SOLSC 2022 #14 - Happy Pi Day!

 

It is March 2022 and time for the

 15th Annual Slice of Life Story Challenge  

Every single day, for all thirty-one days of March,

writers will share stories.

Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for creating this supportive community 

of teacher-writers!

Happy Pi Day!

Isn't it funny what's on your mind when you wake up? Especially, those much-too-early wake ups when you are lying in bed wide-eyed, counting how many hours of sleep you had already and how many hours until your normal wakeup? 

(I credit this morning's early wake up to the time change - the older I get, the harder this 'one little hour' change messes with my body.) 

Anyhow, I woke up thinking about Pi Day. (It was not 3:14 in the morning, but close.) 

I decided to write into it. Let me serve up a slice of pie today...a PI-le of memories...

I have my grandmother's recipe for homemade pie crust. It's a depression-era recipe, made with simplest ingredients - oil instead of butter, for example. She mastered this recipe, used it all her life, and made many delicious pies. She wrote it down for me some 50 or more years ago. Yes, this handwritten page is disintegrating; I treasure this and have no earthly idea how to actually 'keep it' for posterity.  

I just realized I am now the age that my grandmother was then - which means I've come full pie circle, yes?

I have yet to master pie-making...I simply don't work at it enough. I enjoy making pies at Thanksgiving, but otherwise I really do not make pies. Which means, every Thanksgiving, I make a flop of a pie - something uniquely wrong with it, hahaha. 

When someone says, 'it's as simple as pie' does that mean the task is going to be onerous? 

Oh how I love blueberry pie. Pretty fond of pecan pie, too. Apple pie? Nah, not so much.

My mother-in-law made the most amazing chocolate pie.

My aunt made a phenomenal lemon meringue pie.

My friend Debbie loves to make pies as gifts for others, and they are both pretty and delicious.

What's a cow's favorite pie?

Mooberry

This lame joke is almost a verbal tic at my house whenever pie is served and my sons are home, thanks to countless hours lost absorbing this and other really weak cow jokes when they were young. The source: Road Construction Ahead, a children's video that they watched over and over and over. (Warning - do not check out that video link with a three year old sitting next to you.)

More pie, please -

I remember being in my mid-20s, on a business trip to Denver, and the fun my colleagues and I had at dinner one night, eating at a Marie Callender's restaurant. How many different pies did we taste? Oh my! 

How many times have we stopped by the Varsity on our trips to Atlanta, so that my husband can have a fried peach pie?

Sweet potato pie! This deserves its own line of celebration. This is a pie I absolutely married into - and have no regrets whatsoever.

Let me ask now - what is a mathematician's favorite dessert? - a Pi, of course!

How often do I eat pie these days? Sweet pies, only rarely. Otherwise, practically every Friday, when we have our homemade pizza pie. I have long rationalized it as salad on a slab of bread. 

Oh, and quiche is a pie, yes? I have become fond of making frittatas - which are quiches without crusts. Is a frittata a pie? 

When is a pie a pie? 

Once you define pie as "often having a crust," doesn't that imply it does not have to have a crust? So do crisps and crumbles and cobblers become pies? Or only when served in a circular dish?

Wait, I haven't even discussed chicken pot pie. Yum yum! 

I am going round and round here.

I think this is my first time writing about this...would you say, I PIE-oneered the topic today?

Which brings me back full circle to -

Happy Pi Day!

A little light fun

Yesterday was unusually warm, plus we had very few things on our schedule, so the day was just perfect for hanging our outdoor holiday lights. I gathered these varied packages from the attic crawl space and carried them downstairs, thinking my next purchase needs to be a single large storage bin that holds all of these. We have purchased many more holiday lights in recent years, I think perhaps in response to the gloom and doom of the pandemic, and also because we have a little more time on our hands for decorating now that we are both retired. I placed all the bins right next to the front door, and went to fold a load of laundry, promising to join my husband with the outside decorations when this task was done.

A short while later, I stepped outside. Tony was working on the side porch, stringing lights along the banister, and there was a wild web of light strands on the front porch step. Hmm, I thought, where did that little pile of light chaos come from? I'll leave those for him and work with my new favorites, those easy "reel" lights. Last year we purchased some new lights that were packaged on a reel, making it very easy to wrap a shrub in holiday cheer by simply unwinding the container as you work, virtually eliminating tangles and knots in the wires. 

Except, now I couldn't find them. 

"Tony, where are the new lights we got last year? The ones on the reels?"

"They're right there, on the front steps."

"I don't see any reels here."

"Well I put those away after I took the lights off of them. The lights are right there at your feet - see?"

Wait, what?
Talk about flipping a switch.

"Wait -you TOOK THEM OFF THE REELS and MADE A RAT'S NEST FOR ME, so that I might have the THRILL of untangling them!?"

He looked at me patiently and calmly asked, "Did I do something wrong?"

"Well, goodness, I thought the whole point of those strands was their ease! You simply hold them and unwind them onto the tree as you go."

"Oops. Sorry. I didn't know."

"Aiyiyi."

Honestly, I am a little surprised how quickly my mood can change. 

I was having a lovely day - and then I really wasn't. 

I was SO ANNOYED. 

I really dislike MAKE WORK. 

I took a few deep breaths and set to work detangling those all-too-familiar webs of lights, reminding myself 

what a little thing this is,

how good it is that we are working together out here, 

this is such a beautiful warm day, and
the grandkids will be so excited by the lights. 

Let. It. Go.
It took a few minutes, but soon I was back in the spirit, with just a few muttering musings crossing my mind -  how do we so quickly wind up at cross purposes with one another? 

Soon, all the lights were up, but several of our shrubs were still without any decorations. Wait, we decorated those shrubs with the new solar lights - because they are far removed from the outside outlet. We hadn't unpacked any solar lights yet...where were they?

