Quarantine Lessons

If Covid-19 quarantine has taught me anything, it's that it's really important to be careful about who you pick to share your quarters. For example, you want partners/roommates/housemates who:

1. Will take his/her turn making the pot roast;

2. Use the recipe that calls for red wine; and

3. Set aside most of the said wine for direct consumption.

It's a bonus if the partners/roommates/housemates will clean up on occasion, pitch in for laundry duty and know when to find themselves their won corner of the space and stay there. It's also helpful if you have partners/roommates/housemates who don't break important things you all need.                                                                                                                                                                               ⬇

Chez Reed has been blessed in some of the areas mentioned above and cursed in others. Overall it's made for a tolerable quarantine. We also have ample liquor, food and toilet paper in the house. So that helps.

We are down one toilet, though, and it's totally my fault. I was working in the basement and I heard a funky noise coming from the downstairs bathroom. The Captain advised me first that it didn't exist and then second that it didn't matter. But it persisted, so I took off the tank lid to find out why it was hissing a little bit. I pushed down the rubber thing that seals off the water, thinking it wasn't closing properly.

But when I went to put the lid back on the tank, my hands were wet and the thing slipped. It landed against the tank. If you don't know what happens when a 20-pound block of enamel hits a hollowed-out block of enamel, I'll tell you: 

1. You curse and try to catch the slippery object.
2. You grab onto it and pray that it didn't damage anything.
3. You spy the fracturing and hear its crackle as it continues to spread.
4. You put the lid back on, step back and gulp because you know duct tape isn't going to fix it.
5. You swallow hard and go find the Captain to confirm that yeah, we're going to have to shut the water off and get a new toilet/tank.

Fortunately, we have two other toilets, but the quarantine space inside our quarantine space has been compromised. I guess the next sick person we need to separate from the herd can pee in the shower.

Hopefully we'll get it fixed before we need to double isolate anyone else. On another bit of household consternation, Jeff added an extender to broaden the areas where we could all work online. It seemed awesome until my laptop stopped talking to some sites critical to my job.

Happily, we got nearly instantaneous professional help from Alan Ng, who used to be technically family (he's my cousin in-law's brother in-law.) He's now fully part of the clan at least as far I'm concerned. He not only helped us identify the issue, he's going to help with the fix that will broaden our modem strength but won't put up roadblocks for my PC.

On a funny note, within the same 12 hours of time I was trashing our toilet tank, my sister Donna took a hammer to what I think was frost build-up on her garage freezer. The door had been inadvertently been left ajar. So we're both going to soon contribute to the local economy with replacement/repairs. 

In other news, the daffodils have gone by, my neighbors' tulips are trying to bloom, the flox is trying to come in and Easter came and went. 

My housemates were not as excited to see their Easter baskets as I thought they would be but they didn't reject their treats. I guess 18 may be the end of this ritual, though I suspect had The Bunny not hopped by, there would have been a bit of melancholy.

We've had weather whiplash, too. I had a few online meetings on the porch and outside under Lois' magnolia. Ali and I even napped in the sunshine one day. But now it's like winter is back. 

My magnolia was glorious this year, but has flagged a bit under high winds and winter's return.

I got a lesson in using the power drill, and finally got around to putting legs on the cheese wheel container-table our cousin Mary gave me at Christmas. It's a perfect addition to the back porch. 

Jeff's been a regular handyman, too. He's fixed a drawer, did some fine sanding/gluing on the cheese table and replaced our shower heads so we feel like we're getting hotel service when we remember that we need to actually wash our whole bodies.

If only he were confident in his toilet repair abilities...

How mulch do you love me?

Neither the Captain nor Ali are fans of yard work, but it generally works out just fine because I do like yard work. I work out a lot of frustrations out there. I work through things I want to write. I feel like I get a good work out. It's all good.

But when you order 4 cubic yards of mulch and have it dumped in the street in front of your house, it begs for an all-hands-on-deck kind of weekend. We were all asleep when the doorbell rang around 9 a.m. to announce the mulch delivery. I'd told Jeff I was going to order it, but he didn't realize it was happening as quickly as it did. I got dressed and started working on the pile, which took up about half a lane of the road and peaked at about 4.5 feet.

Jeff had recycling and groceries to get, but Ali came out of the house to survey the situation. She volunteered to help, and I don't ever want to know if it was because the Captain called and told her to. I prefer to think she wanted to be there.

