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.

It’s week four of social distancing and things have become routine. It’s nice to have a sense of routine. Dan and I are both still busy with a full work schedule and our weekends have become a good mix of projects, down-time, and catching up with loved ones, especially my step-kids in Sweden.

As the number of infections and deaths increases, we feel relatively safe here in Littleton. A news report last night said that our local hospitals still had 70% capacity available and plenty of ventilators. This made me feel less stressed. Our healthcare professionals are definitely working hard, but it is not as dire here as it could be. I hope that doesn’t change. As far as we are aware, we still don’t know anyone who has become infected. I did have one student cancel a class due to a high fever and I had not heard back from her, so that is worrisome. She is Taiwan.

Generally, I’ve felt less stressed this week. I did have one stressed induced nightmare, where I had to
”scrub the virus” off of my body and I woke up with scratch marks all over my arms. Otherwise, I’ve been sleeping well. We have a week-night routine of the 10pm local news, followed by Stephen Colbert’s monologue, and then bed. We wake up around 6:30am and get our morning news at 7am with CBS This Morning. I am mesmerized by Gale King’s colorful wardrobe.

My biggest concern at the moment is actually Sweden. My step-kids live in Sweden and Sweden isn’t enacting strict social distancing measures. As far as I understand, they are recommending it, especially for older people, but they are not closing most businesses or schools. I’m not sure if their strategy will work and I see their infections/deaths climbing. I worry about my step-kids and their family in Sweden. On a less important note, I’m also worried that our upcoming summer vacation with them will have to be canceled. It’s not only about having a fun vacation ( and we have an amazing one booked, that we are holding-off on canceling), but it is mostly about missing the time with them. We don’t have very much time with them, so losing it, will be very hard. I do feel grateful that we live in a time when technology makes it so easy to connect virtually, but it isn’t the same.

So much virtual connecting this week. I’m a bit exhausted by it, but also grateful. I had a virtual happy hour with my friend Melissa in Oregon. We also participated in the second Timothy Oulton “Friday Night Los Angeles Lock Down.” This week, in addition to giving away prizes, they hosted a Q&A with Timothy Oulton, which was very interesting. It’s great to hear what inspired our favorite designer. I also listened to a virtual concert by Josh Ritter, called The Silo Sessions. He played his entire The Animal Years album, which is one of my all-time favorite albums. A Josh Ritter concert is exactly what I needed right now and there is something special about being invited into an artist’s actual home. I could hear Ritter’s wife and children in the background and he sat on the floor with his guitar. It was low key and very intimate.

We attended an important virtual meeting hosted by our community association that taught us how to prep our sprinkler system for spring/summer. We followed the steps and watered our little patch of lawn…but then we had to shut it down again, because snow came. Oh, Colorado, you weather tease!

We continued with the kitchen experiments. I caved and tried the viral sensation: whipped coffee. It was easy to make and very sweet. It reminded me of Thai iced coffee, more of a dessert drink.

Dan made an English Trifle to go with our Sunday roast dinner. We are lacking a proper trifle bowl, but made-do with a pyrex baking dish.

Dan baked amazing cinnamon raisin bread. Our house smelled so good!!!

Another big accomplishment was physically moving our Timothy Oulton Rex Mirror to a new spot in the house. This was a big deal because it is incredibly heavy and took five men to lift it when we moved to Colorado, but somehow, we managed to do it ourselves on Saturday. In a super hero moment, Dan took the weight of the entire mirror and stood it up. It was like I was trapped under a car and he had to lift it to save me- that kind of strength. Here is a cute picture of Tom in front of the mirror.

During a clean-out of unpacked moving boxes in our garage, we hit the jackpot.

This week we watched a few long-anticipated movies. First, we finally watched Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I’m not a huge fan of the Star Wars franchise, but it seemed like a must-see, especially as we have a trip to Walt Disney World planned. It was better than I had anticipated. Last night, we finally watched Cats.

Cats…I kind of loved it. I know it isn’t very good and it’s truly bizarre, but I liked that Victoria was made a protagonist ( she is a minor character in the stage musical) and Francesca Hayward who plays her, gives a moving performance. It’s all-around weird and the music sounds dated, yet I found myself in tears at the end. I was moved. I think it might be a bit of nostalgia. Cats was my first Broadway show that I saw as a child and I thought it was magical. I’m not sure why the movie made me so emotional, but maybe it was a feeling of sadness for theatres being closed or nostalgia for a different, easier time. I also got torn up by the abandonment story line and thinking of how we rescued our kitties. I also had been drinking gin. Who knows what triggered me, but I was definitely triggered.

I do know that this episode of This American Life, also sums up my fascination with the whole damn thing. Clearly, E.J Dixon is my long-lost sister.

Speaking of cats…here are some cat pictures from this week. Highlights include the cats watching the snow, including Tom trying to catch snowflakes by jumping at the glass. Tom also helped Dan build his new driving simulator chair. I love the picture of Tom and Slinky taking turns at their food bowl. They need to work on their social distancing skills.

Sunday was Easter. We don’t normally do anything special to celebrate Easter, but we did have a relaxing day at home. I read for hours, sitting in a chaise by the window, enjoying the falling snow and multiple cups of coffee. The cats cuddled with me. It was great.

I’m ending with a childhood Easter memory from the early 80’s. My mom always had Good Friday off and we would go to Disneyland. This lasted throughout my entire childhood, until my teen years. I always associate this time of year with Disneyland.

In the 80’s Disneyland had a promotion called “Thumpers Easter egg hunt,” where each child could pick a plastic egg that contained a prize. Most of the prizes were small, like a free soda or popcorn. I always wanted to win the stuffed animal- never did. The top prize was a return ticket to Disneyland and although that was the most rare prize, I managed to pick an egg with it for several years in a row. My mom was thrilled. I still wanted the stuffed animal.

Here I am with Thumper and my Dorothy Hamill hair style. I realize that it seems weird that I was wearing a sailor dress and Mary Janes to Disneyland, but this my style. I almost exclusively wore dresses until I was in Junior High. This wasn’t an Easter thing. I’ve always leaned towards being fancy for any occasion.