Tags
baking, cooking, covid-19 diary, covid-19 humour, dear diary, humiliation, humour, shopping, Valentine's Day
Dear Diary – I declared last Friday a pajama day! (but just so I wasn’t completely disgusting, I did shower and put on clean pajamas). I was so excited to have family and friends join in or comment on our “Adult Spirit Day”! I think we should plan something for next month. Anyone?
Dear Diary – I am a Valentine’s Day survivor. It’s that one holiday between Christmas chocolate and Easter chocolate, that I tend to despise. Too many bad experiences that make me want to cry out “Bah…humbug!” As always, I wore my traditional black to honour my friend (my little black dress stayed in the closet where it continues to shrink), and we ordered in pizza.
On Sunday morning, I received a cryptic text from Big Guy. I had my suspicions but I played dumb (which I’m really good at doing). Sure enough, within 10 minutes I heard snow crunching outside the front door. I opened to a stranger hightailing it away from my house and a large brown paper bag on my doorstep. Even though it was obviously too small for Big Guy to hide in, I brought it inside gingerly. It contained Tim Horton’s: 1 large coffee, 1 large steeped tea (Mine!), 1 large chocolate milk, and 3 chocolate chip cookies. It was the best breakfast from the sweetest kid!
I miss him.
Hubby also cooked us eggs and hash browns (yum!) and helped with dishes. Little Guy played Halo with me in the evening. 🙂
So it was my turn to treat. I spent the afternoon making pastitio, a layered Greek pasta dish similar to lasagna, with a thick bechamel sauce on top, and loads of gooey cheese. Very low cal. For dessert, homemade shortbread cookies. I experimented with flavouring the icing with tea: purple was earl grey, pink was cherry lucuma, and brown was s’mores chai. If you knew to look for the flavours, I mean really concentate, you could taste them.
I also made a cardboard template and cut out what were supposed to be tea bag shaped cookies. It took forever. Little Guy thought they were price tags. Obviously the baker on The British Baking Show did a much better job!
Sadly, my kid didn’t get to spend Valentine’s Day with his new sweetheart, who I have yet to meet. Of course, with Covid, they rarely get to meet!! Long distance relationships can be hard at the beginning, however, it also means you have time to get to know each other. That’s how Hubby and I started. Instead of texting, we wrote long letters, and occasionally talked on the phone after 11 p.m. when the long distance rates were lower. There were no phone plans back in the dark ages. Hubby and I also spent our first Valentine’s Day apart and it sucked for other reasons, but we’re still an item, celebrating 25 years in June. Maybe this couple will have quite a story to tell one day: “Love in the Time of Covid”.
Dear Diary – I ordered and picked up groceries on the only day this week that it snowed. Murphy’s law! With the windchill, it was dipping close to -20C, which made for a long, cold wait. I was the only one cued for a pick up and it took forever for them to come. I know why now: I’m feeding an army!
Be thankful for what you have. Your life, no matter how bad you think it is, is someone else’s fairytale.
Wale Ayeni
Dear Diary – Yesterday I supervised Little Guy’s 3 hour Computer Coding Competition. Even though he notified his teachers for the 2 periods he would miss, I still had to notify the school. But where to begin?
I began with the online attendance system used by the school board. It took me 20 minutes of searching and a 5 minute “video for dummy parents” only to discover that the Report Absence Button no longer exists.
So I called local school. She gave me 2 phone numbers for Virtual School. The first number was the correct number to report absences for Virtual School, but the voice mailbox was full, and then it started screaming “error, error” in my ear. So I called the other number and left a detailed voice message. I received a call back almost imediately from a very polite young man, chuckling from his toes. He was a Rogers Communications employee and this was his personal cell phone. Freaking awesome!
Next I sent both schools an email, explaining why I was writing and what number I called to get the “full” mailbox. At least they couldn’t say I didn’t try! There went the first half of my morning.
About 4 p.m., an hour after Little Guy had completed the competition, I received a rather snotty and abrupt email from the local school, giving me the phone number for reporting absences to the Virtual School. Obviously she read my email very carefully. Sigh…
Sheldon: Why are you crying?
Penny: Because I’m stupid!
Sheldon: Well that’s no reason to cry; one cries because one is sad. For example, I cry because others are stupid and it makes me sad.
– Big Bang Theory, Season 3, Episode 10