I gave her some options and she decided to clean up the weeds on the non-bed side of the rocks that hold in a flower bed that stretches from the street to the front stoop and over to the neighbor's wall. When she finished with that, she decided the lilies against the wall needed raking.

I would have been content to put mulch on top of the leaves, but neither Ali nor Jeff agreed.

All of that extra ambition resulted in about eight bags of yard waste, a good 12 hours of outside work this weekend and a few moans and groans along the way.

My back was complaining as I carefully placed mulch around my day lilies and it was then I remembered that these plants push themselves through the hard ground every year. A little bit of mulch isn't going to top them from poking through. After that, I was a little less gently.

On Saturday, with about one yard of mulch down, I must have been looking depressed. A neighbor came by and called out, "Just think about what it'll look like when you're done. You're almost there!"

Right. She was taking a stroll. I was leaving skin cells on my shovel handle.

About halfway through, Jeff reminded us it was time to head down to 450 North Brewing Co. He had some newly released beer on order, and Ali and I were going for the pizza and BBQ. It's an hour south of us but, man. So worth the trip.

It was drive-through service for both and we ate in the car before heading back home for more yard work. Our friends Eric and Tracy hired Ali to mow their yard weekly until their Broad Ripple house is sold. Hopefully they find another one that's better suited for them but still close to us.

"I could mow three or four yards after that," Ali declared after snarfing down her sandwich and a good portion of her fries.

Once home, Ali headed up to her paid gig, Jeff left to deliver beer to friends -- in a socially distanced way, of course -- and it was back to the mulch pile for me. Jeff got back fairly quickly and unearthed more leaves. We surrendered around 6 and put a tarp over the mulch.

It will be hard to get them back in the yard after this weekend of hard labor. Which is fine. It's mostly my domain anyway. And I need them to rest up for fall when the rakes, bags and blower will be in need again.

She had just mentioned to her boyfriend that she loved the smell of mulch. "It makes me think of Spring and my mom doing yard work," she told him. Notice she didn't say, "My mom and me doing yard work."

Jason disagreed. A summer of Boy Scout fundraiser apparently had ended with mulch in his pores. It took months to get the smell out of his nose, he said.

It's been quite a week of Working From Home for all three of us. I'm grateful that I don't have one or more elementary or high school kids who have to finish their years e-learning. I'm more grateful that Alison has maintained her focus on her Purdue coursework.

She's hard core man and has given me "the hand" as Lynda and Amy would call it more than once. I'd invite her on a walk when I needed to get out of my chair. "Sorry, I'm working," she'd say.

I complimented her on her focus one evening after we'd all packed in the work day. "Yeah, how does it feel?" she asked with a grin.

"Huh?" I asked.

She claims there many, many times when she was younger that she'd asked to do something and I'd tell her that I was working but we'd get to it when I was done. It's probably true. Hopefully we did actually get to whatever it was she wanted. I suspect I don't score 100 percent on that.

One early evening, Ali was still working out some kind of complicated equation and Jeff and I took a walk around the neighborhood. We discovered the tiny, walk-up/drive-up Dairy Queen near us had 16 Dilly Bars on sale for $12.99. We didn't think we could get them home without melting, but we were tempted.

On Friday, we caught Ali on a light day, got out a beer backpack, filled it with ice packs and all three of us trekked over to see if the sale was still on. I don't know why they're so overstocked on Dilly bars, but it seemed wrong not to help them out.

We each had a frozen treat on the walk home, which took us by Indy Tacos, which had a huge sign out front reminding passersby that they were open for take-out.

That night we feasted like kings as we watched more of the Tiger King on Netflix. I blew through it during my basement confinement, but there are things I missed. And it's fun to hear their reaction.

In other news of note, Ali came out of her bathroom chortling to her father. "Dad! Dad! It finally happened. It finally happened!"

While some fathers might have been nervous about what had happened in there, the Captain was all ears.

"What? What?" he asked.

"We finally ran out of that awful Scott toilet paper and I have real toilet paper again," she exclaimed.

I hadn't told him that I'd rewarded her for her devotion to her studies. He assumed, however, that it was yet another sign that I love Ali more than I love him.

"Well your mother must have put all the Scot in our bathroom because we still have three more rolls of that one-ply, half-ply stuff in there," he groused.

I thought about reminding him that in this Covid-19 world, there are lots of people who would loooooo-ooooove to have his Scott tissue. But I was afraid he'd go find them.

