The New Normal / Weeks 07, 08, 09, and 10

[magnetic_pole]

Folks, I owe comments on my last post and need to catch up with the flist, but I wanted to say hello and write something here before I fell too far behind.

Weeks 07, 08, 09, and 10 have been very quiet.


I might have had Covid. I started feeling sick during the week of May 4th, hit that flat-on-my-face-in-bed, oblivious-to-the-world state during the Week of May 11th, missed about ten days of life, and started feeling better this past Friday and Saturday. I'm not quite 100%, but I'm definitely on the mend. I talked to the doctor via Zoom once but never had any of the most serious symptoms, including problems breathing, thank goodness. In any case, I'm happy and grateful to be feeling better now, whatever the illness was. (My health insurance group has a testing site in DC, but it's only accessible by car in a distant part of the city, so, after a conversation with the doctor about the risks and effort involved in getting a test and how a result it was unlikely to change my behavior, I decided not to get tested. Perhaps it was something else entirely.) Unfortunately, now R seems to be coming down with something. Fingers crossed it's just a cold. She's a lot tougher than I am.

In part because of the above, there is not a single thing of interest to report from this end, unfortunately. The semester has wrapped up and the summer research and writing period has begun. I continue to be ridiculously, childishly disappointed about the lack of swimming opportunities, but that won't last forever. In the meantime, I'm going to get walking again as soon as I feel better. (I'm getting to know the three-mile radius around my apartment very well, including the paths and trails leading into the large public park nearby.)

Let me offer a few goodies before I sign off:

*** I'm almost embarrassed to make a baked goods recommendation here, because I didn't do the baking myself and I know so many of you are excellent bakers in your own right, so who am I to recommend anything to you? But this is a truly extraordinary simple chocolate cake I recommend wholeheartedly:

King Arthur's Original Cake Pan Cake (There's an icing recipe, but the cake was heavenly even without.)




Are these peonies? The color was so striking in person-- a bit darker than what you see here.





*** Thanks to therealsnape, we're having a final week of discussions over at covidcoffeecorner--please come join us!

Hope you are all well, folks!

Comments

[ancientreader]

Ah, the flowers are gorgeous!

The whole issue of testing is complicated -- it's valuable on a population basis, but the false-negative rate is so high that on an individual basis, if you have symptoms consistent with covid during a covid pandemic, you've got covid. And, as you say, it's not as though a test result would (or should) change your behavior. I'm just glad you've recovered, and I hope that R only has a cold.

I do have a hot tip should R (or anyone) turn out to have covid & have shortness of breath: proning, i.e. lying on the stomach. This is straight from the hospital covid wards, where it's done to help people fill their lungs better than they can do while sitting or while lying on their backs.

King Arthur flours are among the very few brand-name products I'm willing to shell out extra for, and their recipes are excellent! I'm not surprised the cake is rec-worthy. :^)

[magnetic_pole]

Proning! Thank you. I'd read about this just the other day and couldn't remember the scientific term for it. (I'd described it to R as "tummy time" for Covid patients.)

Are you feeling better, I hope? I'll be by soon to catch up and see if you've posted about your own experience.

King Arthur flours are among the very few brand-name products I'm willing to shell out extra for

Exactly! We discovered KAF while living in KAF's home state, where there were many fervent apostles, and it still took years to change our thinking on this one.

I hope you are doing better, A. M.

[ancientreader]

More on the subject of KAF, because I still boggle at this. I make a lot of vegan banana bread, because we have a dear vegan friend who can't do much with her hands and loves banana bread, and to my own amazement I found a good recipe for it. Anyway, I got some KAF super cheap because it had been mispriced and the store honored the label, and holy shit was that first batch of KAF bb excellent. A fluke, I thought. Then the second batch was just as good. And the third batch. And then I baked some nonvegan cookies with KAF. And that was me sold. I don't know what the fuck they're doing with the wheat over there, but they should keep it up.

[magnetic_pole]

holy shit was that first batch of KAF bb excellent

This is what we think every time we have a KAF baked good. It's a very strange phenomenon, but I've gone the route of "just enjoy it" and "pay the extra, goddamn it, life is short." :) M.