"Tony, did we store the new solar lights someplace apart from all the others?"

"We might have. Let me check the garage."

"I'll recheck the attic."

There ensued about 30 minutes of searching, up and down the stairs, all around the house  - the garage, the bike shed, the attic, the basement closets. Nothing. Na da. Gone. 

This "fun decorating" was really turning into a very sour time. Where in the world were they hiding?

Time for another activity! I put on my gardening gloves, grabbed my shears, and started working in the garden. The remaining light of the afternoon would be spent with miscellaneous other outdoor chores. As the sun set, the few lights we did complete came on, making the house partially cheery (just like I felt). I put away all the gardening tools and went back inside. I turned on a lamp in the front room and saw two bins of solar lights sitting right there - at the front door - where I had set them before running my laundry. 

Oh my! We went all around the house and yard, but never looked right inside the front door. Ha!

Our holiday lights will be completed when the stars align. 

This was NOT the day!

___________________

It's Tuesday and I am participating in the

 Slice of Life.  

Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for nurturing teacher-writers!

One question

It's Tuesday and I am participating in the

 Slice of Life.  

Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for nurturing teacher-writers!

I'm excited to report that I have had my second vaccine, and in a matter of days I will be considered fully vaccinated. Here we are, as my friend says, making the world healthier one vaccine at a time. I know we have much further to go, but I am so happy to be moving out of this hard pandemic time into something a little softer.

I am curious though.

Think back to the trials and tribulations of this past year:

• realizing COVID-19 exists
• learning that it was spreading throughout the world
• trying to contain it, combat it, cure it,
• so much dysfunction on every single layer of government
• upheaval over rules for quarantining, social distancing, masks
• close schools? open schools? virtual school? hybrid school? 
• closing businesses, introducing phases to reopen businesses
• what is PPE? Yikes, where to get PPE? (also, toilet paper!)
• all the false starts, inadequate starts, insufficient responses, all the confusion
• how every state did their own thing, handled COVID their own way
• how every city and county within states tried different responses, often in conflict with others
• wear masks? masks required? no mask mandate? needed inside? not outside? must wear where? 
• legislators arguing over COVID relief bills
• watchdogs investigating federal health agencies, relief bill fraud allegations, more
• vaccine rollout, also chaotic: approved? not approved? withdrawn from market? safe? side effects?
• where to get vaccine - state run sites, local drugstores, grocery stores, churches, just look for it!
• how to sign up - confusing directions, confusing software, paused screens, wait, wait, wait, stress

We all lived this year out, 

I don't need to belabor this list. 

I'm sure we could go on and on! 

However, when all is said and done, all these varied situations lead to:

the exact same, identical vaccine card for every single American?

This wild, hectic, maddening year of pandemic leads every one of us to this 2 x 3 inch rectangle of white card stock imprinted with the CDC seal?

How in the world did we pull this off?

No, seriously, am I the only one wondering how we managed to create one single card and distribute it everywhere? 

How did everyone I know receive the same vaccine card, though we were vaccinated in different places? How did my loved ones and friends who live in other states receive the same as well? 

Who handled the logistics of this one little card? 

I wonder if 

one dear, hardworking employee 

simply decided 

to block out every other maddening unsolvable problem 

unleashed by this pandemic 

and instead

locked herself away 

in a quiet office,

worked with total focus, 

diligently, 

obsessively, 

printing out and packaging, 

box after box after box after box

of these cards, 

for every citizen,

distributing them to every imaginable location in the United States

in a timely manner!

woohoo!

Pretty impressive, really.

No, seriously, am I the only one wondering how we managed to pull this off?

Leaving the metro

I am participating in the
 Slice of Life.  
All participants are writing about one moment, one part of their day, 
on Tuesdays.
Thank you, Two Writing Teachers!

Early morning commute. The train operator announces that the next stop is mine, so I get out of my seat and stand at the door, right next to the guy who is first in line. He's a young, fit, good-looking man. I don't stand too close; I am a big believer in giving strangers adequate physical space. Yet, the guy looks at me and jumps a little bit...it's almost imperceptible, but I can tell he is surprised by me standing behind him. Something about his body language, his cursory glance at me, screams he is uncomfortable. What the heck? He inches a little away from me, as we wait for the metro doors to open. This is really peculiar. I don't believe I am crowding him, yet it's clear he is ill at ease with me. He has nothing to fear of a harried, gray-haired lady commuting to her teaching job. I freeze, and soften my bearing, unsure what has made this moment so awkward. Finally, the metro doors open - ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRAIN.

I repeat:
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRAIN.

Aack!

I am standing to depart from the wrong side of the train.

Ha! No wonder this guy is freaked out! He's wondering why I'm creeping up on him, on a morning commute. He's found this quiet corner near the door that won't open, and up comes this old lady, crowding him, right at his elbow.

I quickly scooted across the train car and out the door, onto the platform...and laughed out loud. This was SO funny to me. I chuckled all the way out of the station.

What a good reminder to myself to give others' grace.
We simply do not know what is on others' minds, what is going on in their lives.

How did I make such a mistake on my daily commute? I take this train most days of the week. It is so strange that I would mix up the exit door of the train.

I am reminded of advice by Atul Gawande in Being Mortal, about the need to focus on one thing at a time...I had been sitting on the train, wildly texting my colleagues about things that were planned fro the day ahead...I was in 'two places at once.' I don't have Atul Gawande's exact quote, but it was something about the need to eschew multitasking as one ages, and instead focus on one thing at a time...the brain isn't as elastic...or was his advice something to do with tripping and falling? Ah, well, the mind is foggy...at least I got a good belly laugh to start my day.