waffle iron instructions. This is an excellent, easy sourdough waffle recipe if you’re just getting into sourdough, and it’s a fantastic use for discard. (I save up my discard in the fridge until I have enough for stuff like this.)

I got up early this morning to start baking them too, because like. It takes forever for a waffle iron to do its thing. And it was wonderful because right as I was about to finish the first set of waffles, Kid #1 came up to me and put his head on one side and twiddled his hands and said wellllllllll, maybe I should make myself a peanut butter sandwich to tide me over? and right then the waffle iron finally beeped and I could say aha, no, you will have a waffle!  and be the hero of the morning.

Later we’re going to make cutout sugar cookies and I am steeling myself. I brought my Precious Notebook From When I Went Away To School with my childhood recipes in it from my mom, and there’s sugar cookies in there, so I’ll post that later maybe if I have time.

replies

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gnomeicecream replied to your post: closing in

Put cloves and cinnomon and ginger in your cookies and coat them in colorful sugar

ah, i have a separate recipe for spice rollout cookies, which we had to do Strange Favors to get from the local Little Old Latvian Lady mafia– an authentic piparkukas recipe, adapted for US-available ingredients. It takes days to make that one, properly– it needs to chill and rest and such. 

These are going to be plain sugar cookies, which we are then going to frost with buttercream icing and put sprinkles onto. If I make the dough now we can roll it out after lunchtime.

akilah12902 replied to your post “closing in”

EEE Dealing with Dragons and then sugar cookies!!

It should be a good day. We just have to get all the wiggles wiggling in the right direction. (These are very wiggly children and especially so after having been confined for two weeks solid.)

shrikeseams replied to your post “closing in”

Just wanna say thank you for your quarentine updates. There’s something deeply soothing about them, even when they wish I lived close enough to my nephews to create a Sugar Cookie Disaster with them.

I am trying to be soothing, I’m glad it’s helping someone. I just find it helps me to write it all down and think about it that way.

girderednerve replied to your post “closing in”

dealing with dragons!! what a delight.

I had that book on a shelf by my bed as a kid so I’ve basically memorized it– and to this day I can envision the cover as illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman, whose name was on the cover as well and I remembered it as clearly as Patricia C Wrede’s name and it’s funny what you remember. Anyway, I didn’t know until last year that there’s a whole series of those books. The library has them as audiobooks and Farmkid has listened to them all a million times, but i figured I’d read it aloud to these kids. 

koseligshimmer:

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koseligshimmer: