Today is the first day of spring, and the title of this post comes from a very silly poem:
Spring is sprung / the grass is riz
I wonder where the birdies is?
Silly and ungrammatical, but we take what we can get these days.
It's heartening to hear about so many more people I know getting vaccines. Some I would have thought would be a higher priority due to pre-existing conditions or age are still waiting; some younger ones have gotten lucky by being available to take a dose when somebody didn't make their appointment and the location had extras that needed to be used.
Work is still grinding on, with long hours, and people have told me they appreciate it, but hey - it's my job. I'm glad when I can get some time away from it, but this month there isn't much. Unlike last year, I didn't have time to make special meals to recognize the holidays this week. I did make Chicken Cacciatore today, mostly from watching my mother make it when I was a child, and remembering, and a quick look at what I hoped was a reasonably close recipe for reassurance that I was on the right track.
Going into the end of the month and the huge work push that it will entail, I am trying to eat better than I might have under past times. Of course, in past times I might have been onsite eating brought-in sandwiches and pizzas most of the time, with breakfast at the hotel buffet and supper might be nibbles from the happy hour or another brought-in meal as we worked into the night. A good thing about being home is that I have a bit more control, although I am subsisting more on dried fruit and granola bars and nuts than perhaps I should being at home all the time. Earlier this week I took the recipe I'd planned for St. Patrick's Day (chicken with a mustard-cider sauce) and turned it into a slow-cooked stew with the addition of potatoes and onions. It was very, very good also.
A third portion of the package of chicken (from a local farm) was stuffed into a jar of leftover pickle brine and popped into the freezer. I'll thaw and cook it towards the end of the month. I've heard of brining chicken in pickle juice and I think it will be tasty.
Today I went to the local farmstand for their spring preview, and while they didn't have much other than plants, jarred things, chocolates, and fresh bread, I was able to buy some beautiful eggs from their chickens:
I almost hate to eat them.
But I shall.
One Year
Of course the news and our social media feeds have been full of the beginning of the lockdowns, or the last events we attended before the world shut down. Quite a bit of "we thought we'd be closed for two weeks", or a month. People being sad at the reminder of how long we've had to be inside, away from loved ones, missing occasions and each other.
It's overwhelming. I don't want to say too much, because I don't have words that won't sound exactly like everybody else.
One year. Over 540,000 dead in the USA alone. No telling how many people who caught the virus and survived will never be the same in terms of health and ability.
Over one year since I have seen any family, other than two Zoom calls. I can count on one hand the number of friends I have seen in person in that time, all at the proper social distance with a mask in place.
One year.
Midmonth Mini-Resolutions Update
As you may suspect with my comments about work, I haven't made much progress on UFOs and most days I am too tired to read, or I read at most a small page. I needed some less-focused needlework so did a plain hat from some handspun I'd been given, and now I am well through another mostly-plain (one cable) hat. I have made progress on the KnitTalk challenge BLUE item, and will have a photo before the end of the month. Maybe I'll get back to the Magical Miniskeins sock by then also.
