Inertia and Covid 19

Yesterday inertia had me in the shop sanding away until late at night. Today inertia has me sitting in front of the computer screen mindlessly scrolling through YouTube and Facebook. I did manage to take a shower shortly before noon and since then I have done little. It is a beautiful sunny day and the weather is warm. I could go for a walk. There are many things to be done in the shop and I know I’d enjoy them if I could just get myself in there. Despite the lovely weather and the blue sky and sunshine, I’m grumpy.

I also like this guy. 

Alberta had the highest number of new cases of Covid 19 in the country yesterday. IN THE COUNTRY! Higher than Ontario that has three times our population. Higher than Quebec that has twice our population. What is wrong with us? Is it selfishness: you’re not the boss of me and you can’t tell me what to do? Is it denial: I feel fine and my mother, father, sister, brother, friend, feels fine so we’ll just meet at my house for a coffee? Is it a desire to gamble: if you look at the stats only about 1% of the population has it so most of us don’t so I’ll just carry on as usual? Are there really that many of us who believe in conspiracy theories and discount science? I don’t know and it makes me tired thinking about it.

This pandemic is inconvenient. I’m not about to go wandering around the stores just to see what they’ve got. I’m not going for my weekly lutherie lesson. This is the second Christmas since I was 8 years old that I haven’t been practicing Christmas carols as part of at least one choir. I miss seeing friends in ‘3D’. I miss sharing a meal with friends. And here’s an extremely petty one: I’m getting really tired of seeing images on the news of people getting swabs stuck up their noses! But none of this is worth either catching Covid myself or being part of a chain of transmission so complex the people who are doing the tracing can no longer figure it out. So I’ve decided to do what I did my last year of teaching. I made a list of the things that I would miss and another list of the things I wouldn’t miss when I retired.  Seems to me I have a pretty good start on what I don’t like about Covid so what about what I do like?

I like not having to go anywhere after supper. I like not having to rush to appointments. I like being able to wear the same favourite clothes and not having to worry about being presentable for other people. Having less contact with people in general means I have fewer opportunities to be irritated by them. I can, after all, turn off the news. I like having uninterrupted time in the shop (once I get myself in there.) I know our neighbours better now than I have in the previous 34 years that we’ve lived here, and they are good neighbours. There are children around and, while I’m not big on little kids in general, I very much enjoy the energetic girls next door and the three kids across the alley who are a bit older. 

Yesterday the doorbell rang and when Richard went to see who it was he found a water-colour painting of a bunch of flowers in our mailbox done by the girl across the alley. We put it on the fridge.She is the same artist who painted a picture of Odie with a Santa hat and Christmas lights on her patio door. Each time I go out to shovel snow off the pad or put out the garbage I look at Santa Odie and I have to smile. I like spending time at home. 

I like having accumulated enough tools and materials that I can take on most shop projects I can think of. A couple of days ago I pulled out the pyrography set that I haven’t used for a few years in order to add detail to a project. I like having a variety of wood to work with. I’m discovering that all the trouble I was having with the scroll saw was likely due to operator error and I’m enjoying what it allows me to do if I take it slowly. Spending more time in the shop has me thinking about ways that I can rearrange it to make the most of the small space. That will be a huge undertaking but, bit by bit, I’m thinking it through.

Richard and I are pretty happy with each other’s company. We find things to laugh about. We rattle around the house occupied with our individual pursuits and then spend time at dinner and watch our YouTube favourites together. I’m grateful that I’m no longer on the front lines in the schools and I have nothing but admiration for those in health care, education and ‘essential’ jobs who don’t have the luxury of just staying home. Then there are all the parents who are trying to juggle working from home with keeping their children engaged when the children can no longer just drop over to a friend’s house after school, or participate in multiple extra-curricular and community activities. 

I do admit to wanting to slap people upside the head when they do things like move a volleyball team’s practice site from Calgary to Cochrane where measures are more lenient or lie about Covid symptoms and bring the virus into a hospital. The only way out of this is through it so may all of us be thoughtful, kind, and look after each other. Despite my crossness with people, I’m content and I need to take time to remind myself of this. I feel better now and may even go out for a walk. Thanks for reading.