Anyway, the yard looks better than it has for years. Jeff and I are pounding Naproxen, and office work isn't at all unappealing. Which is good because we all have a lot of it -- and we're grateful for it given the numbers of unemployment in this Covid-19 world.

Hope you're all coping as well or better than we are. Stay physically distanced but virtually social. Wash your hands and find a fun mask to wear if you have to go out around people. We can get through this. Think about how hard it must for a flower to push through hard earth to reach the sunlight.That takes a lot of patience, time and perseverance. And when that hard work is over, there's another bit of beauty in the world.

Happy spring, everyone!

It'll grow back

When Ali was little and her hair was long with bangs, I was her stylist. It was too crazy curly to comb when dry, so I only combed it wet, and when it got a little too out of control, I'd whack a bit off the ends and we were good to go.

No joke. Her hair is glorious in color, thickness, body and curl. I'm certain that it's because she's tired of people complimenting her, that she went asymmetrical in high school, whacking it really short on one side and leaving it longish (but way shorter than she'd had it) on the other.

It's a cute cut. When it's maintained.
Remember that Ali is the girl who in elementary school Febrezed herself rather than showering when I was on a work trip. I contributed to her lack of primness by pulling her tangles into a ponytail most days, and she hasn't really changed much even with the cute cut.

At Purdue, when her shagginess got the best of her, she had a friend cut it in the dorm bathroom.

"It's fine," she said.

When I picked her up for a quick weekend visit, she'd had another dorm cut. Once home, she disappeared into the bathroom to "fix" what my expression had apparently deemed broken.

"Uh, you have a bald spot," I reported.

"I'll wear a hat," she said.

Fast-forward to today. "Mom, my hair is a mess. Feel the ends. I have split ends. Will you cut my hair."

I looked at her. "Seriously?"

"Feel this," she insisted.

I promised only that I wouldn't give her a bald spot. As I concentrated and listened to her telling me not to cut, it too short, just to get rid of the ends and "Don't cut my ear!"  "Don't cut my neck!"

"Have I cut you?" I finally demanded.

"Not this time, but before," she said.

I haven't cut her hair since she was in high school, and I only once cut her finger while clipping her claws back. She carries a long grudge.

I don't have an "after" picture because she insisted on letting it air dry and since dinner cleanup (when it was still damp) has been ensconced in her room playing Dungeons & Dragons online with her friends. She's been laughing. 'Course, she doesn't have a mirror in her room.

But, hey. It'll grow back....

In other news, after two weeks in the basement getting over a cold that it seems like everyone and their brother in Indianapolis has had, I emerged healthy and ready for sunlight this weekend. I've bleached everything I touched, washed everything, including the family room couch and throw pillows and feel like we could safely have surgery down there.

I even made dinner Saturday night, cleaned the shed and picked up sticks in the yard. I'd put 5,000 steps on the desk cycle that came home with us from Maine when Jeff asked if I wanted to go on a walk. It was glorious. Today, I cleaned our shed and picked up sticks from the yard. My back hurts, but I'm back, baby.

My back porch office is ready for me as soon as it stays warm. Ali and Jeff had left a lot of her dorm stuff in there, but most of it's in the basement as she's home until fall now. One item I kept is a storage unit that she's decorated with stickers ala back when I was a news reporter and slapped political stickers all over a filing cabinet I still have. It's down in the basement. She told me it had inspired her to follow suit. So that was fun.

The first week of the past two weekends was our planned but corona-virused "Spring Break." Frankly, I don't know what they did that week other than bring me meals and wave from the doorways. Last week, I mostly worked and they found places to do their own school and office work.

Tomorrow dawns with three people needing internet access and the ability to focus on our various work. I plan to have the Captain at his desk in the basement, me on the back porch and Ali at the dining room table. The temperature may force me inside, but we'll figure it out.

At one point last week, Ali said Jeff and I were on separate conference calls on separate floors and "It was so loud!"

We've designated the downstairs guest room as the conference call/quiet space. If that doesn't work, we have my bedroom, I suppose. It's the farthest from the planned work spaces.

Based on my friends' experience with small children during this shelter-in-place time, I'm grateful Alison is in college and dedicated to her studies. I don't know what I'd do with multiple elementary or high schoolers. My hat is off to those folks who are keeping it all together.

To your left is Alison's math work -- two of seven problems she had to solve. Let me just say this: I cannot help her with her schoolwork.

