More Spring, and How I Spent My Summer "Vacation"

So, after April, 6 weeks into our confinement, things started getting really old.  School was the opposite of ideal, there was anxiety, there were panic attacks, there was great relief about having school be pass/fail, there was no 1:1 classroom aide except me.... so the cats decided to up the ante and start peeing on things.  One cat did, that is.  So we had to get the stair landing re-carpeted (it had just gotten new carpet LAST spring!) (it took a while to get the carpet in, as due to covid restrictions they weren't allowed in our house), we had to give up on having a back door rug, or a family room rug.  Iain's bedroom door is now permanently closed (until we have the bandwidth to replace his carpet, at least), and so is ours (carpet got removed LAST spring after pee incidents, now we just need something to block the outside view - from the outside so they can't move it like they move curtains).  It took several months and multiple drug trials, but the cat is now on anti-anxiety meds and hasn't had a pee episode in months.  For a while, though, on gabapentin, she was the most drugged out stoner known to mankind.  Here she is about to spill off the table in her stoner state:

The proper anti-anxiety meds don't make her floppy like that.

There were people, kanelbullar, and sleepy cats.

Iain had some gnarly warts removed from his foot and it's taken a bit over 2 months for his foot to return to normal (I'll spare your the horror of pictures of that!).  Ria had her wisdom teeth out.  I got some fancy creams to make my fingernail finally go back to normal (will also spare you the photos on that!).  We reorganized a bunch of stuff in the house to (a) give Iain a bit more space at his desk, and (b) make space for the elliptical we bought so we can exercise in the house when we can't go out.  Ordered that in late July.  It's still not here (all those darn people with the same plan as us!).  Would have been nice to have that during this early and excessive wildfire season while we've felt even MORE trapped at home.  William got some cute t-shirts for his birthday AND a new bread machine (when the old one literally LEAPED off the counter).  And, it took 3 days of cursing cloudy skies, but we got pictures of Comet Neowise.

I think that covers the summer..... Oh, you need some more cat pictures, clearly.  Both Oreo, but both cute.

Coming up next post, fires (outside), floods (inside), and non-consentual home remodelling (re: flood).

April in Quarantine Land....

We've mostly sat around for 6 months, that's how we spent the spring & summer!  But that doesn't mean that there are no pictures to share since I last shared on 1 April...

Iain and I played with the camera again for a bit a few nights:

It was cool to figure out how to take functional moon shots with Dad's camera.  Nice lens, Dad certainly didn't skimp on quality!

The kids did distance school (Iain's pic is with the fancy camera, Ria's with the cell phone.  Hence the clear quality difference!

William and I, meanwhile, got excited about toilet paper (sorry, no picture commemorating finding that..... I have a picture but I'm too vain to post it!), yeast (a POUND of yeast, donated to our bready needs by my lovely sister!), bread, hot cross buns, and flopping on the couch far too much.

Hmm, that's just through April.  I'd better change the title of the post!  (It was going to be "How I spent my summer "vacation", but I haven't even finished spring yet.)

"Celebrating" 6 Months of "The New Normal"

Oh dear heavens, please don't make this actually "the new normal".... not that the world should really go back to the old normal.  Maybe we can make it the start of a better normal?

6 months ago on 11 March, William started working from home full time.

6 months ago next week, on 17 March, the SF Bay Area went into "shelter in place" orders, and school became 100% distance learning.

Wow, none of us would have dreamed that 6 months on we're still at home, and still in 100% distance learning (I know other places are having in-person school, but California is being careful -- which we like, and has too-high numbers, which we don't like), and still not knowing when this pandemic will end.

And, in the US we've gotten to add protests, riot police turning peaceful protests into chaos, jackboot government thugs literally dragging people off the street into unmarked vans, police responding to police brutality and murder of civilians with more brutality and more murdering of civilians.  (OK, lots of police departments are trying to work with their communities to figure out how to fix the police component of the inherent racist basis of US society, but it should be 100% of police departments, and it isn't anywhere near that.), and we have a president who is literally trying to hogtie the election process, reveling in acts expected only of fascist dictators.  There's an entire faction of Republicans who are campaigning for the Democratic nominee!!!