Everything I know about snow shovelling I learned in the wood shop

Bevel up

 Ok this one is probably just weird so feel free to bail now.  I've long heard the expression that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We had a dump of snow over the last few days and today I was out shovelling the remains of it. It was about -7C according to the thermometer but it felt much warmer in the sun. So much so that once I got the top layer of snow off the thin layer closest to the sidewalk began to melt.

On my first pass I was left with harder snow that had been packed down by people walking on it. Rather than going at it again with the snow shovel in the regular orientation, I turned it over and scraped at the crusty stuff that way. It did a much better job of removing most of what was left. It's exactly the same with a chisel. Bevel down you take a finer scooping cut; bevel up you can take a heavier straighter cut. Both positions have their uses. Of course turning the snow shovel over does wear it out faster, but it's a snow shovel!  When it wears out I cut the handle off and keep it if it's made of hardwood and I get a new snow shovel. If it has a metal handle I toss the whole thing. The plastic snow shovels aren't meant to last.

Bevel down

Another similarity: when I skew the shovel I change the angle of attack just as I do when I'm using a chisel or a plane. Maybe when you're a woodworker everything looks like a piece of wood and a cutting tool.

Making bread on a snowy day

It’s Tuesday and normally I’m learning to build ukuleles on a Tuesday. To do this I drive about an hour north. Today it’s snowy and the highways are partially covered. There’s an accident on Stoney Trail so I’ve decided to stay home. That’s the wonderful thing about being retired: nobody is depending on me to make my way through the snow. The roads probably aren’t that bad and, no doubt, I’ve driven in worse but it’s fabulous that now, I simply don’t have to. There are challenges to growing older and there are also great opportunities.

So what am I doing with my bonus day at home? I thought I’d spend every moment in the shop and then I got sidetracked. Wouldn’t it be a good day to bake bread and have the house infused with that smell that was an ever-present one as I grew up? We could buy bread and sometimes do. We both love it and tend to eat way too much of it so we mostly ignore the temptation to buy. The same goes for a bread machine. We have had two. They were wonderful and it was way too easy to make bread that came out flawless every time - well most times, unless you forget to put the paddle in which results in a burned stack of ingredients when you get home and expect a lovely light loaf of bread to have with chili for supper. In an effort to eat less bread and other carbohydrates we gave the machine away about six years ago.

With the onset of Covid we are looking not only for comfort food but also for comfort smells and activities. When I lived in Banff I baked all my own bread. It was a calming thing to do on snowy weekends when I didn’t have to go into work. It also helped to warm up the draughty suite which had only a gas heater in the living room. Mind you, near the gas heater was a great place to set the bread to rise. 

Mum used to put hers over one of the heat registers.I’m not sure I’ve found the ideal place to raise bread so, for the moment, it sits on the counter. With a convection oven and quick-rise yeast making bread doesn’t take nearly as long as it used to and every once in a while I make a couple of loaves. As so often happens I just thought I’d check Google to see what was new in baking pans. The ones I inherited work very well and I’m sure they were in service before I was born. Somehow the loaves I’m making don’t seem to fill the pans as much as I’d like them to. I was wondering if there were slightly smaller pans available. And down the rabbit hole I go.

crust is a bit dark (tastes good though)

There are all sorts of bread pans available most of them the same size as the ones I have. There are steel bread pans with no coating, silicone pans that need no coating, aluminum pans with non-stick coating, bread pans with lids (why would you need a lid), and bread pans that make 4 mini-loaves in a single pan. Or, I could just form the bread into a round loaf and throw it in the oven. We have to be very careful about non-stick coatings, most of which are toxic to birds if they get overheated. Much as I threaten Odie with the soup-pot from time to time, I’d hate for anything to happen to him. So today I’m not buying any new bread pans and the bread is rising in the heirloom pans as have so many loaves before it. Maybe the next time I’ll make a round loaf or a baguette-shaped loaf. For today, it’s two mostly whole-wheat loaves.I’ll experiment with slightly longer rising times and other places to set the bread to rise. The texture of the bread has been dense but not overly so for whole wheat. I’d like to try sourdough again but hesitate because you have to feed it and use it regularly and we really don’t need to eat that much bread. Still the idea is intriguing. Stay tuned.