She's still dedicated to research chemistry. I like to think she'll be one of the ones saving us from repeat situations such as we find ourselves in today.

Hope you're doing well in your new normal. And hey, welcome to my work from home world. It's harder with the whole family around, and all the uncertainty of how long this will go on.

We'll get through it together. There are so many examples of people reaching out to do what they can for each other these days. If you're in need, I hope you find help. If you can help, I hope you will. Most of all, I hope we come out of this giving each other the benefit of the doubt and delivering well on that trust.

Good luck this week and the weeks ahead until someone's found a way to overcome this virus. Stay safe. Keep in touch. But from a distance.

Like Ali's hair, we'll all bounce back from this.

💗😀💓

One Quarantined; One Returned

Alison's outrage - or embarrassment - at me calling her RA to check if she was dead didn't last long. Or perhaps it sparked a memory of how good it can be here at Chez Reed because she sent the Captain and me a text last week asking if it was OK if she came home for a weekend visit.

As if she has to ask.

I, of course, immediately answered in the affirmative. Jeff was heading to Maine to spend some time with his father, and I suspected he'd tipped her off that I'd be home and lonely, but they both claim there was no conspiracy.

I wouldn't have cared if they had conspired. I picked her up Friday afternoon as soon as I possibly could.  We called Maine on the way home and Jeff, Jen, Peter, David and James passed the phone around while waiting for their food at the Muddy Rudder.

(Side note: Jeff's dad, Gary, has had a bit of a setback and has been in the hospital and rehab over the last several days. He may have a new or re-inflamed old back injury, and we're hoping he's on the mend after meds were evaluated and treatment given. It didn't make sense for both of us to visit, so Jeff made the trip solo and is glad he did, though he came home sick and has been sleeping in the basement ever since. It's not COVID-19 but apparently he's full of some colorful gunk. I call to him from the stairs on occasion but so far he's been tending mostly to his own self, at his own insistence. Not that I want any of whatever he's got.)

Back to Ali and me on Friday: She regaled me with campus life stories and caught me up on what was happening with her various friends. I gave her the low-down from Maine and Indy. We made a Costco run before we got home. We had just enough room in the back of the Subaru for all our goodies and her laundry.

Once home, we took up our station on the couch with a bag of Taco Bell and more mini tacos to come and found a stash of Chrisley Knows Best on the DVR listing. We followed that up with G.H. Cretors popcorn -- which I'd bought only with her agreement to take whatever we didn't finish back to Purdue with her. I swear that stuff is addictive. the only way not to eat the whole bag is to give it away.

We stayed on the couch until midnight or so watching TV, munching on bad food and comparing whatever we found on our mobile devices when we weren't shouting back at the Chrisleys for their various - and many - crazy antics. We stumbled off to our respective beds until about 3 a.m. when a nightmare woke her up and she ended up with me.

I did not pray or ask in anyway for her to recreate the times when she was little and Jeff was away, but I didn't protest. I woke up way earlier than her and had most of my work done and bacon ready when she emerged.

I had looked askance at her hair when I first laid eyes on her, but I didn't want to be that Mom, so I didn't address the fact that her hair was looking a little, well, off. "Did you have that girl cut your hair in the bathroom again?" I may have asked.

"No," she said. "I did it myself."

"Ah," I said.

The American Hair Stylist Academy does
NOT endorse these as a tool.

She protested a little bit about my honesty. I said it wasn't that bad and beside that it was her hair and it would grow back.

Saturday morning, she comes out of her bathroom and I was a bit more honest. She'd used a pair of scissors that I'm sure we bought for her in her Kindergarten days.  I may have raised my eyebrows.

"What?! You said it needed work," she said.

I pointed out the near-bald spot she'd created. That's when she showed me the scissors she'd used.

"It'll grow back," I assured her as she went searching for a hat. We debated going to a walk-in hair salon but we decided to let it grow a little bit first because the only way to really address it is to buzz most of it.

"Look!" she said. "All I have to do it pull this long part over it. You can't even see it."

She may be the first 18-year-old sporting a comb-over. But, characteristically, she's not overly worried about it. She did wear a hat every time we went out, though.

We spent part of Saturday at a super fun event organized by my friend Betty Cockrum and attended by Karin Ogden, Carey Hamilton, Catherine O'Conner and a bunch of other fun ladies.

