Oatmeal is definitely a comfort food that’s good for you!
Mr. FixIt and I have a kind of rhythm. While I do most of the meal prep, we seem to take turns making breakfast. I’m the eggs and pancakes gal. He’s the maker of oats. Ohhhh, he makes the BEST oatmeal. We only use old fashioned rolled oats by Quaker. I like some chewy in my oats...not wallpaper paste. He uses a lite version of brown sugar that either has Splenda or Stevia in it...I can’t remember. He adds some cinnamon. Then, when we dish it up, we add whatever berries we have handy and a small handful of crushed pecans or walnuts. His gets a splash of 2% milk...mine gets a little bit of Half & Half. Perfection!
Thankfully we didn’t need to venture to town yesterday. Instead, we took a drive over to the farm to check in. Oh...what an amazingly warm day it was. I actually saw the thermometer at 79! All was well at the home place. The daffodils are blooming as are the forsythia and the flowering quince. The irises are shooting their flat, sword-like blades out from the wet, awakening earth. As you drive out through the country, the bushes along the roadsides are gaining a green, ghostly hue as the leaves begin to form.
One of the benefits of living in West Virginia is the rural nature of things makes social distancing pretty easy. After all...it’s what we’ve done for generations. It isn’t a big stretch for Mr. FixIt and me to hang around The Ponderosa or The Farm, but we do normally take several trips a week into town. We decided yesterday, the biggest change we’ve seen in our lives is not getting to dine out. I didn’t realize how often we eat meals away from home till that little luxury was taken away.
First, you remove the spare tire from under the bed of the truck.
We picked up my truck from the mechanic on Tuesday. It was in the shop for ten days but it was fixed and didn’t cost an arm or leg. After breakfast yesterday and a quick update on the news, we decided to drive out to the farm for a little while. On our way, we were just getting ready to cross a bridge when three things happened...I looked ahead to the intersection to make sure no one was stopped, I glanced to my left at the empty campground someone set up just before the oil and gas business left town, and I caught a glimpse of a vehicle passing me in the opposite direction. I turned back to comment to Mr. FixIt that it was a shame that man didn’t set up the campground earlier when he could have made some money on it. Just then, we heard loud banging on the outside of the driver’s side of the truck and the clang of metal on the road.
Honestly, our life here at The Ponderosa BCV (before Coronavirus) and ACV (after Coronavirus) isn’t that much different. That’s mainly because we are retired. I think we are affected more by Mr. FixIt’s continued recovery from his stroke than we are the global pandemic. We have been taking turns making breakfast. (He makes the BEST oats!)
This is what most of our stores looked like this weekend. It won’t always be this way.
We’ve been listening intently to the news. We’ve followed every story, listened to every nightmarish tale, seen and heard things we wish we’d never seen or heard. We’ve pillaged the stores in a way that would make a Viking proud. We’ve hoarded toilet paper, hand sanitizer, gloves, masks, and cleaners. Our pantries are stocked with everything from diapers to donuts. We’ve got every medicine available for every eventuality. The schools are closed. The stores are cutting back hours to give the staff enough time to restock. The hospitals are rationing supplies and making contingency plans for every possible scenario. And so...we wait.
Notice West Virginia is the only one that’s empty. There’s reasons for that.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the latest news regarding COVID-19 or not, but West Virginia has the distinction of being the last state without a confirmed case of this viral menace. We hillbillies are sitting over here thinking “Heck, yeah! We’ve been drinking water tainted with C8 all our lives. We’ve been mining coal and have black lung. We cut our teeth on moonshine and coffee. Of COURSE it’s not here!”
I don’t believe it’s a “stroke of luck”. I believe it is a gift from above.
As I sat in bed the other night with my little lap desk and my iPad typing this, I had the windows open. At 9:00pm it was still in the mid-60’s and the peepers were calling from the ditch by the road that borders our property. The house was quiet...my husband was off bowling with his buddies. On his own. We have slowly increased his independence and he’s started driving a little. It is a great relief for him to return to some normalcy. It is a great relief to me that he can.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a picture of Mr. Virgo that I haven’t seen before. He was always the one behind the camera and didn’t really care to be in the limelight. One of our friends sent me the photo above earlier this week. She was the Human Resources Director at the Hotel Jerome in Aspen and was responsible for Mr. Virgo getting that job. Which, in turn, brought him to my geographical area. And, into the local “dating pool”. We met on an online dating site. I would say, “If it hadn’t been for her”...but I know who really lined us up and crossed our paths. It was a God thing.
