It’s 2020 bitches! The epic year of a global pandemic, climate crisis, zoom backgrounds, election insanity, and the return of The Curvy Cook!
This year has been quite the ride, friends. We’ve been through the ringer and, I don’t know about you, but I for one am fucking exhausted. The raging dumpster fire of the past 7 months has taken a toll on all of us and we are painfully aware that we’re not even close to being out of the woods just yet. There’s so much fun to look forward to with the fall coming; a likely resurgence of the virus, arguably the most important election many of us have seen, zoom holidays, distance learning, the list goes on. With a constant barrage of negativity in the news, on social media, in LIFE, I felt like I’ve hit a bit of a breaking point. I am craving something good and positive and full of profanity and bacon fat. Enter the blog reset, stage left.
Let me tell you a little bit about what we’ve been up to here in The Curvy Cook world. We have basically been quarantining now for about 29 weeks. We started isolating ourselves a bit early because in the beginning of the year I had a pretty serious respiratory infection that basically made me a pariah before we officially went into lock-down here in CT (not the Rona, I got tested, that was fun). After the official quarantine decision was put into place, we pretty much stayed home with our little family of 3 and I didn’t see anyone else for many weeks. Jay was still working at Amazon at the beginning and so we didn’t want to risk even seeing a small circle of people. Not only are our parents older and at a higher risk, but some of the kids in our lives also have respiratory issues, so we were not going to tempt the fates. Not seeing my parents, sisters, and the kids was an acute type of torture for a chick who thrives on being around, and feeding, all the people she loves on the regular. There was crying, there was stress eating, there was no evidence that any of us owned a pair of real pants.
So, in an effort to keep myself sane, and also try to help some of the people in our lives feel connected, I got a Zoom subscription (before it was cool to have one) and launched The Curvy Cook’s Corona Chronicles. We were a small but mighty group of kids (and adults too!) who met every day at lunchtime for many weeks, and once the summer hit, weekly. All in all, we got together regularly for about 25 weeks to talk, cook, do science experiments, crafts, read new books, and just spend some time together. It was a wonderful way to remind ourselves that we were still connected to each other, and it was such a special thing for me to be able to give them something routinely fun during a confusing and scary time for all of us.
During it all, here I was, obsessively making sure I had something entertaining for the kids every day, stumbling through the distance learning thing with AC, trying to keep up with the latest CDC recommendations around how not to die, transitioning to work from home when I had just gotten used to being back in an office, actively stopping myself from burning down the White House press room, scrambling to keep us fed with all the grocery store stock shortages, and going through some weird form of Corona survivors guilt because I knew we were actually lucky in that we did not loose our jobs or have anyone in our circle who was sick. Admittedly, some of this was self inflicted, but I have always been the type of person who deals better with things if I have a lot going on. This time I may have taken a bigger bite than I should have, but I just did not have time for the mental breakdown that I (and all of us) deserved. Self care was becoming non-existent, and I had to figure something out soon.
So, I basically threw myself head first into the kitchen, made every single recipe known to man, and baked more bread than I ever have in my entire life. I definitely contributed to the yeast and flour shortage, sorry guys, I left you toilet paper. Those of you who follow my personal social media pages know it was a bit out of control. I couldn’t stop myself, I was in a constant search of the thing that was going to make us feel good, even for just a few moments. Was it the healthiest of coping techniques? No. Did I go through an obscene amount of butter? Yes. Do I really care anymore since I only wear yoga pants now? No again.
Something happened though in these past 28 weeks. Amid the incessant flow of negativity, we found ourselves experiencing a whole lot of things that were positive. We watched so many awesome movies and binge watched more shows than I care to admit together, snuggled up on the couch, likely ignoring bed time. We played games, did crafts, talked about things we wanted to do to the house – and then DID some of them. Jay built and planted the most beautiful raised bed garden, entirely from seeds, that flourished for our first summer in the house. We virtually visited more with friends we don’t always see because zoom get togethers while everyone is home are a lot easier to plan than real ones were in our normally busy lives. We embraced technology to the fullest and used it to make us feel more connected, not farther apart. AC and my nephews got into a routine of zooming nearly every day to chat and play video games together, something they were never able to do pre-corona…not because we didn’t allow it, but because we never would have thought of it. We consequently taught the kids real life skills like meeting management and courtesy, how to mute their fucking microphone, and wait for other people to stop talking before they did. Some of the adults I know can take a page from that book. They experienced adaptation in hard times, flexibility under stress, and saw that learning wasn’t just for school. When they look back on this time and tell people what they did during the pandemic of 2020, I think they will say that they had a lot of fun. What more can we ask than that?
Meanwhile, through all of this was a nagging little voice in the back of my head telling me to get back to writing. I’m usually really good at ignoring it and telling it to shut the hell up, but this time felt a little different. I found myself missing connecting with you all. In no way do I have a large scale audience here, but I love all of you guys. You make me feel like, in some small way, I might be making people’s days a little brighter…and putting some light out into the world right now is just so ridiculously important. So buckle up buttercups, we’re going on a foodie ride to get us out the other end of this highway to hell that is 2020, and that Corona bitch ‘aint invited. We’ll make it there together, with singed buns, a lot of laughs, some inappropriate comments, and a whole tub of glorious pasta.