Living While Gray

Age is Just a Number

Baking Bread or How I Spent My Quarantine

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spent my quarantine

Image courtesy of Couleur from Pixabay

OK, so I didn’t bake these lovely loaves of bread but, if you want to know how I spent my quarantine, baking bread was a big part of killing time waiting for life to begin again. Mine just don’t come out as pretty but they taste pretty awesome.

It looks like a lot of you also spent your quarantine baking bread. According to the Atlantic, the shortage of flour and yeast now replaced earlier shortages of toilet paper and hand sanitizer during the pandemic. The hand sanitizer I get, the rest, is still a mystery.

Sourdough seems to reign supreme right now. I’m not quite sure why, although I love a little sourdough whenever I can get it, so send your extras on over.

Baking bread

bread flour

Sourdough, for those of you not infected with the bread baking bug, is the most challenging of all bread baking and takes serious commitment. I might wake up today and decide I’d like a nice fresh loaf. I add flour, water, yeast, maybe some sugar, and butter with a dash of salt ad 4 hours later, I have a nice loaf of bread. Yummy.

If I want sourdough, I needed to start yesterday or the day before because sourdough bread requires a starter of fermented yeast to sit out until it sours — where did you think it got its name??? And, while I love sourdough bread, I can’t stand the smell of sourdough. I guess that’s because I used to work with yeast back in my days working on my masters in biology. The smell literally turns my stomach. Plus, I’m an instant gratification kinda gal and 4 hours is my limit on waiting to eat fresh bread. If I want sourdough, I’ll add it to my curbside pickup (LOL).

If I haven’t turned you off on sourdough or you want to try some other types of bread, here’s my advice:

  1. Spend the extra money on bread flour. It’s a finer grind that rises better and results in a fluffy texture rather than a course bread.
  2. Ensure everything is at room temperature before you start. Remember, yeast is a living thing. How would you feel if someone threw cold water and eggs on your head? And, while that won’t kill you, just piss you off, it kills your yeast. No living yeast, no nice bubbles, and you now have flat bread.
  3. Proof your yeast to make sure it’s ALIVE (whenever I think of that I’m reminded of the line from Young Frankenstein, “it’s alive” — OK, maybe it’s just me). Just like every other living thing, yeast needs to eat and drink. So, adding yeast to a mixture of flour and water, with a little sugar mixed in because yeast never has diabetes. A cup works for this. Add everything in a small bowl, tuck your yeast in nice and warm, and wait 10 minutes. If you come back to a bubbly mixture, your yeast is good. If not, throw the mess out and order yeast the next time you find it — there’s also a serious shortage of yeast. Some local bakers will sell you a small quantity if you ask real nice.
  4. You’re gonna get dirty so don’t expect to use a machine to do everything for you. Even if you mix in a machine or with a mixer, you need your hands. They’re already clean from all the hand washing and sanitizer, so that’s taken care of. BTW, using a mixer results in a mess as the dough gets sucked up into the blades to the mixer. And, a bread machine is good, but baking in one results in weird-shaped bread that doesn’t brown right — IMHO. At a minimum, you need to knead your bread — I just love saying that!. To knead, push the bread away from you on a floured counter, fold over then repeat – for about 5 minutes or more.
  5. Don’t rush. It takes time for the bread to rise — at least 2 hours.
  6. That’s it, you’re now a master baker — LOL

Why I spent my quarantine baking bread

It’s cheaper than therapy and safer in a pandemic.

I’m not a psychologist, but as a marketing professor, a lot of my coursework involved psychology. A wise professor once taught that marketing has 2 parents — economics and psychology and she was right. My pop psychology answer to why we, as a collective group, are obsessed with baking bread is that it’s something creative. In a world where we can’t make anything, our jobs that consumed many of our waking hours disappeared, and just about everything in our routine changed instantly, we could still make something happen, even if it was only making a ball of flour rise up to triple its size then turning it golden brown to feed our families. Baking bread made us feel productive in a way that the pandemic took from us.

In fact, we’re all cooking up a storm and many of us learned how to turn on the stove for the first time. There are Tik Tok videos on cooking, new cooks are teaching as they’re learning how to cook, and even children are getting in the game. There’s just something awesome about feeding people that gives us a sense of self-worth.

Maybe there’s also a little control in there, as well. The pandemic took away any sense of control we had — we no longer determine what we do, who we see, and, for many of us, how to pay rent. But the laws of biology are finite and dependable. Once we add yeast (a living organism in dried form) to water and flour, the little buggers start churning out carbon dioxide that forces the ball of flour to expand. Baking the mixture, fixes the solid elements leaving little holes where the gas escaped and creating a texture we find pleasing. Control.

