Social Distancing in Littleton: Week 21

On the Covid-19 front, there have not been any significant changes in Colorado. I’m grateful that the mask mandate is still in effect, and I hope that it will be extended beyond the initial thirty days. Whether or not they agree with the mandate, most people seem to be complying, and there is less aggression when we are in stores. People generally seem calm, which is a relief. Truly, life feels more or less normal.

One thing that has really bothered me is the spike in mask conspiracy theories. A new one that I read about involves a hashtag= “save our children,” and links the wearing of masks to a child sex trafficking and pedophilia. Really? It goes deeper, to a conspiracy that powerful people ( democratic politicians/Bill Gates/Celebrities like Tom Hanks) are in on it, somehow harvesting the power from children that is emitted when they are extremely fearful, including acts of cannibalism with children. How can anyone believe this crap???

It makes me even more angry that these conspiracies serve to undermine the vital importance of wearing masks and public safety. They also distract from more important issues like the BLM movement and the upcoming election. It’s maddening. Dan is tired of hearing me complain about it, and quite honestly, I’ve spent too much energy getting worked up over it, so I’m going to distancing myself from reading about the conspiracies. I’m optimistic that more people are level-headed and see through this nonsense.

This week was low-key and fairly normal. We ran errands and ate out a few times, including a “new-to-us” Vietnamese restaurant, where I tried Vietnamese-style iced coffee. It tastes similar to Thai iced coffee, but a little less sweet.

I don’t have a picture of it, but I made the most amazing fresh blueberry crumble. It was delicious, and I even made it with half the recommended sugar. It will happen again and soon.

Dan went golfing with a few of the guys in our neighborhood. I have to share pictures that he took of our local golf course. This is just a short distance from our house and it is gorgeous! It reminds me of Red Rock Canyon in Las Vegas.

In most exciting news, Wednesday was my birthday. I worked, as usual, but Dan spoiled me rotten.

The big package was a Cornhole set, which I’ve been wanting for a few years. I’m surprisingly good at it! I also received several cool kitchen gadgets- many from my Amazon Wishlist, fuzzy socks, a cook book, another outdoor game where you throw a ball on a trampoline ( looks fun), a cleaning gadget ( I’m old, I like cleaning gadgets), a ceramic cotton ball holder shaped like a rabbit, and a box of rock candy, which I recently mentioned was a must-have purchase during childhood Disneyland trips. So many friends and family sent messages and I was much loved on my birthday.

Tom delighted in the box that one of my presents came in. It can be your birthday too Tom!

There is an extra-special treat for this coming weekend, which I will reveal next week. I’ve probably never been this spoiled on my birthday! :-)

Which brings me to some funny emotions that I’ve been having this week. My birthday is always a time when I miss my mom a bit more intensely than other times of the year, and last night, we were watching the fabulous new Anna Kendrick series “Love Life”- specifically an episode regarding Kendrick’s character Darby and her relationship with her mom. Even though my relationship with my mom was nothing like Darby’s, there were themes about simply needing your mom. It made me really, really sad and I couldn’t stop crying. I’m grateful to have a husband who loves me enough to make my birthday incredibly special, but I still miss and need my mom. It’s tough.

On the great news front, last night we had the announcement that Biden has picked Kamala Harris to run as his VP. I’m thrilled and optimistic.

I’m ending on a happy note with cute pictures of the cats. This week, Tom started a new behavior of stealing stuffed animals off of my bookshelf. Naturally, those animals have been moved to a safe, “Tom Free” zone, but it was very funny to catch him being a thief.

Slinky is living his best life by licking the leftovers from a bowl of whipped cream. He licked it completely clean.

Social Distancing in Littleton: Week Nineteen

This week has been a bit tough. It’s usually the best week of our summer holidays, as we celebrate both my husband and my step-daughter’s birthdays. We are normally traveling somewhere fun and doing extra special things to mark the birthdays. Last year, we were in Hawaii, and this year, we were supposed to be in Orlando. Also, my stepdaughter is turning thirteen, so it’s a big birthday.