Betty had collected a bunch of jewelry that was either broken, out of favor or just extra and worked with the Indianapolis Art Center to create an event where you brought some jewelry and left with some other jewelry. You could break stuff apart, repair things or create new. There were also bagels and mimosas. It was a lot of fun.

I'm hoping to do another event or something similar and highly recommend the place for fun group gatherings. Karin, Carey and I think it would be a fun Book Club venue.

Ali and her friend Nikki went to an anime movie while I went back home to laundry and work. We had to make a Kroger/Meijer run to get ingredients for poutine, and Ali made dinner: french fries drenched in gravy and cheese curds. I did make her eat a pepper while I had a salad.

But mostly it was cheese and gravy. We took a picture and sent it to Jeff, who was at the mercy of airport food. Because we love him.

We got him around 9:30 p.m., and he was just at the beginning of the illness that has him making noises I can hear with a floor between us.

We returned her by 2 p.m. so she could get ready for her week and get re-settled.

It was a perfect visit. Except for the Captain's sickness, of course.

We'll get her back in a couple of weeks. Our Spring Break location is still TBD. I don't really care where we end up. I may have to eat zero-point soup for a week, but it'll be worth it.

Nashville Day 2

Much, I'm sure, to the Captain's chagrin, I've been listening to classic country music since we got home from Nashville. It's his fault for finding a classic station on Sirius radio that carries a show called Willie's Roadhouse and playing it as we drove home Sunday.

I'd never heard some of the songs, but many of them brought me back to hanging out with my sister Donna when she she was first married to Jim. Jim had a collection of 8-track tapes and we must have listened to them a lot. Charlie Pride, Willie, of course, Loretta Lynn, vintage Dolly, Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette...it was like going back in time.

Jeff's dad had a few of the albums that let Jeff know some of the songs, but he mostly indulged me with something I didn't even know I wanted.



Also, I was fresh from the Country Music Hall of Fame. Eric and Tracy and I spent a couple of hours there while Jeff went to a craft beer release. They're not big country music fans, but were intrigued. Not going would be kind of like skipping the Eiffel Tower in Paris or Buckingham Palace in London, right?

Nashville is quite the hopping place day or night.  The Hall of Fame museum is massive. Elvis' gold-plated Cadillac was there, as were more guitars than I could count but Eric probably did. The number of stage dresses and outfits were amazing, but not more amazing than their tiny sizes.

The museum also displays the cornfield from the set of Hee Haw complete with some of the outfits of the cast who stood there and told truly awful jokes. Hee Haw was must-see-TV for my family long before that tagline was dreamed up.

We left the museum and wandered around downtown Nashville a while before we decided we needed to refresh ourselves at the Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar. At 2 in the afternoon, it was full and there was live music rocking the place out. It was tremendous.

We wandered some more and had to run to meet our shuttle. Well, in truth, Tracy ran. Eric and I were slower and took advantage of her waving down the driver. Jeff returned from his beer share having made new friends with whom I'm sure he'll be trading beer in the future.

We had ticket for a beer crawl, which was to begin from Alan Jackson's bar on Broadway. We got there only to discover after a long wait that the bar crawl had been postponed for another two hours. So we created our own crawl. We didn't crawl far, as the bar we started in (and most others it seemed) was three-stories and each floor had a different band or singer.  Some had full stages, some had tiny squares of space big enough for a stool, an amp and a microphone.

Most of the musicians covered major hits, but occasionally they'd break out an original song. We ended up having a late dinner at Puckett's, which included a young woman singing. Her name is SJ McDonald, and she looked about 16. I hope she makes it big. We can say we heard her first.

We stopped off at 450 North Brewing just south of Columbus. We're definitely going to go back. At 3 p.m. or so it was nearly full. We had only a snack of shredded beef nachos, but my eyes kept wandering to nearby tables full of pizza and cheese curds and such. It's not for vegetarians or people who can stick to a diet, but you've never had nachos like these.

It was a great trip, but followed as normally happens, with a lot of work. The highlight of the week might have been going with my friend Tina Noel at near the crack of dawn to listen to our friend Lisa Vielee speak to a packed house about being vulnerable in the workplace.

If you're like me, you think highly of your friends. I mean, it takes a while to make a friend, so you want to have good ones, so of course you should think highly of them. But when you see them in a new setting -- as in addressing a packed house of people who arranged their day to hear what they have to say, it's an interesting new light.

Lisa was awesome. If she wasn't already my friend, I'd actively seek her out to be one. She has great taste in shoes, too.