And, in California climate change is as far from a theoretical exercise as possible, as the state burns....again.  This year Oregon is joining in the fun.  Yes, wildfires are to be expected in this type of ecosystem, but in 30 years of living in California, only in the last 3 has the area we live in been overwhelmed with wildfire smoke multiple times a year.  In the previous 27 years there was only once I remember, from the fire in the Oakland hills. Now it's 2- 3 times a year. The current fires started 3.5 weeks ago, the first day of school.  2 days later smoke took over, and we have spent 3 weeks needing to check air quality before we consider going out for a walk, or eating a meal outdoors, or.....  And then we got the cool apocalyptic orange skies yesterday.  That was fun.  A quote from a news article online:  "The August Complex’s record means that all five of California’s largest wildfires have burned in the last three years. Six of the top 20 largest wildfires occurred this year."  Yep, climate change is real and personally impacts my life.

This is apparently a rant post, not the "lots of pictures post" that I was planning.  I guess I'll post this and move to the more pleasant post for y'all. ;-).

Confirmed, distance learning for the whole school year.

Yep.

We got it confirmed, school buildings won't reopen this school year.  That will be 12 weeks of the school year (well, 11 + 1 week break) that will occur at home.  Sanity is optional!!!

Life in 'Interesting Times"

Dang, I can't believe that it was just 23 Feb when I did that last blog post.  1 week later, Mom was here visiting (awesome timing!).  2.5 weeks later William had already transitioned to working from home full time.  3 weeks after the last blog post was the last day of physical school.  ~3.5 weeks after the last post we got our "shelter in place" order locally (which seems to be working, California's curve is much better than most states).

So, at this point W has been working from home for 3 full weeks, and the kids haven't been physically to school for 2.5 weeks.  2 weeks of shelter in place so far (feels like a month!).  4.5 weeks minimum of additional "distance learning" and "shelter in place" to go.  Current planned date to start up life again is Monday 4 May, although there's rumors that today we'll hear that schools won't reopen physically this school year (end of school year for us is June 5).

More on that later, first pics from Mom's (Birgitta's) visit!

Mom and I went to SF on the Sunday and had a lovely time tooling around, and goofing off.

We hung out with Rachel one day and got projects done:

Then, as we know, the crazies kicked in.  First William got the order to work from home.

Early the next week, Iain had his first professional driving lesson, a requirement to activate his learners permit.  The permit isn't valid until the permit is signed off by the professional trainer.

While they were out driving, the order came to start "shelter in place" restrictions starting at midnight that night.  He got that driving lesson in just in time!

I'm not terribly sure how I got those words on the left of the photo, but I'll accept it ;-).  I think  it will magically go full width next paragraph.

So, then we started living at home and having video life.  Zoom meeting social skills class, Discord + Roll 20 for Ria's D&D, Zoom guitar, and Zoom karate:

And, distance school/work/etc.

Iain and I did have a nice few minutes one afternoon taking some photos in the backyard, you can see a few errant sprinkles in the photo of Iain.  He has one of me, but its locked on his camera ;-).

Having this all happen right in the middle of the already stressful spring of Junior year (SAT's, ACT's, choosing universities to apply to, contemplating recommendation letters) has been an unpleasant load for Iain, so he's more than a bit stressed.  I'm also having to adjust my brain a lot to this never being alone thing, and continually ensuring that Ria's day stays structured enough.  Luckily she responds awesomely to a checklist!  We set up her daily school checklist at the start of the day, and that makes her confident enough to have a positive mood.  She's finishing up her school work by 1 or so every day, though, and by late afternoon the lack of imposed structure starts to make her uncertain and upset.  We need to work on our afternoons - I might have to force her to move our daily PE lesson (physical education == a walk) to the late afternoon to structure up the later part of the day.

So, that's what we're up to!  Looking forward to life getting uninteresting again....

New camera, et. al.

Hello ;-)

Some catch-up, and some new.... in any case, pictures to tickle the heart of Grandmothers and Mormors everywhere.  Well, one Grandmother and one Mormor, at least.

First, a comic to celebrate the return of gluten into our lives!!!  WOOT!  Mind you, there are more than a few recipes that I have maintained as GF because they are just so good that why would one mess with them?  And, I'm now used to FLAVORFUL flours, so all those white flour recipes bore me (except for the special ones - skorpor, I'm talking to you!), so I can't just make old G-full recipes as is, I have to add some millet, some almond meal, some....  ;-).  My flour stash has not reduced, it's grown.