I feel grateful that we are all healthy and that the adults are employed. We are much luckier than many. This acknowledged, it is difficult that we had to cancel our vacation, especially since we have not seen the kids since last summer. We feel that our London trip in the fall has about a 50/50 chance of happening, so that’s also tough. We miss the kids.

In honor of past vacations, I want to share one of my favorite family vacation photos from our Walt Disney World trip in 2016.

We have been celebrating Dan’s birthday, which was on Tuesday. Last Saturday, I took him to dinner at The Melting Pot. We felt very safe there, as the restaurant is huge, and they very much spaced out the guests. We had a alcove to ourselves, which was not only private, but very romantic!

Here is a picture that we took as we were heading to dinner.

And a few at dinner. We did have masks on at all times, except while eating.

I planned The Melting Pot for Saturday night, because I thought that it would be too much to enjoy on a work night, but on Dan’s actual birthday, it seemed sad not to go out, so we went to Carboy Winery. Carboy Winery is very strict with their mask/social distancing poiicy, plus they have awesome wine-slushies, so we like to support them. They are one of my favorite local discoveries.

The birthday fun continued as we received a surprise dual-birthday ( mine is in early August) surprise from my mom’s best friend, Nancy. I had told her about holding the chicken at the farm last week and how I wished our local community allowed pet chickens, so she sent us a pair. In her card, she told us their names are Bertha and Ernesta. Yes, one is missing a beak.

I love them so much. They’ve been given a place of honor on the curio cabinet, right behind our Ukulele from Hawaii!

Besides feeling down about the vacations, I’ve been feeling confused and frustrated. I have a close friend, someone whom I care very much about, who is deep into conspiracy theories regarding covid. She shares news stories that often get labeled as false or misleading by Facebook. Breitbart stuff. I disagree with her, but I also care about her.

I’m conflicted. I feel like I should say something, because I think what she posts are harmful ,and it makes me even more worried to see others agreeing with her. However, I’m not sure how to approach her, as I know she is sincere in her beliefs and they are her truth. I see conspiracy theory and she sees rock-solid evidence. What to do? If I lived closer and could see her, I’d have a conversation. A phone call would have the same tone, where you can really feel the vibe of the situation. I’ve felt compelled to respond to her Facebook threads, but I think it would come off as antagonistic or unkind. I feel angry about it though. My tolerance for anti-mask, “covid isn’t a big deal” talk is gone, but I’m left not knowing what to do with people I love who persist with this.

In writing news, I didn’t advance to the final round of the NYC Midnight Microfiction contest. I was disappointed, but I understood. My round-two piece wasn’t great.

Instead of writing, I began my new ELS Tutoring Youtube Channel: A to Z with Zora G. It’s still very rough, but I’m going to keep working on it. Dan has been a huge help!

In health news, I found out that my health scare from a few weeks ago, was nothing to worry about. This is a huge relief! HUGE!!!

We finished watching The imagineering Story documentary on Disney Plus. It’s great and helped fill the void of missing the theme parks. We also watched the latest Charlize Theron Film, The Old Guard. The Old Guard is fantasy movie about immortals. I wasn’t sure about it for the first fifteen minutes, the premise seemed silly, but then it had me hooked. Plus, I really like Theron.

We had a few amazing sunsets.

Dan took this picture of me in our nearby field.

And finally, cute cat pictures from this week. Slinky was trying to sit on my lap while I was trying to write.

Social Distancing in Littleton: Week Eighteen

This week, Colorado Governor Jared Polis enacted a state-wide mask mandate. I’m thrilled about this and actually wish it had happened sooner. It takes the ambiguity out of the situation and makes it easier for cities/businesses to enforce the safety measure. The tide seems to be turning a bit with mask mandates happening in many states and Trump even finally caving to the pressure of masks. Of course, this all feels too little/too late, as the cases of covid are getting out of control in the United States.

If Douglas County can’t bring the cases down, we will be back to “Stay at Home” orders within a few weeks. This will be crushing for the economy and a very frustrating situation.

This weekend we took our first over-night trip of the year and stayed at the Hilton Doubletree in Breckenridge. It was strange. Last year, we spent about a third of the year in hotels, primarily Hilton properties as Dan has status with the chain, so Hiltons are very familiar, but this felt like being in The Twilight Zone.

