we have a vaccine!

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Giveth/Taketh; VAXXED!; Dinners This Week

Apparently there is a chicken tender shortage????? 

Okay, maybe there is, maybe there isn’t; I asked All Knowing Google and got three headlines of varying levels of certainty:

Article 1: Is a chicken tender shortage underway?

Article 2: US could experience a chicken tender shortage

Article 3: The US is now facing a chicken tender shortage

Time will tell.

Carla, in typical Carla fashion, won’t eat chicken tenders, instead preferring her chicken in nugget form or shaped into dinosaur-adjacent shapelets. But how can the chicken tender shortage not have a domino effect? Well, perhaps this is the ideal time to wean her off of chicken nuggets for good!

And things are looking up, in other parts of the freezer section. I got my hands on some frozen pancakes this week: some of the mini pancakes at Target and some regular Eggo buttermilk pancakes at my normal grocery store. 

I guess sometimes the good lord taketh away and sometimes the good lord giveth.

Carla is now FULLY VACCINATED against Covid 19! And the flu, but that’s less exciting. No less important, though. 

She had a low fever the day after her vaccine, and complained of arm pain and a headache for most of the day. She also seemed a little more subdued than usual. But the next day, she was back to normal, aside from some lingering arm pain. 

I AM SO RELIEVED OMG. 

It’s not like we’re all going to go out and stick our faces into the mouths of strangers or anything (I am picturing those old-timey lion tamers who stick their heads into the jaws of the beast). But I do feel like maybe we can RELAX a little. I mean, we will continue to wear masks, we will continue to social distance. And I can’t imagine that we’ll be attending packed-house concerts or sporting events. I do think I will unclench a little bit? That sounds nice. And maybe we will explore some of the avenues that we’ve considered mostly-closed for the past eighteen months – travel, restaurants, birthday parties, indoor playdates/dinner parties? I suspect we will move very slowly. 

Although…

My husband and I are – possibly – going to eat dinner in An Actual Restaurant for our anniversary this week. We have childcare (Carla will be at a birthday party, full of masked, mostly-vaccinated children she already sees every day at school). We have a reservation. We are both tentatively committed, which is an oxymoron. Tentatively committed to keeping the reservation, not to one another. I mean, one hopes. But despite all these baby steps, we are both VERY NERVOUS at the idea of eating inside a restaurant. Even my husband’s enduring desire for a real steak (as in a steak that I haven’t prepared at home) hasn’t pushed him over the fulcrum of the Should We Eat in a Restaurant teeter totter. 

We have eaten AT restaurants since March 2020. Three, to be exact. Each time, we ate outside. Each time, we were the only people eating outside. Each time, somehow, it rained. Each time, the wait staff seemed totally unperturbed; each time, I assume, the wait staff talked about “the whack jobs at table four” when they were safe and warm and dry inside.

Anyway, we may decide at the last minute to get takeout instead. We shall see. I, for one, am not opposed to eating steak from the cozy if cramped safety of my car, although perhaps we will need to import our own steak knives for the experience. My husband is less enthused at the prospect. But I don’t think anything says “thirteen years of marriage” like scarfing down fancy steakhouse food between the gear shift and the automatic window buttons while your kid is attending a birthday party. 

Let’s come up with some food to eat on the other, less fraught days, shall we?

Dinners for the Week of December 6-December 13

  • Mediterranean Sheet Pan Cod with Zucchini: This calls for cherry tomatoes, which I may add if I’m feeling generous. It also calls for kalamata olives, which I may subtract because my husband hates them. We shall see.
  • Chicken Tikka Masala: I can’t remember if I’ve tried this recipe before, but it sounds yummy. I will add some sliced bell peppers.
  • Thai Chicken Quinoa Bowls: TSomething about this just sounds good right now – the ingredients make it almost summery, maybe? A good change from the fall/winter fare.
  • Ginger Salmon Salad: We have had this once before and I remember it was refreshingly different. I also think it was one of the rare salmon recipes that my husband liked. 
  • Slow Cooker Short Ribs with Mascarpone Polenta: You guys. I am so embarrassed that I STILL haven’t made the short ribs that are hanging out in my freezer. WHAT is wrong with me?!?! (I know exactly what is wrong, and it is that I don’t want to sear the short ribs before putting them in the slow cooker.)
  • Maybe a Restaurant?
  • Takeout or DIY: My family prefer to call “fend for yourselves” nights “scrounging.” But that sounds a little scrappier than what actually goes on. 

