We had company. It has been a long time since we had company, but it was the granddaughter and the daughter in law and my son’s friend and us. Yes, I know, I know, but we’ve been so isolated for so long, I needed the companionship badly. Really really badly. We had lamb for dinner last night and they came back tonight for lamb curry.

Not only did Owen bake four loaves of French bread, but I backed na’an to go with the curry. The bread was great, the na’an was delicious, the curry was excellent and they brought cheesecake with strawberries on top as well as they incredibly huge dog who I swear is as close to the size of a Shetland pony as any dog I’ve ever met. Duke, who can be a terrible bully to smaller male dog got run a bit ragged by a super friendly Titan (that’s his name and no kidding, he really IS titanic). Titan is really friends, but he’s just a year and a half old and he still has bubbles in his brain.

I didn’t get anything done that didn’t involve the kitchen. Because while baking isn’t difficult, cleaning up the mess is a constant stress and Owen and I were totally covered with flower most of the day. How many times did we clean the stove, the kneading board, and all of the dishes repeatedly. I have dishpan hands!

The “first found in Great Britain” variant has moved into Worcester County. This is also the county without any major vaccination site and where I can’t get one anyway because I’m too young and apparently not nearly sick enough. A friend wrote me from Pennsylvania and said they got lucky and were vaccinated. On the other hand, he’s a doctor who has a bad case of cancer in progress, so she got her vaccine because she’s his caretaker. The vaccine made her quite sick, but everyone else was fine. She said it was weird since she’s healthy and never has a problem with medication. Go figure. Garry didn’t have any serious issues either. A slightly sore arm, but nothing alarming.

Me? I hope they get me vaccinated before some weird new strain of the virus hits.

Meanwhile, I blessed my granddaughter with one my middle level Olympus camera and a surprisingly large number of lenses. I actually didn’t know I had that many lenses because I really only use three or four lenses and so many of these were duplicates. I have to remember that I’ve gotten most of these lenses over a period of about 15 years. Two of them were supposed to be identical, but they weren’t. Which means I got them in two different years. I had a wide-angle lens I’ve used exactly once in three years — the day after I bought it, just to see if it worked. I also let her have my portrait lens which I used to use a lot, but I never go anywhere anymore and mostly, I shoot birds using a long lens through a window that urgently needs cleaning, I realize that I use my 25mm normal, my 100-300 long lens (birds), my 12-200mm which is my best lens for using when I don’t know where I’ll be or what I’ll be shooting. I gave Kaity the 12-150mm which is, as you can see, duplicated by other lenses and I let her have my 60mm lens because she’s my granddaughter and needed one really fast lens. And finally, my 75-300 Olympus lens because it is another version of my long lens which is a Panasonic — but I like the Panasonic better.

She got the OMD E-M5 Mark II and I kept the older one as a backup. I kept the macro lens on it for shooting flowers and anyway, she doesn’t have the patience to deal with it’s temperamental issues on whether it will or won’t focus close or far. I have learned to deal with it, but I think Kaity would find it overwhelmingly frustrating.

I was a little shocked to realize how many cameras and lenses I had. It’s nice that she is such a good photographer and she has gotten even better over the past few years. Much much better.

So that was our weekend. But you know, every day is kind of like an endless weekend, but rarely do we get company. In fact, it has been months. No one seemed sick and at some point in time, you have to grab a piece of life and run with it. I needed to feel like I was still alive!

Categories: #Food, #gallery, #Photography, baking, Cooking, Vaccination

Tags: bread, cameras, Family, holiday weekend, Marilyn Armstrong, Olympus, vaccines