From the back porch - May 7, 2020

I doubt my brother is one of the two or three people who read this blog, but happy birthday to him.  He has been good to me since the day I was born, and I pretty much love him.  :)

I had to go to work again today.  The Boss called last night and said, "Have you heard the news?  Courts are open tomorrow."  She said that she wanted me to station myself in the main hallway to see how smoothly the entrance process was running.  So I got up this morning and got dressed, and tried to find my car keys and my shoes, and get to the courthouse by 8:45.  I hung out in the hallway for thirty minutes or so, shooting the bull with the lawyers while I watched how things were working.  Only people who had to be in court were allowed in the building until court was over.  A deputy was taking people's temperature on the porch, and would have turned away anybody with a temperature.  Less than half the people were wearing masks (I wore mine), and the rest of us were periodically removing them for a minute or two.  Our Clerk's office had positioned tables in front of the counter in an effort to stay 6 feet from the people on the other side of the counter, and there was a sign that said, "Please don't lean on the counter."  One young, smartass lawyer deliberately violated that rule.  I told the girls to spray him with Lysol if he did it again.  The judge backed me up on this.  The lawyer got a warning squirt, but not a full-on disinfecting.  If I had been wielding the can, there would have been a mushroom cloud of Lysol all around him.  Punk.

We only had about a half-day of court, so I left after lunch-time.  Hurried to the grocery store to pick up my grocery order, stopped at another grocery store to get things I'd forgotten to add to my list and things that the other grocery store didn't have.  Came home, put away the groceries, cleaned out the refrigerator, folded a load of laundry and washed two more, and put a roast in the oven, and then I came out to the porch to chill for a minute.  About 15 minutes later, I thought, "I should go ahead and put the carrots in with the roast.  So I got up, went in the house, chopped some carrots, and hauled the heavy roast pan out of the oven.  Almost dropped it as I was getting it out.  I put the carrots in and came back outside for a few minutes, then thought, "I should have cut that meat up so it will cook faster."  So I went back inside, took the roast out of the oven, and cut up the meat, and when I was putting it back in the oven, I DID drop it.  Gravy and carrots went all over the oven.  Of course, I had to stop and scoop most of the mess out with a spatula and a sheet pan.  Meanwhile, my supper is NOT COOKING, time's a-wasting, and it's not going to get done if I have to stop and clean the oven. It's too hot to clean, anyway.  I rinsed off most of the carrots and put them back in the pan and set the roast to cooking on top of the stove.  It's simmering nicely as we speak.

I was kind of cussing myself for messing up the oven to where I couldn't use it, for I'd wanted to make some kind of bread to sop up the roast gravy.  Then it occurred to me that I have two ovens, so I made some beer bread.  It just got done.

Now I have to go peel potatoes to go in the roast pan. 

Tomorrow will be self-cleaning oven day.