What are you looking forward to this week, food-wise or otherwise?

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Grumpy Morning, Booster, Dinners This Week

I am having a grumpy morning. Part of that is due to Carla having a surprise! day off of school (think broken furnace, frozen pipes kind of reason) when she was just off for FIVE CONSECUTIVE DAYS and part of it is that I got some feedback that was honest and thoughtful and nonetheless hurt my feelings and made me question my life choices and part of it is that I still don’t feel great after my booster.

I am going to tell you about my booster, for blog-record-keeping purposes, and for your own anecdotal-data collection purposes. But I want to be clear that I am GLAD I got my booster, and that a robust immune response is supposedly A Good Sign, so I am not complaining (well, a little) but instead reporting. I got my booster Sunday afternoon. I arrived at the pharmacy 15 minutes before my appointment, which is when I realized that I forgotten my vaccine card. (I did this with my second vaccine; now I have THREE vaccine cards SIGH.) The pharmacist was unfazed by my lack of physical vaccine card; I told her I had a photo of it on my phone and she was fine with that. She had me sit in a VERY little cubicle. She asked which arm I wanted and told me it was okay to take Tylenol later if I needed it; she said she’d gotten feedback that most people have a sore arm and feel a little achy starting about 6 to 8 hours post-booster. She injected me with the booster, applied a bandaid, and said goodbye.

I got the Moderna booster; my vaccines were Pfizer. By ten p.m.-ish I was starting to feel a little yucky, but that could have been the power of suggestion or the beginning of a long-weekend hangover. When I woke up Monday morning, I felt awful – achy and tired and shivery and off. My arm was very sore. My glands were swollen and painful to the touch. I had a fever of 100.9, so I took some Tylenol, fed Carla and drove her to school, and returned home and climbed into bed. I sleep for about an hour, but when I woke up, I stayed in bed, feeling yuckier and yuckier. At 2:30, I had a temperature of 101.7. When I picked up Carla, I felt so bad waiting in the car line that I kept running through little worst-case scenarios: would I pull over into the nearby parking spaces? Was my in-case-of-emergency friend still in the car line herself, so I could ask her to get Carla for me? Would we both get into her car? Did I have an extra booster seat? Did I have a mask? When I got home my temperature was 103.3, so I looked up whether I could take ibuprofen (the pharmacist had specified Tylenol, so I wasn’t sure). The CDC said I could take any NSAID, so I took some Advil and got back into bed. My bones and joints hurt. My skin stung – even the feeling of the fabric of my sweatshirt sliding over my stomach made me flinch. My eyes hurt. My neck and kidneys ached. I kept waiting for the time to switch over to 24 hours post vaccine, hoping either for the miraculous relief of my symptoms ending or for the sweet release of death. Neither came for me. As the night wore on, I felt slightly better. My skin stopped hurting, for instance. My fever was down to 100.6 when I went to bed

Today I feel MUCH better. My glands are still tender, but not quite as swollen. The site of the injection still hurts, both to the touch and with movement, but it’s not unbearable. My back hurts – but that could be from lying in bed all day. My head hurts and I feel a little wobbly. But no fever. My bones and skin are back to their normal state of only vocal when directly injured. 

AND – most important – I am BOOSTED. 

Carla gets her second vaccine in a few days (I set a reminder on my phone to remember her vaccine card!), and I am so excited for all of us to be vaccinated and boosted. It will be such a relief. And, frankly, even if we have to get boosted every six months and I have to have a day of yuck twice a year, it will be 100% worth it for the dip in Covid-anxiety I have enjoyed each time one of my family members has received a shot.  

Now, onto dinners this week.

Dinners for the Week of November 30-December 6

What are you eating this week?