Friday, Jeff came home and was greeted with a blast of classic country music. He was on the phone with Alison, and I'm certain they were both rolling their eyes and poking a little fun. The were, in fact, talking because Jeff had been talking at work about a song from some new (or old) group that either Ali or Jeff had tipped the other off to. As I've said before, my brain doesn't remember any other music than country. All I remember is that it's a group that sounds a little bit like Devo. What I remember about Devo is they wore hats that looked like terra cotta plant pots. Right? That's Devo.

Anyway, we turned down the tunes to talk about Spring Break. We've made no decisions, but for that fact that we'll be together. Which is enough for me. I am, as my bio tells you, a simple country girl at heart.

 If we road trip by car, though, I'm going to insist on a few miles to educate them on the classics.

Nashville Notes

Five hours in on a mostly interstate drive that was supposed to take about four-and-a-half hours, I was a little bit frazzled. Dire predictions of winter weather hadn’t come to fruition, I’d picked Jeff up a full two minutes early for our weekend, anniversary getaway and we’d had a well-timed pee and snacks break.

Traffic in Louisville got silly just about the same time Jeff started playing around on his Sirius radio dial and blasting the music. Lest you get the wrong impression, I, too, am a music fan. I like all kinds of music, though my brain will only retain a few gospel hymns and country music.

Jeff is an audiophile, and partially deaf. So audible to him is loud to me. And he likes his music loud. 

I’ve lived with him 22 years and dated for two ahead of that, so I know this. It’s part of what makes me love him; his passion is contagious and fun to watch. It’s even educational when I’m of a mind to learn.

So, all was good as we went from hits from the 50s to the 80s to the 90s to the 70s as he found songs that he loved or didn’t. Traffic-wise, we were stuck in the 10s. As I rode the brake, Jeff was flopping around like a fish out of water. If a fish could play air guitar, drums, saxophone and direct the invisible band. And it was 6-feet-2.

But it was still all good. No country music crossed the dial, but I have a passing acquaintance with a lot of the songs and was singing (badly) along when I could. Then, not too far from Nashville, we hit another traffic stall and I had a hot flash hit that had me turning off the heated seat, unbuttoning my shirt and turning down the window to the frosty air.

I was panting. Jeff was still playing all kinds of music and playing air everything as three lanes of vehicles played a brake light show. And then from nowhere, a semi-tractor trailer comes roaring down the break-down lane on my left. It felt like it brushed back the passenger side mirror, and I don’t mind telling you I would have peed my pants had it not been for that earlier stop we’d made.

I mean, who does that? Turns out, a bunch of people. I’m not sure where they thought they were going, and I was hopeful they’d run right into the arms of Johnny Law, but I kind of got used to it. Not that I liked it.

This was about the time my headache started. There's volume control on the steering wheel , and every once in a while, I’d lower the sound. Without fail – or complaint – Jeff would lean over and turn the dial to the right, go back to strumming and telling me the origin story of where he’d first heard this song and how it shaped his musical tastes. Sometimes he’d tell me about the artist.

I normally like this kind of running dialogue, but between the hot flashes, the continual noise and the Tennessee traffic, I was pretty much done. We finally got to the point of origin for the slowdown and sure enough, all of those asshats who’d blown by me were stalled along the breakdown lane as a quarter-mile length of police and highway workers were out in the pitch blackness doing God knows what.

Maybe the asshats were part of the crew and were hurrying in response to some kind of need. I hope not. I hope they were being punished for acting on their impatience like I had wanted to be didn’t.

We got safely to the hotel at least an hour later than we’d expected to, but I’d calmed down by then and all was good. We get in to find the hotel having technical issues which meant we couldn’t get room key cards. We hadn’t had dinner and were planning to explore Nashville.

“Well, you could flip that thing on your door and leave it open so you could get back in when you got back,” said our helpful bellhop, musing out loud that doing so would leave our belongings open for whomever might want to come sort through them.

“How about room service?” I suggest.

The bellhop nodded. That was an option to, he conceded.

I’d begun unpacking and Jeff advised me to let that go and start examining the room service menu, which wasn’t to be found. “It’s here,” he said when I told him it didn’t exist. “Just look for it.”

I called the front desk. “No, we don’t have room service menus in the rooms,” the clerk said. “You’ll have to go down to the restaurant.”