We were requested to have one family member go into the lobby for check-in, a sign which we didn’t notice, and we both went in. Luckily, we were the only guests at check-in. The seating areas/tables/decorations in the lobby had been removed, creating a vast space, like the hotel was being remodeled. We didn’t receive our usual bottled water or signature DoubleTree chocolate-walnut cookies. Our free breakfast perk was gone, and I don’t think the restaurant was even open. Santizer gel and signs were absolutely everywhere, and only two people to an elevator for safety.

Our room had new signage, including a large sticker over the door to let us know that it had been cleaned and sanitized. We had to break the sticker seal to open the door. I guess I felt safe, but I didn’t sleep very well at night. I had the thought that someone else, potentially Covid infected, had been in that bed recently. Could it be properly sanitized? Was this a risky move?

The fun aspects of staying in a hotel, like the pool and cocktail lounge, were gone, so it was strictly a place to sleep situation. It cost over two hundred dollars for the night, with none of the perks. Maybe this is yet another reason to hold off on travel?

We did enjoy Breckenridge. The town takes the mask mandate seriously and we felt safe walking around. We ate BBQ and went up on the scenic chair lift. I will blog more extensively about our getaway in another post, but here are a few pictures. I did briefly take off my mask for the velociraptor picture, but no one was near us when I did. The town was very quiet mid-week.

On the way to Breckenridge, we went on the Historic Georgetown Loop Railroad. The ride is about an hour and it goes through stunning Colorado scenery. I will also write more on this in a future post, but I want to mention a Covid concern.

The train ride was mandatory masks, and we were seated by the staff in a semi-socially distanced way with our own companions. We sat in an outdoor train car. This is a picture of the people in the car next to us, very close to us…see how many refused to wear masks? This picture shows people from about six different families, sitting in close proximity.

Announcements were made that masks are mandatory, however, the employees walked past those not wearing them and did not enforce the state mandate. As I wrote last week, I feel empathy for the employees who are being made to be enforcers for this often volatile situation, however, it is a public safety mandate for a serious situation. These non-compliant people should have been directly asked to wear the masks when they were seated, especially prior to the train leaving the depot ( as many did not have them on then. It’s not like they were wearing them and removed them when seated) and if they refused to comply, they should have been asked to leave.

One family in particular, you can see the teenage son in the blue shirt in the forefront of the picture, was loud in their disagreement with masks and making mocking comments towards those complying with the mandate. We nearly said something rude to them, but didn’t. We were not alone in our feelings. This situation definitely diminished our enjoyment of the train experience. I was angry at those refusing to comply, and frustrated that the train company didn’t enforce the masks.

Here we are on the train following the mandate. We made the best of it by enjoying the sunshine and beautiful mountains.

Check out this beautiful Georgetown lake! We had lunch at a pub with this view.

We ate breakfast at The Original Pancake House in Denver, which was our last dine-in experience prior to the March covid closures. It was great to be back and we even had the same server.

It wasn’t all restaurant dining this week. I also experimented with several recipes in a Mediterranean cooking magazine that we bought at Sprouts. We made chicken kabobs with cucumber-yogurt sauce, stuffed tomatoes with couscous, zucchini fritters and a spicy shrimp marinade. All were delicious and healthy, but I only managed to snap a picture of the stuffed tomato.

We did some garden maintenance, and I pulled out an enormous weed that we actually think might be wheat. It was a monster to pull out. Here I am, having a Green Acres moment and feeling very chuffed.

On writing news, a poem I wrote was selected to appear in the “Field Notes” section of Cordella Magazine’s website. I’m not sure when it will be posted, but I was thrilled by the news!

Our community organized a visit to the nearby Happy Dog Ranch. Due to social distancing, we had to sign up in small groups for hour long visits. It was a great experience. We fed llamas and petted goats. A chicken named Penelope sat on my lap and we won a cute pig decoration in a charity raffle. The ranch helps rehabilitate both animals and people. It’s a great organization and the animals are delightful.

And finally, some adorable cat pictures!