Toronto is now in Phase 3, which for them means they are able to accept two guests into their apartment at a time. We had to complete some documents, make sure we were wearing masks, use hand sanitizer and have our temperatures checked before being allowed entry. It was a bit of a hike between their place and the subway station, and it was a pretty sunny day, so I was sweating fairly significantly before I got my temperature checked. I don't even know if it makes sense, but I was worried that I'd raised my body temperature by speed-walking through the summer sun, and that fear was exacerbated when the person checking me said "Let me try that again". However, I apparently passed the test on my second attempt, and we were allowed to meet my grandparents.
Not only was this their first time meeting Lee-Anne, this was also my first time seeing their new home. It was really nice, with a lot of the personal touches of their old house. We had brought some potted flowers, and it turned out that they had a shelf full of flowers in front of one of their windows, with one empty pot just the right size for the ones we'd brought.
We had coffee on their terrace, and then we had lunch at their club. As an effort to help diners feel safe during COVID, there was a tray next to each table, and servers offered a choice between setting the food on the trays to maintain physical distance, or to bring it right to the table. Their club is right by a lake where some members keep boats, and so we went for a walk on the docks afterward.
The hand sanitizer there was coconut-scented. That was my first experience with scented hand sanitizer.
So now, Lee-Anne has met my mother, my brother, a cousin, two of my aunts and a set of grandparents. She still needs to meet my two more northern grandparents and one more cousin.
After this, I went to Guelph for the last bit of Summer Shutdown. I got to be present for the introduction of Cassidy, my mother and brother's new cat. I mentioned in a previous post that we had gone down to My Kitty Cafe and met some cats. After another visit and some consultation, they arranged a pick-up date, and I managed to be in town for it.
She was very shy and immediately chose a hiding spot under a table in Mom's room. We didn't get much more from her that day, but she at least came out at night long enough to find a hiding spot at the other side of Mom's room. Despite not wanting to come out in the open, she was receptive of physical touch, leaning into being pet and purring.
That's as far as she got while I was there. Since then, it's been over a week, and she is still very shy, but she has like, five hiding spots that she'll alternate between. She will eat wet cat food with the other cats, and enjoys perching in the windowsills. The older cat, Thor, just ignores her, and Blackavar is curious and social but has been respectful for the most part. She's not much interested in socializing with the other cats yet.
My phone apparently has a moist charge port and can't seem to dry or charge. But I managed to email these pics to myself before it died. Here's Cassidy:
My family sent these. In the last pic, she is relaxing in an open space, which is big improvement.
I updated Gryphood with my "Pandemic Pretzels". If you want to read the whole recipe with description, you have to click on "Read More". That's a feature of the new Blogger format, and as far as I can figure out, I don't have the option to use the layout that this blog uses. I guess this blog's format has been kind of grandfathered into the new Blogger system.
Another criticism I have of the new Blogger format, is that when I'm on this blog, there is a "New Post" button that allows me to make a new post. Gryphood doesn't have that. So the only way I've figured out to make a post on Gryphood is to click "New Post" on The Gryphon's Perch, then try to exit the page, which brings me to a list of posts from the blog, which gives an option to toggle onto my other blogs, including Gryphood. From there, I can make a new post. So if they force a change to the new format, I don't know how I'll update any of my blogs. There's got to be a way, but it's not very intuitive.
Anyway, here's the new post, don't forget to click "Read More" to see the full entry: https://gryphood.blogspot.com/2020/08/pandemic-pretzels.html
If you've got a recipe you would like me to try, and potentially publish, send it in a comment or by other means if you've got my information.
No comments:
Post a Comment