I refrained from telling him that we didn’t have a room key. Jeff went down, took a photo of the menu and gave our order. Which, I kid you not, was delivered in plastic bags and Styrofoam by the security guard.

I may not have chosen our accommodations well.

Ali called while we were assembling our take-out containers, and we were having a lovely chat as she walked back in the snow from a late test she’d just taken. Suddenly the phone cuts out. She doesn’t call back.

After a few minutes, I text her to tell me she’s not dead in the snow of Lafayette, seven hours to the north.

Nothing.

Jeff calls her.

Voice mail.

I take a drink of the champagne we’d brought with us. Krug. The good stuff. We’ve been married 22 years. We deserve the good stuff.

But it was a bit acidic as I pictured her fallen in the snow, bloody and alone because she’d either been run down by a drunk student or mauled by a horde of thugs.

I Google to find her dorm reception. “I don’t want to sound like an overprotective parent,” I said as Jeff nearly choked on his food. “But would it be possible to check on a student?”

Long story short, it was only her phone that died in the snow. She texted back as I was on the phone with the poor kid who was trying to be nice to me but clearly was rolling his eyes and saying, 

“seriously” to whoever was next to him at the desk. He was laughing when I reported that she wasn’t dead and asked him to not tell her that I’d called.

Of course, the Captain ratted me out. I got a “MOM” text.

I am unapologetic. It’s unlike her to drop us and then not respond. She’ll thank me when she’s broken her leg and is laying cold and alone in the dark and the cops find her because I sounded the alarm.

The champagne tasted a whole lot better once she’d resurfaced.

I worked Friday morning, and Jeff explored Nashville’s beer scene. Then, we both explored downtown, intending to have a late breakfast at Biscuit Love. We found nearby parking and left all but our coats in the car. The line to get in was massive, so we opted to walk to Hattie B.’s Hot Chicken. The sun was out.

As we crested a long but fairly high hill on the way there and the brisk Nashville wind found my ears, I was regretting my decision to walk light. But we persevered only to find another long line.

I rarely wait for food, and there were other options all around us, but Jeff was stoked, and I was intrigued. Behind us were two girls who could not stop talking about the menu and should they get this, or should they get that. “The peach cobbler is a must,” one said. They both wanted fries but thought they should diversify. We were in line about 35 minutes. This discussion DID NOT STOP.

We get in but still had a bit of a wait and I spied the size of the chicken tenders I was planning to get. Mind you, I didn’t need to look at the menu as it had been fully described to me on repeat. Jeff had been getting tips from buddies who’d been there before.

I ordered level “Hot,” which was a couple steps up from plain. Jeff leveled up one to “Damn Hot” and declared me a sissy. Minutes later, when his mouth was on fire, he considered his choice. By this time, the chattery girls had sat down at our table. It had been vacated for a spot in the sun by the couple who’d stood ahead of us. They were from London. The talkers were from Connecticut.

Clearly, we were tourists, but it was fun and once the girls found different topics of conversation, they were fun, too. We ended up eating on the porch, that had rolled down plastic over to stand in as windows. The heat lamps made it tolerable, but we still ate with our coats on.

Jeff wasn’t the only one trash talking me. To my left at another picnic table was group of men, one gasping. “Why you got to breathe for anyway?” his unconcerned pal laughed at him. The Londoners had downed their pitcher of beer. I’d gone back for more tea to save Jeff’s life. I ended up giving him one of my tenders – they were huge. The sides were amazing, too.

Before we left, I chatted a bit with one of the cooks and asked him how he’d gotten the greens so tender. “I cook ‘em,” he said.

I laughed and a waiter joined our conversation where I shared that I’d never been able to make them so delectable. “You’re not cookin’ ‘em long enough,” the chef declared.

“How long do YOU cook ‘em?” I asked.

“Three-and-a-half hours,” he said. The waiter chimed in, “But his momma would cook ‘em overnight.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” the cook said.

It was worth the burn. And the wait.

Oh. We got the peach cobbler. I sampled it before my taste buds were burned away. I should have thanked the Connecticut girls. We at the rest of it as we walked back to our car. I was wearing boots, which weren’t really made for long treks, and I hit the 10,000 step mark before we got within site of the parking garage.

At which point, Jeff says, “Want to go to the Johnny Cash museum? It’s not far from here.”

We’d been talking about what to do as we waited for Eric and Tracy to arrive, and Jeff knows I’m a big Johnny Cash fan. I’d found a brochure in the hotel, and he’d seen a billboard. The car was parked. My dogs were barking but sure, how far could it be?

