The Upstory

Merry Christmas 2020

In this year of many changes, here’s another change as our Christmas greeting switches from poetry to prose. Why? Well, for one thing, nothing rhymes with Covid. But I can tell you we lived through the same bizarre year as everyone else.

Family Dinner becomes a thing. Of course, meal prep was an exercise in oddness when grocery shopping turned into a treasure hunt whereby we could find some foods and not others. We cooked up everything we could find and gathered on Saturdays to talk about how weird our week was and eat mismatched food. Lasagna and taco soup, spring rolls and ribs. Afterwards, everyone loaded up containers with take-out for enough meals that Holly said she never had to cook until Wednesday.

Why the grass is always greener. If you can’t go anywhere you stay home and do projects and if your name is Glenn Orgeron you turn an acre of crab grass, weeds, and dichondra into a lush Bermuda lawn. If your name is RaMar you learn how to force your stubborn 1990 stick shift Jeep into four-wheel drive. And you find out that you don’t do it when you’re already stuck in sand. You have to do it while you’re still rolling. So, yeah, we took up off-roading. And kayaking (but only in the river not the lake because I am lazy and want to avoid paddling). We saw lots of saguaros, wild horses, and gorgeous desert vistas and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. There’s no place to social distance like the Sonoran Desert.

The working people keep working. If nothing else, everyone worked harder. Holly, a behavioral health therapist, had an ever-changing number of clients and diverged into the strange mix of working remotely or seeing someone from a distance of six feet in an open-air place. She’s working on her Master’s (Mental Health Counseling) and got to experience the wonderful world of Zoom with classmates from different time zones. Still, she made time to do pedis and manis for me and Aurora and taught us to make Dalgonas (a weird coffee derivative, thank you Covid). Cody didn’t miss a beat as a warehouseman with UPS and, right when the pandemic hit, he picked up a second job with the grocery chain, Kroger. He didn’t do the job he was hired for but he was busy nonetheless doing work required as a result of the virus. After lengthy planning and prep, Ricky, a pro window-tinter, made his move and went into business for himself. His shop, Precision Cut Window Tint, is flourishing and he is as busy now as he was this summer.                                                                                                                         

Lessons from COVID
Art is not my category. People with talent, who are sheltering-in-place, paint stunning designs on river rocks and leave their art in various public places for others to find. I am not one of these people. Never ever. The image in my brain doesn’t look anything like the image my fingers make with the brush. When I leave a hand-painted rock it stays there for all time.

All flour is not created equal. Holly and I learned that there’s a reason that flour has different names. No, unbleached and bleached cannot be used interchangeably. Just ask us how our Panda Orange Chicken ® recipe turned out (like glue) when we used the wrong flour for the batter.

Glenn can fix anything he gets his hands on. He started restoring and refurbishing things people set out on the sidewalk for Bulk Trash pickup as part of the church effort to furnish a men’s shelter and because he could social distance in his shop. Wall units. Washing machines. Everything got a new life and a new home.  

We learn a new word. Masknesia (mask*nee*sha, noun.) Memory loss relative to face masks, usually occurs upon entering a building. Example: I had masknesia and left my dratted mask in the car again.

What happens when your neighbors’ trees produce a bumper crop of citrus. A friend gave me a recipe for whole lemon pie, sometimes called Sunshine Pie or Blender Pie, and every time a bag of lemons showed up on our doorstep I made pies. Whether you liked lemon pie or not, you got one (if you were Aurora and raved about the lemon pie, you got several).   

Plans for 2021
To wear lipstick again, once I can ditch the mask. (*This was the first year I can remember in which no one told me I had lipstick on my teeth.)

That’s all for now.
Lots of love to you and yours. And Happy New Year!

RaMar, Glenn, Cody, Holly, Ricky
Nixon, Boomer & Hercules