Thought I'd put here the nice photos that I stuck up on Facebook from the Memorial Dinner we had for Dad out in Chicago in November.  A small gathering, but it was all the people that Dad cared about.  Lovely folks.

Happy Christmas!

And the new year is upon us!  Showcase is heavily on Iain.

Here Iain is at the Freestyle Academy exhibition just the other Friday night at the Computer History Museum.  He is in the animation program, and this was the animation zone.  Here's the link to his class web site:
http://freestyleacademy.rocks/~IainR/

If you click on the "Narritive 1" link you'll see his stuff from the exhibition.  The "Conceptual" link is from the Oct 31 open house.  Finally, there's a bunch of "photo blogs" you can peruse.

Some other photos, Iain at "Rice Ball Day" at Japanese class - his teacher took such a lovely photo of us, Iain looks so happy.  Although his anticipatory joy of that burrito (celebrating the passing of the written drivers license test -- we have a Learners Permit, people!!) does seem to exceed his rice ball happiness.

Finally, I have taken ownership of Dad's DSLR camera, and am starting to play with it.  here's some pretty photos of my people:

And, a mild treatise on my children's hands....

school photos, and holiday fun

Hello!

This year I forgot somehow to take the 1st day of school pictures, but I have 2 somewhat scruffy school photos to share ;-)  Iain is now in 11th grade, 16 years old, and Ria in 7th, 13 years old.  Goodness me!  This year for Iain is going to involve thinking and planning about college applications.  yeep!  This has all 3 of us somewhat stressed, needless to say.

Both kids are doing great this school year.  Iain is in the Freestyle Academy program at his high school, which pairs the English class with 2 elective courses, digital media (where they learn to use digital cameras, record audio, use photoshop and other programs, make web pages, make videos) and in his case animation.  All of the English class work is done project based using the skills learned in the 2 electives.  Iain is LOVING it!  He has found an artistic side to himself and is throwing himself with glee into it.  For Christmas his main gift was a drawing tablet for his computer, and he's been exploring it non-stop, with great joy.  Here's some eye candy from his efforts:

He has also started taking piano lessons this fall, though those got interrupted for a few months while he healed from a broken bone in his hand - he took a dump off his bike the day after his birthday.  He's back on the piano, back at aikido, and back on his bike (though rather less often as he's made friends on the city bus to school).  He never left the computer, and now has a D&D group he plays online with kids in Japan, England, and across North America - a true 21st century digital boy (without the connotations of the song).  He's taken an online drivers ed class, but hasn't yet taken the written test to get his permit.....soon, though.

Ria started taking guitar lessons this fall, and has gotten to the point where she is playing some songs that she likes, and I hear her singing along up in her room while she practices.  At school she's getting great grades, and in 2 of her 6 academic classes she is independent from her classroom aide.  In 3 others she only needs medium support, and in the last she needs strong support (nearly 100% project based group work).  So, we're starting to talk about how to wean her off her classroom aide next year.  They have roving aides assigned to the school in general so that she can have help in just 1 or 2 classes and be independent in the rest.  The goal is 100% independent, as long as she can maintain a B or better in grade level classes.  Even without the aide she'd still have the support class (in addition to the academic classes) to get help from her case worker in organizing, etc.  She's joined at D&D group at the local game store which is run by a guy who used to be a special education teacher, and has merged that with his love of gaming, so its a perfect group for her giving her all the support she needs to have FUN!  She also is taking karate lessons 2x/week, and has just been awarded her first "stripe" on her belt.  The yellow belt for kids is broken into 4 steps, 1, 2, and 3 strips, and then the yellow belt proper.  With her coordination issues its taken her longer than most to get that stripe, so it has truly been a labor of love.  So proud of her.

Our house has sprouted gluten based objects now that Ria's gut is healed to gluten tolerant levels.  Our gingerbread house was a great success, and was plundered on New Years Eve.  William has been sporting a new blanket on the couch, which comes with cat enhancements.

And, there's been some holiday projects:  shelves for cats, and new antennas!

Finally, proof that I've been here too.  Happy New Year ;-).