The Hibernator

Surprise, it’s me again! Kit had to bow out this week, so you’ll get her twice later on instead.

It’s been a tough spring around here. The weather has been cold and wet for months (my day-job boss made a crack about how we seem to have moved to Vancouver — think Seattle if you’re American, or Scotland if you’re British), the world continues to be a dumpster fire in new and exciting ways, and all I want to do is hibernate.

So I’ve been hibernating. Aside from the attempts at nesting I told you about last time, I’ve been reading more, watching Netflix (our new favourite show is The Good Place), and getting constantly sucked into Facebook. Some of those things are healthier coping mechanisms than others, I will admit…

On the nesting front, we’ve also been tinkering with recipes. Most recently we’ve worked out:

• an excellent salad — arugula, cherry tomatoes, walnuts, some kind of cheese (blue, goat, Brie, Camembert, you name it), and homemade vinaigrette (based roughly on this)
• our new favourite brunch dish, huevos rancheros — our somewhat inauthentic version involves layering cheese quesadillas, BBQ pork or beef (fried up with some vegetables), and fried eggs, with maybe some hot sauce on top
• roasted beets — why do we never think of buying beets? Roasted in the oven with a little oil drizzled on top, they’re so flavourful, as it turns out!

Perhaps helped along by all this delicious food, I’m gradually coming out of this funk as spring finally, inexorably pushes out the last remains of winter. To give you an idea of where we are in the season, my tulips have just opened, and the cherry blossoms were last week. (Yeah, I know.)

Lately we Turtleduckers have been meeting for virtual write-ins, in which KD threatens me until I poke at stories and they poke back…meaning not a lot of headway yet, but a little is much better than none. Gardening season is looming, and there will be opportunities to get out of the city, and long walks in the natural parts of the city.

I can feel it. Almost time to bloom.