I think the whole kneading thing also helps work out frustration. If I had to guess, I’d say this is the real reason why everyone is going crazy baking bread. For 5 minutes, or more, you get to punch a blob of dough and no one’s gonna send you to therapy or call 911. You have the perfect excuse to punch something other than your partner’s head, which is what you really want to do after watching the way he ________ (fill in the blank, chews, brushes his teeth, leaves his socks all over … ), even though he knows it irritates you. A little tip here, it’s possible to overwork your dough so if you’re really frustrated, divide your dough into smaller segments, and beat each segment for 5 minutes or so. If you run out of dough, just make another batch.

OK, enough for today. Enjoy your baking.

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See you back here soon.

 

Companionship During a Pandemic

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companionship during a pandemic
This is what my office looks like as I continue working from home. I’m a marketing professor and I’ve been teaching via Zoom since Spring Break. During that time, just like the rest of you, I spend most days huddled inside and far away from others who might carry the coronavirus. My question is what are you doing for companionship during a pandemic?

As a single mom for most of my adult life, I’ve lived alone since my last child left home a few years ago. However, I still had the pups, Pearl, the sweet little pitbull, and Dusty, the bullmastiff, who was an old man. Unfortunately, we lost him during the pandemic, so now it’s just me and Pearl. Both dogs are rescues, which I highly recommend. I’ve always owned rescue dogs and they make the best pets.

Companionship during a pandemic

In all honesty, she’s ecstatic about being the only pup but even happier that I’m now home with her most of the time. If I had to lay odds, I’d be willing to bet that the novel coronavirus was genetically engineered by a team of super-intelligent dogs as a plot to have more quality time with their families. Then again, I write fiction books about an impending apocalypse from one group of terrorists or the next. I don’t think there was anything malicious about the dogs, and I don’t think they were trying to overthrow legitimate governments like the villains in my novels, they just hate when we leave them home alone in the morning.

If Pearl had her way, she’d be snuggled next to me 24/7. In fact, here’s a pic I took before the pandemic of her idea of hangin’ with mom while I’m trying to take a nap.

snuggles

Here’s how the Huffington Post says dogs feel about the lockdown (of course, cats just wish we’d leave them alone in their house).

Lockdown has been nothing short of epic for dogs. Deeply social creatures that require and desire intense periods of bonding for their happiness and wellbeing, they’ve been spoiled by housebound owners marooned for weeks on the sofa.

Pearl is especially spoiled because I basically take her everywhere I go now that I’m not working since I only go to outdoor locations or to do curbside pickup.

In some ways, the need to bond is mutual.

Even folks who never imagined getting a pet fostered or even adopted a dog during the pandemic (cats are not a pandemic pet, so not as big a change in cat ownership). Fostering served the needs of humans for companionship during a pandemic, and I admit a few colleagues I never saw as pet people, decided to foster for the companionship. Fostering also helped animal rescue places trying to keep their own staff and volunteers safe.

Working through a pandemics

Of course, the love goes both ways and I’m really happy to have such great companionship during a pandemic, even though she loves peaking at the students or colleagues trying to have a serious conversation through Zoom. I think others enjoy seeing her pop her little head into my screen as I certainly enjoy seeing their dogs and kids.

Working from home has its challenges. Today in class, a student took her dog (and her computer) out because, well, when a pup has to go, they gotta go. It looked nice outside and, with my crazy schedule, I probably won’t see much of what’s going on outside except when I let Pearl out.

Of course, the downside of all this working from home is that, sooner or later, we go back to working in an office, or, in my case, a classroom. As of now, the university plans to open to face-to-face classes on Aug. 24. I have to say I have mixed feelings about going back to the classroom. I’ll miss the daily walks with Pearl, the lunch spent on my patio, and not having to put on makeup. I also miss my students and they haven’t done as well with online learning as I would expect from digital natives.

Pearl won’t be happy, which may result in some superficial damage, but change is inevitable. My hope is to make the transition back to work as easy for her as possible. After all, her companionship helped me through this pandemic.

Saying goodbye to our companions for the day

As much as I’ll miss Pearl once I got back to campus, I know she’ll miss me more, especially since she can’t understand why I leave every morning after being home basically full-time for 5 months. And, it’s no good explaining the situation to a dog.

The best solution is to prepare your dog before heading back to work outside your home.

The experts I checked out suggested some variation of the same tactic for helping your pet cope with separation anxiety, which involves gradually increasing the amount of time you leave them home alone. Other experts recommend using a thundershirt or similar product that provides comforting hugs throughout the day or giving extra treats or toys for the dog to distract him/her from the fact you aren’t there.

OK, enough for today. I hope you find these posts useful and I’d love to hear your feedback.

