The pandemic continues, and life continues with it. We have several big events in May every year with Mother’s Day, Jose’s birthday, our anniversary, and of course the end of school so there has been plenty of activity in the last couple weeks despite continuing to stay at home!
Jose turned the big 40 this year! I ordered a huge yard sign because if you can’t put an obnoxious sign in front of your house for your husband’s 40th birthday in the middle of quarantine, well, when CAN you do it? Ha! He loved it, and the girls did too. (I had kept it a secret from everyone to maintain the surprise. Also patting myself on the back for having the foresight to order it a month ahead of time, because demand is up right now!)
The girls and I made him a cake which turned out great, and otherwise did our best to make sure he had a nice day. We had Tokyo Bowl takeout for dinner, and his present arrived — a 3D printer! It was very user-friendly and he’s already made a few things with it. Fun!
Saturday was our anniversary. All of our anniversaries are usually pretty low key, and we don’t really exchange gifts because we usually go on a kid-free trip instead. (We were supposed to be heading to Belize in a couple days but that trip was an early casualty of the pandemic. Sad face.) I had ordered a Le Creuset dutch oven a few weeks ago when they were on sale at Sur la Table, so we called that our anniversary gift! I made one loaf of bread with it so far that turned out so-so (tasted fine, just really dense) and one batch of dough that failed before I even was able to bake it. Hmph. Will try again soon!
In other news, tomorrow is officially the last day of school for Emma. She had a virtual awards ceremony with her class yesterday, and there’s a drive-by parade at the school tomorrow night to see the teachers. We wrapped up homework and “homeschool” last week, and she is officially ready for 3rd grade! (Fingers and toes crossed that 3rd grade can start normally in August.)
We are starting to talk about summer kid care, and the level of risk we are willing to accept by sending our kids somewhere. Emma’s summer care opened again this week; Charlotte’s daycare is still closed until NASA decides to ease some of its restrictions. It’s looking like the NASA daycare may be able to reopen in a couple weeks, so that would probably be the point at which we send both girls back to camp/daycare.
(The other factor is Jose’s job. If his company brings people back to the office, that would also be a driver in getting some childcare since it would be really difficult for me to get any telework done from home if I’m the only one here with the kids.)
I ran the second virtual race in my training series on May 17. I chose to stick with the 5K and it went well! But then I bailed on running for a whole week for, I dunno, lame reasons. The next virtual races will be at the end of June, so I have time to get back on track.
I’ve been nurturing plenty of quilting projects, including my 100 day project and finishing up the Alison Glass/Giucy Giuce Mini Series Stitch-along. I’ve done some graphics and editing work for clients and wrapped up a new pattern for Bluprint…and then, only a few weeks after submitting it came the news that Bluprint is shutting down. So disappointing! I’m not sure what this means for the two not-yet-published quilt patterns I had in the works with them, or for the patterns I’ve written for them in the past. I’m hopeful that I may be able to get the rights back to some of them and put them in my own shop. We’ll see.
I haven’t been reading much during the last couple months, but I did pick up Lord of the Rings again. Jose is reading it for the first time, and I’ve only read it once before — and that was 20 years ago shortly before the movies came out. It’s been fun to read the same book together, and I’m looking forward to watching the movies again as we finished each one. (We’re halfway through Fellowship of the Ring right now.)
This week I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather again with a sore throat and general ick feeling. I mean, honestly, just ugh.
Joining you in the general ick feeling. I’m trying not to blame it on going out in public for the first time last week but I totally am. Same sore throat earlier in the week and now just general blah.
And I’m with you in the daycare thing. I’m hoping maybe mid-June we can send him back. But as I told Chris, do we know where the parents are going? Are they all at the beach with the throngs of other people?
How has Jose never read LoTR?!
*shrug* He just hadn’t! Heh. He read The Hobbit a few years ago and I’ve been telling him he really should read LOTR. He finally listened. 😉
How in the world are you getting sick?
Ugh, I wish I knew. The options I have come up with are 1) grocery store, 2) takeout food, 3) mail deliveries, 4) the general outdoors or 5) re-inhaling crud that is still circulating in our house.