Road tripping...

My younger brother is gravely ill in Iowa.
So Marc and I thought we could (with a little luck, a supply of masks and a lot of disinfectant wipes) pull off a trip out to see him, maybe give him a last in-person goodbye.
It's so hard to sit here thousands of miles away and try to love and help by remote control.
We found an affordable air flight out to Des Moines and started plotting out a road trip back to Utah that would include seeing Marc's son and his wife in Nebraska and checking out Mt. Rushmore and maybe Yellowstone.
We knew it might be risky to travel through several states and mingle with populations that might have Corona Virus. We also knew they might not welcome out-of-state visitors.
But, anxious to break out of our self-imposed isolation, and thinking we could be careful enough, we booked a flight and a car and called my sister-in-law to let her know we were coming.
"Oh! Absolutely not!" she said in alarm. "The Home Health people here forbid it! It's too much risk!"
Ok. I understand. We got kind of carried away with the vision of the freedom of the open road. I totally see the wisdom in protecting my brother and his precarious state.
So, we reined it in and redrew our plans.
We dropped the visit to Iowa. We cancelled the plane ride. We decided NOT to stop in Omaha because now it was pretty much out of the way.
We decided on a four-day run that would include some Mormon Trail history sites, a hike around the base of Devil's Tower, a trip over to see Mt. Rushmore and visits to Yellowstone, the bears and the geysers.
Marc had his GPS all programmed. I had a cooler stocked with snacks and provisions for roadside picnics.
It looked like fun compared to staying within our four walls and Utah's restrictions. (This way we were dealing with Wyoming's, South Dakota's, and Idaho's as well.)
It turned out to be low level fun and a LOT of driving, over 1,700 miles on our rental Outlander.
Marc had never been to Wyoming so a half-inch on the map didn't look like the endless road it was. The GPS counted a gravel and dirt road as a real road.
The travel time we calculated didn't factor in the construction areas where we waited and waited for the pilot cars to come free us.
We didn't expect the hotel in Cody to NOT have an elevator or to supply soap as a given.
We only missed Old Faithful's eruption by 10 minutes.
On the plus side, the little ELKS movie house across from our hotel in Rapid City showed us a zombie movie about a pandemic with Brad Pitt playing the lead. That took our minds off our troubles.
We fit through the 8-foot, 0-inch Needles Eye tunnel in Custer State Park. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-QbHhYSSdk)
We had some unique picnic lunches, sitting on the side of the road in the sun.
We saw the Crazy Horse Monument.
We didn't get eaten by a bear.

New oven, old me...

There's a lot to keep up with right now what with all the rules that go along with the Pandemic.
If I decide to go shopping, I have to remember if the store is open, grab my mask and plan a good route.
If I want to look around at anything, I have to pretty well know what it is I want before I start.
I need, more than ever, to plan things ahead even though there is not much to actually plan.
It's blowing my mind.
That became clear the other day when I decided my granddaughters and I would bake some banana bread.
I had ripe bananas begging to be put to good use.
I had a trusted recipe in my recipe card box.
I had brown sugar and white sugar and oil and eggs.
We started organizing the ingredients.
One granddaughter greased the glass baking pans and started beating the eggs.
The other one measured out the spices, poured in the oil and the sugars.
We mashed the bananas.
At one point, the question came up? "Should we mix all the wet things first and then the dry things?"
"No," I showed them the recipe card. "It says, mix in the order given."
We soldiered on, adding everything in a bowl and pouring the mixture into the two loaf pans.
I looked at my new oven which is supposed to be a new age convection oven if I wanted it to be.
I decided I didn't want to fuss with a newfangled process so I punched in the button that I thought kept it being a conventional oven.
(One button said "Conv bake." The other said Conv roast." Above that it said "Bake" but what oven doesn't?)
I opted for the "Conv bake" thinking that meant conventional bake.
I soon realized I chose wrong.
The bread was bubbling and the fan kept coming on and off.
I'm thinking I mistakenly put it on convection oven mode so I decided to keep the temperature down and cut the baking time.
I turned on the oven light and started watching carefully.
The bread turned brown, then dark brown and continued to bubble.
It smelled really good and I crossed my fingers a lot.
Finally, after 45 minutes had passed, we lost hope.
I figured the convection oven process had ruined our good effort.
We pulled out some underdone, burned banana loaves.
"Maybe we needed some flour?" said my older granddaughter carefully.
What? Flour?
I looked at the recipe card. Sure enough, it asked for three cups flour.
Why had I not noticed that earlier?
The last line was hidden in the slot for the recipe card so that's a bit of an excuse but not really.
I had blown it and let down my granddaughters who now had to settle for a couple of store-bought donuts instead of warm, fragrant, homemade banana bread. I'm embarrassed.
Blame it on the Pandemic, I say.

P.S. We regrouped and tried it again. This time the bread rose, the oven was great and I didn't get in the way of Adell and Hannah's success. Woo hoo!

Dropping in and off...

Lately I feel rather like a thief in the night.
Except I'm not taking things.
I am leaving things: books, video tapes, old socks, shoes, sacks of old toys, a CD player that still works but doesn't play cassette tapes.
Since the Covid-19 hit, everything has changed.
My routines have been the same for decades.
I clean out a garage or sort through a closet and end up with boxes and sacks of discards, some with perfectly good items like a collection of books I reviewed and don't have room to keep.
I then make a run to the Deseret Industries drop-off area and bequeath the store with my treasures.
I sometimes claim a tax deduction and always, at the very least, I get away clean.
I feel I've done something good with my items and stopped short of adding to the community landfill.
Now, as of several months ago, I have to change my habits.
I have limited options.
DI has been closed and when it is reopened, I will need an appointment.
The library used to take stacks of books I didn't care to keep any longer. Now they are having to be so much more careful.
Nobody wants my worn-out stuff.
I drove around the other day with a trunk full of material to toss.
I finally selected a no-name drop-box for the old clothes, a drop-box surrounded by bags and bundles of similar cast-offs.
I left several books at the donation site by the grocery store.
I am still looking for a dumpster to take my videos.
My trunk is now nearly clear.
But my conscience isn't.
It feels wrong somehow. I don't feel honest about the drop-and-run, sort of the opposite of a Porch Thief. Am I Dumpster Lady?
I can't quite identify my problem but I've now made an official appointment with Deseret Industries so I can legitimately take a number of sacks and boxes for donation in a couple of weeks.
It's good to live honorably!