Pandemic Diary — September 14 to 20, 2021

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

E had her annual visit with her primary care physician today. Dr. L said that her test results were great. She was really impressed by the cholesterol numbers. We went out to lunch downtown at the food truck place to celebrate. Later on, E went to a meeting of the knitting group, a largish monthly gathering of old friends and colleagues. The meeting was held outside in a park. She had a chance to catch up with some people (and their dogs) that she doesn’t get to see very often.

E finished a Maisie Dobbs novel yesterday. M started it today. This one is called A Lesson of Secrets. We have also been watching a Turkish series on Netflix called Love Me As I Am. It’s a dramedy about a couple of college students who fall in love and decide to get married without having a clue about what they’re getting into, especially in terms of family pressures. It’s a little silly, but the couple is cute and lately their brightly colored knit sweaters have been awesome. 

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

M worked in the yard for a few hours in the morning: a little mowing, a little raking, and a lot of cutting back old irises. One of the sunflower plants, a volunteer if we remember right, has shot up to a ridiculous height and now contains more than thirty open flowers. It’s about eleven feet tall. The Turkish word for sunflower is ayçiçeği, which literally means moonflower, which has always seemed a little odd to us. Anyway here’s a picture of ours, posing in the late afternoon with a half moon.. 

Today was pie-for-dinner day and it was again strikingly successful. The first course was a cup of soup (Amy’s quinoa, kale and red lentil) and a small tomato and lettuce salad. This was served at the kitchen table. The second course was served outside at our small table way at the back of the yard, next to the crepe myrtle and the compost bins. The slices of rhubarb pie were cut Chambers style, which is to say that each piece was one sixth of a pie. So as to protect the purity of the rhubarb experience, no ice cream was served. 

Today was also the day we said goodbye to our old red armchairs. They were noticeably worn and the style had never looked quite right in our current house. But we had loved them dearly. At least we found them a good home. (And made enough money to go out to dinner at Sybaris tomorrow night.)

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Tertulia with J and R this morning. The coffee shop was busier that we’ve seen it in months. Summer is quiet in Corvallis, but in the fall things gear up fast. The K-12 schools have started, so the school buses and parental taxis are both out in force. OSU classes haven’t started yet, but students have started arriving and the whole great university machine is rumbling into life. 

We are still in mourning for the chairs. E says that selling them was sort of like selling your pet pig at the auction. Speaking of which, dinner at Sybaris was very fine. E had trout; we won’t mention what M had.

Friday, September 17. 2021

We talked to a concrete guy this morning about replacing our driveway. That was depressing. We’ll have to think about it. Bad news in the back garden also. The great mutant sunflower has fallen. On Wednesday it was fine. On Thursday it was leaning. Today we find that its main stem has buckled under the weight of those 35 blossoms.

In the afternoon we went with J and B to Brigadoon Winery, a lovely place in the foothills of the coast range about twenty-five miles south of Corvallis. We tasted a pinot blanc, a dry riesling, a semi-dry riesling, and two pinot noirs. Wonderful weather, warm and bright with a sky full of thin white clouds that let the sun through most of the time. Rain is forecast for ten or eleven o’clock tonight. We’ll see if that pans out. We haven’t had any real rain here for a really long time. Everything is bone dry.

Saturday, September 18, 2021

This is a melancholy date for us, twenty-four years now since Becca passed. It’s funny how sad events can recede into the far distance and yet remain forever new.

We picked apples on Thursday and E has been making applesauce, quite a lot of applesauce. Today she wanted to give a couple of jars to R and G, so we walked over that way just before lunch and dropped them off. It’s the time for year for giving away produce–we got some nice grapes from P a while back, and L dropped off a box of plums, pears and apples. Our own apples are sort of okay, but hers are really good. And so, despite E’s sauce making, we still have plenty of apples. 

The rain did actually show up late last night and came down heavily for a while. Today the world is damp and refreshed. More moisture is expected tonight and tomorrow, though it sounds like it will be mostly drizzle.  

Monday, September 20, 2021

We did our usual grocery shopping today and had smooth sailing at both stores. No shortages noted. It’s a beautiful early fall day, and E enjoyed her walk over to the Co-op. After lunch we did some furniture arranging. We just got some sliders to put under the legs of the couch. They make the process a lot more fun. E also had her Zoom yoga and then went out looking for a tablecloth. She is hosting two gatherings this week. On Tuesday the Lemon Meringue Pie Society will be here; then on Wednesday it’s HEPAJ. E had long planned on hosting the former. She’s only doing the latter because A’s well pump is broken and she cannot promise water for Wednesday. As to why the two groups have their monthly meetings so close together, that is a mystery. It’s no problem for most of the members, but E and her friend H are in both groups and have been known to grumble about the scheduling.

M spent the afternoon updating and backfilling his COVID database. He tries to keep up with it daily, but sometimes things get in the way and days are missed. Every once in a while he has to go back and fill in the blanks, which he finds soothing.

We’ve been watching a lot of our Turkish series Love Me As I Am (Beni Böyle Sev). Omer and Ayşem fall in love while they are students at a university in Istanbul. Ayşem’s mother died four days after she was born, so Ayşem has been raised by her father, who operates a modest restaurant in a small town on the Black Sea coast. She is a scholarship student at the university. Omer comes from Istanbul and is the only son of rich parents, the source of whose wealth is never mentioned. Ayşem is played by Zeynep Çamci and Omer by Alper Saldiran. Do they look like young first year college students? Uh….no. But that’s what they’re supposed to be.

Love Me As I Am is a little odd. It sounds like standard rom-com fare and that’s sort of how it goes. When the two young people first reveal that they love each other and want to get married, both Ayşem’s father and Omer’s parents are aghast and firmly opposed. But the two lovers persevere and in time Ayşem’s father comes around. He hates losing his daughter, but he appreciates Omer’s sincerity and recognizes true love when he sees it. Omer’s parents are another story. Omer’s mother, Nadide, is appalled that he would even consider marrying a girl that she had not chosen for him, especially one who was out of his class. She is devastated by this betrayal and that’s pretty much all she talks about. Are we saying that Hadide is a depthless stereotype? Yes. Are there any characters in this series who are not depthless stereotypes? Not really.

Omer’s father is short, balding, absurdly selfish and hot tempered. If anyone thwarts him, he immediately plots revenge. Omer is an earnest young man in love. He is determined to be with Ayşem and will not give her up. Ayşem is a very conventional good girl who really likes looking into Omer’s green eyes. In her mind, she refers to him as ‘Grass Eye.’ At least that’s what we think she calls him. There was that one scene when she was musing to herself about how wonderful he was and the subtitles referred to him as Glass Eye. But we think that was a mistake. Anyway, when Grass Eyes proposes, she finds herself saying yes and once she says it, she sticks to it. After that the writers don’t give her much to do except to look cute and be nice to people. 

The episodes are an hour and a half each, which is way too long, and the action often proceeds very slowly. Every episode features a musical interlude, which consists of out-takes and shots from previous scenes, accompanied by a soundtrack featuring love songs from a particular genre of Turkish traditional music. These last only three or four minutes, but they seem to go on forever. So is there any reason to watch this series? Well, the odd part is that it is really rather fascinating. Maybe someday we’ll figure out why.