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Five for Friday

November is really putting on a show for us: bright blue skies, occasional spits of tiny snowballs, lots of sunshine. Even the sunrises seem more brilliant and showy than normal. I am a fan. Plus, I am eating leftover black bean tacos for breakfast with great relish. (Hmm. Relish is a little confusing in that sentence, considering relish is also a food. But let me assure you that I will never eat relish, with relish or otherwise.) Your comments on my breakfast post were so reassuring and I am intrigued by many of your ideas and bolstered by your reassurances that eating lunch food at 8:15 is perfectly acceptable. (I had leftover chicken vindaloo for breakfast yesterday and it was magnificent.)

Completely deviating from my typical pattern of grumpishness/food talk, here is some HAPPY randomosity. I have somehow restricted it to five bullet points. Don’t worry, I have made each bullet point much more wordy than necessary to make up for how few there are.

  • I forgot to tell you about Halloween! Carla was a witch – a very glittery witch – and we happened to have beautiful clear, cool weather for Halloween. Often it is raining, but not this year! We stayed in our cul-de-sac, and all four of us accompanied Carla on her trick-or-treating sojourn. It was very pleasant to walk around, and I was reminded of just how wonderful our neighborhood is. We have SUCH nice neighbors. Even though we did not end up buying any candy whatsoever because my husband didn’t want to have a bunch of people coming to the door (I tried suggesting the Nicole Method, of mask and tongs, HI NICOLE!, but he wasn’t having it), probably 95% of our neighbors handed out candy. Most of them were sitting on folding chairs behind tables set up in their garages or on their driveways, with big bowls of candy on top. It worked really well and I think it persuaded my husband that there IS a way to hand out candy safely. Our neighbors all know Carla, especially those with dogs, and greeted her with glee. I was so charmed and touched to see how many of them had special treat bags set aside for her, or had full-size candy bars squirreled away for her. A couple of our neighbors even had treat for the adults – beer and little bottles of liquor and beef jerky “for the fathers.” It was such a nice evening, and Carla seemed content to tour our cul-de-sac for an hour and come home. Perfect Halloweening! And then the next morning, as soon as she was off to school, I put away all the Halloween décor. You know I love my bats and my ghosts, but with two extra bodies in the house (I am referring to my in-laws, not to murder victims; am not a murderer) they were starting to feel a bit oppressive. Literally the only person who noticed everything was gone was Carla, but that’s fine. I noticed, and feel that much less crowded.
  • My root canal is over and done with. Aside from a major headache and some lingering jaw soreness, which the endodontist indicated would last for a few days, I feel fine. AND, better yet, I can drink liquid of all temperatures again without pain. Doing the conscious sedation was a good choice for me. I was SO anxious about the root canal that the anesthesiologist kept telling me that he was going as fast he could so that he could calm me down. He was very nice and friendly and very by the book. He made sure to tell me, very clearly, that I could not drive or operate machinery for a day after the procedure; he said he had to tack on the second part after calling to check on a patient, and learning that the patient was outside using a chainsaw to cut down trees. According to my husband, when we left the procedure, I told the anesthesiologist that I was going to go home and use my chainsaw, and the guy was NOT amused. (I also told him that I had asked my husband if I could take a Xanax on the way to the procedure, but that my husband said the conscious sedation would cover that for me; the anesthesiologist was alarmed, and asked me several times to confirm that I had NOT, in fact, taken a Xanax. Not much for joking around, that guy. I’m glad I didn’t take my husband’s advice to tell him I ate an egg McMuffin for breakfast. You aren’t supposed to eat anything after midnight the night before, and I think he would have been distinctly unamused.)

  • As I mentioned, we are having a truly glorious display of fall right now. The trees were late to color, but now I’d say they are at their peak. All these beautiful maples, competing with one another over who can don the most fabulous autumn frock, boasting colors that you rarely see outside of a box of crayons. I have been walking every morning, despite the chill in the air, and I am constantly marveling at the trees and their outrageous plumage. It makes me so happy. I do wish that I could capture just how glorious the colors are, but my iPhone photography skills leave a lot to be desired. Plus, while a suburban tree shining just so in the morning sunlight is truly gorgeous, it is difficult to separate the trees/sunshine from the homes/power lines portion of the image. So you will just have to imagine an especially vivid fall suburbscape all on your own.

