Dear J,

I default to sleeping on my stomach with two pillows, one underneath my head and the other on top of (and sometimes held in) my right arm. If I’m exhausted, I might fall asleep on my back, but on my stomach is the default. There’s only one problem: Penny has decided my dual pillow approach is perfect… for her.

She always wakes me up cautiously, though her daily approach varies. Sometimes, she combs the hair on the back of my head with just-barely extended claws. Other times, she smooshes herself against my chest. This morning, I got a series of gentle pats on my chin. If I get up to pee or get a drink of water, our little lady doesn’t waste any time settling down into a blissed-out state that I can’t bring myself to disturb, no matter how much of a grump I am waking up.

P is just as much of a sap with Penny as I am, if not more. He always said he wanted a cat who bonded with him the way Echo and I did; one wish fulfilled.

I’m talking about Penny to distract myself; I was disappointed to hear Fauci say ‘open season’ for vaccines won’t begin until June or later. I’ve been following events in TX, feeling awful for the people stuck in cold homes. One of our apartments lost heat and water for a stretch of days one winter, and it was *miserable,* though not the mortal peril people in TX face this afternoon.

I see pundits and politicians – mostly on the right, but some lefties, too – trying to score culture war points off the disaster in TX. I’m so tired of people indulging in ideological pillow fights while ignoring the real issues facing the country. Maybe chill out on spreading lies about windmills or indulging in schadenfreude until *after* there are warm shelters and food available to everybody in TX?

I got my chores done yesterday: Chicago’s main streets are clear and salted, but the side streets were treacherous. Lots of slipping and sliding. People are still digging out; all day, our neighbor Pat has been coaching drivers in our alley how to recover from losing traction.

Lots of people seem to be spinning out and getting stuck these days.

I know exactly how they feel.

Much love and ::hugs::

C/ 

12:07 pm CST
Today’s Sunday dinner is steak and twice-baked potatoes. We started the potatoes at noon; while P washed and oiled up the ‘taters, I sat down and read the instructions for seasoning our new cast iron griddle. Excuse me? Three coats of oil, baked at 450 for 30 minutes each, before the griddle is ready for cooking?

Glad we started early!

The temperature outside is sitting in single digits. If there was ever a day to keep the oven fired up, this is the one. P said this morning that he’s feeling better, emotionally, then he has in a long while. Music to my ears! Is it the slow but real progress on the vaccine front? The incredible shrinking media presence of a former POTUS? Reduced stress from work? Doesn’t hurt that we’re both doing a better job listening to one another and being sensitive to each other’s vulnerabilities.

2:41 pm CST
How much oil is enough? I felt like I went light on round 1; round 2 I got enough on the griddle I had to buff excess oil off, as per the instructions. (I had no excess in round 1.) Back into the oven the griddle goes. P is playing games online with his cronies. I’m playing the newest version of Civilization on my computer as I wait for my alarm to ring.
“It’s the time and the season/ For… seasoning”

3:54 pm CST
I think I see a difference in the griddle surface. I didn’t stint with layer three of the olive oil. I was originally planning on doing the minimum number of seasoning rounds, but maybe a fourth is in order? Not sure how much I got out of round one.

Diligent -or- perfectionist? Ask me again tomorrow, I’ll have a better answer.

4:24 pm CST
I pulled the griddle from the oven. A shiny layer was visible, so I’m cautiously declaring the seasoning process a success. P and I are planning on dinner around six; the potatoes have been baked once, but not bisected, smooshed, doctored, mixed, poured, re-covered and baked again. I will be required to grate cheese, but otherwise it’s P’s show. He’s gaming until 5, so we’re on hold until then.

6:30 pm CST
Stuffed. Struggling to stay ambulatory. Griddle did a nice job providing searing and close-to-grill flavor. The steaks themselves were a little tough… but we didn’t buy the best strip steaks on offer, just to depressurize our first run. P found a recipe for twice-baked potatoes that included tons of butter and milk… when I went to mix up the potato mixture, he asked that I leave the consistency more like potatoes au gratin than mashed potatoes. The result was greasy but delicious: next time, we’ll try to hit that silky mashed texture.

Is it all a lot of bother? Yes. But P and I both enjoyed the fuss and bother today.

And I’m going to sleep well tonight.

::hugs::

C/ 

Dear J,

The lasagna was our best meal yet. P and I did a better job splitting up the work. He doesn’t enjoy grating cheese, so I assembled the ricotta/parmesan/egg sauce while he focused on the meat, red sauce and pasta noodles. The recipe we used stipulates a mix of Italian sausage and ground beef; I feel like the Italian sausage adds a bunch of flavor. Ditto for the onions P chopped and the parmesan I grated. Fresh stuff tastes better, in obvious but hard to define ways. P and I agreed: we would not be embarrassed to serve this lasagna to you or any other guests.

The snow is over; in two days, we got more of the white stuff than we’ve gotten in years. I love how the quality of light is transformed as the snow falls, and the muffled quiet that settles over the city. The bushes in front of our building got blobby and amorphous, but – since this is Chicago – the roads stayed open.

Our next door neighbor is your age, but looks twenty years older than you. I blame her cigarette smoking. She’s a day drinker, which makes me smile, but she can be a mean drunk, which… is not amusing. Right now, she’s hollering at a car stuck in the alley next to our building.

Alleys are not the same priority as the streets for Chicago’s road cleaning crew. Which makes sense from a traditional perspective, but wreaks havoc on Uber, Lyft, and a bunch of similar “gig” companies, who regularly direct drivers down the alleys.

I feel badly for the poor schmoes whose GPS directs them into an unplowed alley. My instinct is to ignore the sounds of tires squealing helplessly as treads try and fail to gain traction. I figure if a driver gets stranded, they can call a tow truck and meanwhile everyone else will have a visual cue that the alley is impassable.

But as I wrote this? My neighbor’s profanity-punctuated lessons in the basics of overcoming a snow-induced lack of traction actually worked! The Uber driver listened, and he got his car back onto the street!

Good for her. I think we all need victories these days, even if they’re small ones.

::hugs::

C/