The strange idea of continuous living
It's finally, officially Spring. Plus: my newest houseplant, Dottie; the banana bread that's my new go-to and a poem to keep us going.
Saturday marked the first day of Spring, and I, for one, could not be happier to welcome her to the party. Last weekend the clocks changed, this weekend the seasons changed…it feels like everything is finally back on the upswing after one hell of a winter. As I type this, my front window is open and my newest houseplant, Dottie (pictured!), is enjoying some fresh air from the sill. I can hear my neighbors out in their front yard, mulching and raking and digging into the dirt to make ready for the blooms and buds about to make their appearance. Before you know it, we’ll be back to long walks on warm evenings and who knows, maybe even adventures like dining indoors, afternoons at art museums and travel, glorious travel!
I’m feeling particularly optimistic because under Chicago’s vaccine rollout program, I was not only able to qualify in the latest round of expansion but thanks to some dedicated refreshing, refreshing, refreshing on the city’s appointment scheduler, I found an opening last week and I got my first shot! To absolutely no one’s surprise, I got pretty emotional about it, tearing up as I got the shot and downright losing it on my drive home. We have all been through so much. To think that it’s nearly behind us is just…it’s just…it’s almost more than I can handle.
If you’re eligible for the vaccine wherever you are, I hope you’ll step up and snag it. The sooner we all get that good jab in our arms, the sooner we can get back to hugs and cocktail parties and concerts…I found an appointment by using the city’s ZocDoc scheduling page. You’ll need to be eligible, but once you are, refresh the page frequently, as appointments are opening up all the time. We can do this!
Stay Informed
With all this optimism going around (truly, it’s like a drug!), I’m tempered by the reality that actually, the coronavirus is probably not going anywhere anytime soon. This article in The Atlantic is from February, but it remains a relevant, and I think balanced, take on what the next six months or so are going to look like.
Will summer be amazing? Yes, probably. Here in Chicago, the baseball fields are opening up again (Wrigley is even bringing back summer concerts) and Ravinia announced their outdoor event calendar will start back up in July.
But do we still have plenty to be concerned about? Definitely, and it likely will have a lot to do with how the vaccine roll-out continues, not only in the U.S. but around the world. Things are very much looking up, so the optimism isn’t entirely misplaced. But there’s a lot of work left to do.
Stay Fed
I’ve never, ever been one of those people who just whips up some banana bread when the bunch on the counter is about to go bad, but a couple weeks ago, there I was: bananas about to turn and needing to get them used, stat.
I turned to a new-to-me cookbook I’ve been meaning to dig into, Baking: From my home to yours by Dorie Greenspan. I’d heard off and on that this is a great go-to baking cookbook, and I even had it on my wishlist for a bit. So imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered a copy at a nearby Little Free Library on a recent walk! I snagged it happily, and ended up making her Cocoa-Nana Bread, a rich and moist cake loaf that’s definitely going to be a staple here at Chez LT going forward.
I highly recommend Baking if you’re looking for a standard go-to for everyday recipes; in the meantime, find Greenspan’s recipe for this sweet, banana-y treat online here.
Stay Entertained
I feel like a lot of my viewing habits these days can be boiled down to “which TV show that I’ve seen already can I binge without having to pay too much attention to?” I’ve recently re-“watched” Breaking Bad, Peaky Blinders, Love Sick, even Archer.
With my weekends at home, I nearly manage a season a day, the shows streaming on the iPad I take from room to room while I dust or vacuum, fold laundry or wash dishes. Recently, I’ve had a bit of a Ricky Gervais moment, catching two of his sitcoms from very different eras in his career (and life). Extras is streaming on Netflix only through March 31, and though it’s from 2005, it’s still laugh-out-loud funny. If you can catch it before it goes, you should.
Also on Netflix is a much smaller, apparently pet project of his called After Life; Gervais plays a newly widowed small-town journalist who decides nothing matters when his life is turned upside-down by grief. Except, of course, everything matters more than ever. There are two short seasons now streaming, with more in the works.
I’ve been watching films, too, though my pace has slowed a bit since the likes of virtual Sundance or Berlin film festivals. All my latest reviews are always at Third Coast Review, including an okay Norwegian disaster drama called The Tunnel now streaming via virtual cinemas and a couple of my favorite films from the last year, too. The Father features spell-binding performances from Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman; and The Truffle Hunters is a meditative journey into a world few ever get to glimpse, that of white truffle hunters in northern Italy.
Stay Inspired
If there’s one essential lesson to glean from this time of year, it’s to keep going. To keep waking up, showing up, growing up. It’s something I’ve been thinking about quite a lot, which is probably why I found Instructions on Not Giving Up such a good gut-punch when it came across my feed lately.
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.-Ada Limón
Until next time,
Lisa