Be sure to check out Living While Gray on Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram. If you have ideas or would like to write for us, reach out to me through the comments below.

See you back here soon.

Cover That Gray: Coloring My Gray Hair During a Pandemic

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coloring my gray hair

Sorry, we’re in the middle of a pandemic and my gray roots now reach halfway to my ears and the cut that looked so nice 12 weeks ago now looks like something from a horror film or something the dog’s been chewing on. Not a good look, but my options for coloring my gray hair aren’t good. Even now that most states loosened restrictions allowing salons to open, I question whether it’s safe for women of a certain age (yes, that’s you) to spend hours surrounded by too little social distancing.

I mean, I like to look good, but I’ve never been a believer in the old adage “leave a good looking corpse”. I got stuff to do.

What choice do I have?

Coloring my gray hair: Problem

Sure, I can cover the whole mess with a hat or, I guess since I’m not really seeing anyone but myself and my dog, I can just let the whole thing go until I’m completely gray. But that’s not me and, from the number of you posting on Facebook and Pinterest asking for advice, I’m guessing you’re not gonna go down without a fight, either.

After years of hair salons producing questionable results and a number of DIY failures, I still struggle to do something with the thin, gray mop on top of my head.

See, here’s my vision of me:

me

Idealized me

Notice the full head of thick, red hair. Well, that was never the real me and even farther from the real me during a pandemic, where my hair badly needs a cut and color and my face looks like a teenage bad dream with acne from wearing my mask every time I leave the house.

OK, delusional, I know. But here’s the reality.

I won’t go to the salon. And, maybe, I won’t feel comfortable going to a salon until there’s a vaccine for the virus. Call me chicken or a snowflake, I’ve been called them all by folks disturbed (somehow) because I started wearing 2 masks after a trip to the beach in NC. I’m not sure how me doing everything I can to protect you makes me a snowflake, but hey, to each his own.

Coloring my grey hair: Solution

Luckily, my daughter lives about 45 minutes from me and we’re a pod — a group that spends time with each other but doesn’t see others outside our pod. I feel safe with her (and the 3 grandbabies wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t visit once a week).

I ordered hair color from Madison Reed and, with the help of the 3-year-old, my daughter applied it to my head. I used another company’s products before. I even had a friend back when I was a grad student and we applied color for each other since neither of us could afford the triple-digit price of a salon. I wasn’t too happy with the flat color that resulted. Of course, the bottles of wine we consumed while coloring each other’s hair might have contributed to that. [Come to think of it, when you added in the cost of alcohol, a salon might have been cheaper … but definitely less fun]

Back to my story.

I’m really happy with the results.

How it works

So, Madison Reed has a tool that takes your hair color, the amount of gray you have, and other factors from answers you provide to suggest hair colors. I don’t think this works at all. I’ve tried it twice and never ended up with the color I was going for.

Instead, start with the colors — browse through the colors matching what you’re looking for, such as reds (my fav), blonds, etc. Each shows what the color looks like on particular natural hair colors. This got me closer to the color I wanted.

Next, put on old clothes you don’t care about because the 3-year-old will cause hair dye to go everywhere. And, if she doesn’t, by the 3rd glass, your substitute stylist will get dye on everything. I ended up with dye on my shorts the last time.

That goes for the spot you choose for the application, too. Go somewhere easily cleaned.

Before you apply color, put the packet of gel around your face or use Vaseline. Otherwise, your face and ears will look like you come from another planet where people have 2-toned skin.

If you’ve had color before, you know they start by applying color to the roots and working the color through the rest of your hair in the last few minutes. Separate your hair into manageable clumps and paint the roots. I find Madison Reed gives you plenty of dye (although my hair is thin), so don’t buy two boxes of color, which the company pushes in their efforts to maximize profit. Also, they push the subscription to deliver additional boxes of dye on your preferred schedule, which reduces your cost a few pennies. You can change the color with the next delivery so it saves a few dollars to go ahead and subscribe. Just remember to cancel when (if) we ever go back to feeling safe at a salon.

Leave the color in a little longer than the directions instruct if your hair is grayer, then wash your hair thoroughly with the enclosed shampoo and conditioner. I usually buy the Pro Boost Seal, but my daughter usually takes it before I can get it home. I guess she considers it payment for her services.

I try not to wash my hair for a few days after the color to retain the reds a little longer. I could go into the science behind how coloring my gray hair works but then I’d put you to sleep, just trust me on this. Besides, we don’t have anywhere to go, so why bother.

OK, enough for today.

Be sure to check out Living While Gray on Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram. If you have ideas or would like to write for us, you can reach me through the comments.

See you back here soon.