Category — Uncategorized

Josh and I are both taking vacation time in August. I need a break, or I’m going to burn out, but it also feels silly to take a lot of time off right now when we’re not going anywhere. Then again, that isn’t going to change any time soon. So I’m taking five days and trying to figure out how to take a vacation without going on vacation.

Because it’s too easy to fall into Saturday habits of going online, which leads into “let me just clean up my email” and finally devolves into “let me just take care of this thing and this thing and this thing.” At the same time, stating that computers are off limits doesn’t feel relaxing. I don’t want more restrictions than I already have.

There are spots along the river that are currently empty if you’re willing to pee in the woods. (I am willing to pee in the woods.) We’re thinking about bringing our beach chairs to the river and reading. It will be hot. And probably buggy. But it will be easy to bail and move somewhere else outside. So that’s in the plans.

I really love the blog A Strong Sense of Place, and they have recommendations for taking a vacation when you can’t go anywhere. They have two rules: you must have anticipation, and you must deliberately savour.

The savouring part will happen in the moment, but I’m trying to plot out my reading list for that week so I can get excited. Making a schedule. Planning fun foods to bring with us. It feels kind of less-than, and, at the same time, I am so looking forward to sleeping in and reading.

I am trying to come up with more on the anticipation front—ways I can get excited about the sort-of vacation. Ideas?

I found out about a love-letter-to-restaurants project online, and I nodded over the opening statement: “Restaurants make us feel happy, satiated, soothed, carefree, inspired, restored, embraced, blown away, taken care of, connected, complete.”

Taken care of. That is the feeling I am missing the most in all of this. It isn’t the food itself because I’ve been able to recreate so many dishes at home. It’s someone asking me what I want and bringing it to me. That doesn’t happen in many facets of my life. It’s someone else doing all the work and letting me sit back and relax. It’s someone else cleaning the dishes after we’re done. (Okay, Josh does 90% of the dishes, so I guess I am cared for on that front.)

I’ve felt those other things before—satiated after being hungry, carefree after hanging out at the table during a long meal, inspired to cook new things, blown away by tasting something amazing.

But it’s the taken care of that I miss the most.

There are plenty of things that are hard right now. It is hard not to see each other. It is hard not to be able to nip to the store and pick up ingredients. It is hard to learn via computer and not be able to get a doctor’s appointment and deal with job instability.

But conversations… those don’t have to be hard. We’re making them hard.

I am totally happy to answer people the first time. No, we’re not getting together with people. No, not even six feet away. Yes, totally thrilled to talk via phone or video call. We’re all figuring out each other’s comfort zones and then interacting accordingly.

It’s the reanswering that is so draining. No, we’re not getting together with people. No, we’re still not getting together with people. No, even this week, we’re not getting together with people. How about I let you know when things change for me? Because, no, we’re not getting together with people.

When the twins were little, we had a code word that meant “you already know the answer to that.” (It also meant “stop” and “you are about two seconds away from me completely losing it.” It was one of those fantastic multi-purpose code words.) So when I said the one word, they knew to pause and think deeply about whether they knew the answer and just didn’t like the answer and were hoping for a different answer, or whether they truly didn’t know the answer.

Because I get it. No one likes hearing my answer, and I don’t like giving my answer. Go back to that first paragraph. I cry at least once a week because it is so hard not to see one another. Because I want to nip down the store and have the social-emotional learning part of school and get a physical and have everyone have a job. I want there to be a different answer, too. But I want to be safe—I want me to be safe, and I want the people around me to be safe.

I’m waiting for different information so I can give a different answer.

Every evening, Dan Zanes and his wife, Claudia, release a video on Facebook. Last night was #128. They sing songs like “Brown Girl in the Ring,” “Loch Lomond,” “We Shall Overcome,” “Deep Blue Sea,” and “Welcome Table.” They usually put the song in context, and then launch into their rendition. The songs are so familiar, and they sing so beautifully… They’re this tiny bright spot at the end of the day.

Sometimes, I’m just trying to get through the day to see which song they choose.

Sometimes, they’re a happy pause from worrying.

Sometimes, they’re a celebratory dance after a productive day.

They are always two welcome faces on my screen. I’m so grateful for the people using their talents to keep us all together during hard times.

The New Yorker has an article about the future of restaurants, suggesting that restaurant-less kitchens will become more popular, with multiple businesses sharing the space.

Over the past few years, delivery has been on the upswing, and delivery-only kitchens—referred to as “ghost kitchens” or “dark kitchens”—are having a moment. Reef operates kitchens across eighteen cities in the United States, in seventy-odd parking lots.

The meat of the article is this business model of placing pods in unused or underused city spaces, such as parking lots. But the question of restaurants has been on my mind lately. How will we return to restaurants. I know people who are eating at restaurants—usually outside—but we’ve barely done takeaway. We are not ready to eat at an establishment.

The article points out why ghost kitchens may become the way of the future:

Opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant is high-risk and expensive, whereas ghost kitchens are lower-risk, offering a more affordable way for entrepreneurs to enter the business. In most cities, opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant requires a gauntlet of permits and inspections; restaurateurs waiting on permits might find themselves paying months of rent for space they aren’t yet allowed to use.

And yet, part of the joy of eating out isn’t the food itself. I mean, of course, it’s partially about the food. But it’s about the space and decorations and the people at your table and the people around you. Ghost kitchens remove four of the reasons for dining out while only providing a single counterbalance to the loss: It’s safer.

We don’t do delivery at all (pre- or during-COVID-19), though we’ve gone to two restaurants two times each to do takeaway. We’ve started setting aside a day every two weeks to pick up at one of the two restaurants. They are places we associate with takeaway, so the experience feels normal. We haven’t yet ventured to places where we haven’t done takeaway in the past.

We may head in this direction for a few years—ghost kitchens and hiding away in our homes to consume food—but I hope we swing back to brick-and-mortar spaces. To sitting at a table and chatting with the waitstaff. Meeting with friends. Peeking at the other tables to see what others are eating. Encountering the food while it is still hot; straight from the kitchen.