  • My in-laws decided to give us a little break and checked into a hotel last night. I think they are coming back here when my sister-in-law leaves, and maybe that is part of why they made the move: to be closer to her. But they positioned their departure as giving us a little break, and it is quite lovely. One of the hard things about having extra people in my house – especially when they are all night owls – is that I feel like I never get to talk to my husband. It’s hard for me to elbow my way through the throng to kiss him hello when he gets home, and forget about having any sort of private conversation before I slink off to bed, by myself, at ten. Last night, my in-laws left at about nine and my husband and I sat on the couch together and he told me all about work and I told him all about a phone call I had with a potential new client and we caught up on all the day-to-day things that we hadn’t really had a chance to share lately. It was SO NICE. Also nice: After our conversation, he wanted to go work on his music and I poured a (possibly too large) glass of wine and curled up on the couch and watched Seinfeld reruns all by myself. Even though I stayed up much too late, I feel partially restored. Maybe once I get back from my walk I will be all the way there.

  • I have been saving the best for last. Yesterday, I scheduled Carla’s Covid vaccine appointments!!!! She gets her first dose next week which means she will be all vaccinated before the new year. I am SO EXCITED. It took awhile for me to get to the excitement stage. I woke up Wednesday to texts from two of my mom friends who told me that Walgreens was scheduling vaccine appointments. I immediately booked Carla a spot, even though I would rather have her go to the pediatrician: she has extreme shot anxiety, and I think being in a familiar location with a familiar person administering the shot would be much better than going to a Walgreens thirty minutes from our house and having a harried stranger do it. But getting the appointment was important and I did it. I was kind of dreading the whole thing: dreading telling Carla she has to get two more shots, dreading the topic coming up around my in-laws (who, in prior conversation, have been opposed to us giving Carla the vaccine; we have purposely avoided the topic since this discovery because a) we don’t want to argue and b) we definitely don’t want Carla to hear and then feel more worried, but it’s possible their views have changed since we last discussed it), dreading the possibility of Carla suffering side effects, dreading the very-rare-but-not-nonexistent possibility of more serious issues resulting from the vaccine, dreading the entire thought of being a parent and making decisions for your child that could alter their futures in potentially negative ways, etc. Then, at 1:57 p.m., I got an email from my pediatrician saying they were scheduling Covid vaccinations. I called IMMEDIATELY. I was on hold for thirty minutes, but instead of getting irritated by the long wait, every minute that passed made me more and more giddy with excitement. Because the only reason they weren’t answering my phone call was because they were fielding so many calls from other parents trying to get vaccinations for their kids! The stupid hold music interspersed with repetitive messages about how important it is to get a colonoscopy and interrupted at intervals with “your call is important to us” started to sound like hope. Hope that Covid will soon be as mundane as the flu, hope that someday soon our kids can play together, indoors, without masks, hope that we can travel with less trepidation, hope that we can worry less, hope that fewer and fewer people will get sick and fewer still will die. I am feeling gleeful again, just typing it out! Upon learning that I’d scheduled her vaccine, Carla’s first reaction was YAY! She was PUMPED! She had so many excited questions: could she have friends over once they are vaccinated, and would they be able to play without masks, and would she be able to maybe have a sleepover with someone, and would she be able to visit her cousin without masks on, and would her school stop requiring mask wearing. A lot of questions I could not answer, but it really reminded me how eager even our adaptable, resilient, go-with-the-flow kids are to return to some sort of pre-Covid connectivity with others. When she realized that the vaccine is a shot, and there could be side effects, she was less pumped. But that’s just a normal anxiety around shots in general. And once I told her that she could choose a treat for afterward – ice cream or a donut were the treats I suggested; she added cake or mini cheesecake to the list – she switched her focus to the all-important task of which treat and when. (I think she landed on mini cheesecake for dose one, ice cream for dose two.) Loose end: Since I’d already made two separate appointments, I discussed the options with Carla: unfamiliar Walgreens on a Friday, so she wouldn’t miss school, vs. her regular pediatrician but during the school week, so if she has side effects she might miss a day of class. She preferred the pediatrician option, so I canceled the Walgreens appointment and I am sure it was snapped up right away by another parent eager to vaccinate their kid. Woo! LET’S GO!

Happy Friday, Internet!