It was far. Along the way, we ran into the Connecticut girls who were on the way to the Country Music Hall of Fame museum. They’d debated between it and Johnny Cash. We ducked into the Hall of Fame for a bathroom break. It’s possible I put a little rest in the restroom, but we went back in search of the Man in Black.

A mile later, we found it, and it exceeded the hype. I’m not sure you have to be a JRC fan to enjoy that place. I learned stuff, and I remembered some other stuff. I’d totally forgotten he had an acting career and had appeared on Little House on the Prairie and Columbo. He even hosted Saturday Night Live.

He was even in a movie where Andy Griffith was the villain, and he took a tiny Ron Howard hostage in a movie when Cash was the villain. It took a bit of thought to realize that was a very young Kris Kristofferson in Stagecoach. Merle Haggard looked the same. And I wondered if that was the genesis of “The Highwaymen.”

Anyway, we were there for a long time, and I sat through one of the movies to rest up and remember. It was super fun, and I felt indulged because the Captain isn’t a country music fan. At all. But who doesn’t love Johnny Cash?

Eric and Tracy hit town and we went back to the hotel where we had a few drinks and pre-gamed before our late dinner at The Green Pheasant, which promised a fusion of Japanese and Tennessee cuisine, and in 2019 was voted Nashville’s best restaurant. It was amazing. Flavors I’d never seen paired before and highly delectable.

The waiter recommended we order at least eight plates and we thought he was insane. But then we did, and it was great. I couldn’t even tell you what all of it was or how it was made. But I’ll remember the meal.

We stumbled back to the hotel and I went to bed while the rest of the team sought out a Blues band fronted by one of the hotel staff – Jeff had figured it out earlier. Sadly, the band had disbanded by the time they got there. It was a good day.

We’ll see what Saturday brings. Pretty sure it's going to be awesome. But I'll see it in more comfortable shoes this time...

Boiler up the blasphemy

We drove up to Lafayette last weekend to take Alison out to dinner. We thought she'd want go to Red Lobster and get her crab on but she was thinking sushi instead.

I should have gotten the name of the place we went to. It was really good and we had a little booth that was set apart from the tables and separated by glass beads.

It was perfect -- a lot of room and quiet enough that we could listen to Ali expound on her antics in the month or so since we'd seen her.  The food quality was second only to the company.

Ali was telling us about a group chemistry project she'd been involved with. It was a success, and a lot of fun for her because "they let me decide everything." Classes are going well, as is her social life. She's hitting the Co-Rec more regularly lately as she tries to out-swim the Freshman 15.

"It's getting kind of painful," she confessed, describing the return of her abdominal pooch and its effect on how her pants fit.

We'd surprised her with a little Valentine's gift bag that included some chocolate, some Ramen and a surprise from Aunt Margaret, who is super crafty. She'd been to a pottery place that has added an option to paint and stencil wood. She decided it would look good in our wine room, but Ali decided it would look better in her dorm room.

Jeff and I have been working a lot but we're about to go off for the weekend to celebrate 21 years of wedded bliss. We're sharing the weekend with Eric and Tracy, who have 30+ years together.

It's kind of fun that we're going to Nashville, TN, when only I am a country music fan. Eric is flying from there to Costa Rica to surf, so it makes sense that we go there. I'm going to have a great time. I don't know about the rest of them.

The Captain has already found a few craft beer options, so unless Stormageddon strikes, it should be a fun weekend. In the meantime, we're trying to finish up the perishables in the fridge and fruit bowl. In doing so, I committed a cardinal sin at dinner tonight.


Ali and I are purists when it comes to sausage, pepper and onions. It's a stir fry, essentially, with turkey smokes sausage, red, orange and sometimes green peppers and onions. A little soy sauce and that's it. Paired with mashed potatoes, it's simple enough that even I can't screw it up. Jeff occasionally would suggest we should add different kinds of vegetables, but Ali usually talked him out of it.

She's not here to protect the sanctity of the sausage and peppers, though, and I had veggies to get rid of. So tonight, I threw in the small bit of broccoli and jalapeno that were in the vegetable crisper, along with some corn. It was good, but I know Alison would have flipped her lid like the time I sneaked turkey burger into Grammie's chili. I'm lucky I didn't have to sleep in the garage that night.

I sent her a picture. Her response: