April - August 2020: Life During Lockdown

So, obviously it wasn’t a three-week shutdown. Here we are in late August, STILL, with the world going to shit around us and nowhere to go even if we could. Here’s how we spent our time, what we lost and what we gained, and what good we were able to make of it all. 

Celebrations in a year like no other
Once the lockdown began, there were no gatherings allowed (county health office and statewide guidelines went from 100 people, to 50, to 25, to 10, to same-household-only by the end of March). So we, like everyone else sane around here, adapted as we had to. First up was Raina’s 12th birthday, which in normal times would be a sleepover or movie trip or something; as it was, Annika and I went over to Raina’s house with a gift — a handmade card, a gift certificate to Amazon, and a roll of toilet paper with a very creative, colorful paper collar made by Annika — and took the side gate into the yard, where her mom, dad, and sister greeted us from six feet away; there was cake on the patio table, and we went one by one to get slices, which we retreated to the socially-distant chairs to eat. It was kinda strange, but good for the girls to get to see each other, at the very least. Then there was Mother’s Day: I got to sleep in, and then we all had waffles and I got cards from the kids. We went over to Grandma & Grandpa’s with cake, champagne, and flowers for Grandpa, plus a short visit from their patio, then went home and had a pool day. R.’s birthday was similarly low-key, and had us in the pool, but also featured a chocolate layer cake with Nutella icing. Memorial Day, per the usual, was a full-on three-day pool weekend, but instead of having friends over, it was just the four of us. Father’s Day played out exactly like Mother’s Day had, but with R. and Grandpa as the honorees. To celebrate our young friend Mason’s high school graduation, in late June we held an all-Sauce Zoom call (complete with Pomp and Circumstance playlist, a baccalaureate program I created and had sent to each participating household, and Mason in his cap and gown). The Glorious Fourth (of July) … we didn’t feel very patriotic this year, on account of … everything, ugh … and for the first time since we moved here, there was of course no neighborhood parade, so instead we slept in and, well. Spent the day in the pool and grilling. And finally, Grandma and Grandpa’s 60th wedding anniversary: Any other year, this would have been a legit party, or at least everyone out at a nice restaurant, but alas. We did what we could — took treats and flowers and champagne over, and hung out in camp chairs on the patio, six feet between households, with gifts and cards and promises to make up for it next year. 

Sourdough, summer reading challenge, the dead refrigerator and other failures
This plague bullshit really screwed up a lot of the things we normally do — it’s depressing to think of things like the Sauces we did not have (e.g. around Mike’s & R.’s birthdays a week apart, one around Mason’s graduation, one sometime in midsummer or at back-to-school time …), the concerts that were called off, the cancellation of our trip to Hawaii (the only other years we haven’t gone were either because I was pregnant or because Jake & Jill’s wedding was the big trip of the summer), the bowling, Chuck E. Cheese, birthday parties, sleepovers, day trips, Beach Boardwalk days, restaurant meals and other activities we did not do. But also, there were more mundane daily fails: Our three-year-old $2500 refrigerator quit on us in early May; we lost a lot of time and frozen goods, and it cost the same amount of $$ to replace (just tried to feel grateful that we were *able* to replace it). Out of concern for the sudden total shortage of yeast in grocery stores and because it seemed like almost literally everyone else was doing it, we made a sourdough starter — and got a few decent loaves of bread out of it (and a couple of superdense bricks, lol) before gradually letting it die on us and abandoning the effort. I got the kids and myself signed up for the public library’s summer reading program, which we all did great on for about a week, then stopped bothering logging our reading, then just kind of … not doing it at all, long before the end. It seems that despite the amount of time we all had (at least once school ended), the lack of motivation for anything ongoing was an even bigger factor than anticipated. Lessons from the pandemic, I guess; it wouldn’t bum me out as much if I didn’t have to see people I know posting on social media about the great awesome fun educational things they were doing with their kids, while it often felt like mine were impossible to drag into doing anything, ANYTHING, but screen time.  

Taking it all online
But on that note, there was a lot of fun to be had in the world of screens! With face-to-face meetings out of the question, we turned to meeting up for online gaming: a couple of epic Mario Kart sessions with cousin Sonic, Splatoon with the Carneys and Smiths, forming teams for the return of Splatfest, and the establishment of a Minecraft realm for all Saucers (nicknamed Saucecraft, of course), and a virtual Mario Kart playdate with the Patels (even Amira joined that one!). Lukas took to the online meetup thing like a champ — virtual playdates with lots of his pals, hours and hours of Roblox with Lawson and/or Manir — but Annika had to be nudged to make any kind of contact with her friends. We grown folk had some FaceTime/zoom sessions with our friends, too — it’s better than drinking alone! 

Trying to get outdoors
Exercise and fresh air were and are non-negotiable daily needs, so I did my daily workout in the movie room or went running, and beyond that I put what little energy I had into more or less forcing the kids into walks to the park at the end of our street (Pokemon GO was a good motivator for awhile, although the kids never wanted to go for as long as I did, and usually fought each other about which direction to take — at least they both liked seeing the herd of goats that were brought in to take care of the vegetation before fire season got started?), or on outings both local (Almaden Lake Park trail) and farther afield (Uvas Canyon park, which had shady trails and a bunch of waterfalls AND we saw a mama deer and her two babies up very close). I dusted off my bike (Mango Fury) and was pretty much unstoppable all summer long — a day without a ride was a day wasted, as far as I was concerned, and I was meeting up with friends to ride bc that’s like one of the only low-risk in-person activities you can do — but I absolutely failed to get either of the kids to ride, even if it meant they could see *their* friends; Lukas claimed he “can’t” and “would fall” no matter what he did, and Annika claimed she knows how (she does) but just didn’t want to (WTF). Lukas would go out with me — I on my bike and he on his Razor scooter — but would go ballistic if I suggested trying the bike again. The first two thirds of the summer were unseasonably cool — lots of days in the low seventies to low eighties — so we didn’t get quite as much pool time as we normally would, but we grabbed what we could anyway. And finally, R. took it into his head to take down the play structure, long ago outgrown by the kids and starting to rot in place; then, unable to half-ass anything ever, he re-trenched the side yard (with a shovel and his own two hands), re-laid the irrigation pipes and the wiring for the lights, rototilled the whole area, and re-seeded it with grass. Now it’s a beautiful open lawn space, which we have not yet decided what to do with — so many possibilities!   

Family life
Absent our usual travel and social plans, we had to struggle a bit to find things to make one day/week/month seem different from the previous and the next. Sometimes the kids did their own thing — Annika reading, working on her art, getting back into latch-hook, watching quite a bit of YouTube (siiiiiiigh), Lukas playing Roblox, making movies of himself (complete with effects he downloaded and integrated all on his own) and eventually, frustrated by the limits of apps and iMovie and whatnot, actually started learning FinalCut. But we also did a lot of family stuff, and honestly, that’s been the silver lining of this whole fucked-up shit-cloud — time together as a family, without any rush or pressure. R. being here and us having family dinner every night, instead of forcing it once a week, has been one of the few things I’ve been proud of doing right. And we have time to work on their interests: Since both kids wanted to learn how to do special effects, R. ordered this whole studio setup, with lights and a greenscreen backdrop and whatnot, so they could mess around with it. We spent all the time we could in the pool, either lazing around or playing Marco Polo or our new game, Uncle Ball — nobody remembers why we named it that, but it involves the four of us standing in the shallow end of the pool, in a rough square, trying to keep a beach ball aloft and counting the number of touches. At first, any kind of hit, any number of times, was legal; as we all got better at it, creating new records (well past 500 hits and almost to 1000), we changed the rules to make it more difficult: you can’t hit it twice in a row, you can only use one hand, you can only use your non-dominant hand, etc. It’s my favorite pool game ever, tbh. Over dinner one night, we randomly decided that the next weekend would be Maysgiving — in which we would make a full-on Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings, from the turkey to the deviled eggs, and so we did. We planned and executed a virtual Hawaii week: R. took a week off of work in early August, and we had all the foods we normally would in Hawaii (grilled ahi, fish tacos, chicken skewers, burgers with (frozen) onion rings, Napua smoothies and mai tais and lava flows); we put KAPA radio on the outdoor speakers; we got out the snorkeling gear and GoPro’d ourselves sighting coral and fish and whatnot in the pool (dive toys, lol). And all summer long, we had so many family movie nights — sometimes as many as four a week! We had to move beyond Pixar, into slightly dicier territory, but them’s the times we live in: The Karate Kid, Back to the Future, half the Marvel catalogue, Freaky Friday (70s and 90s), Raiders of the Lost Ark, Goonies, Jumanji (the Robin Williams one once, the 2017 and 2019 ones MANY times each), Descendants 1, 2, and 3 multiple times; Ocean’s 11, 12, and 13; all eight Harry Potter movies, Independence Day, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pirates of the Caribbean 1 and 2, Sonic the Hedgehog, Matilda, That Thing You Do!, all three Hunger Games, The Wizard of Oz, Maleficent 1 and 2, The Greatest Showman, Small Soldiers, Innerspace … we’re having to have some Conversations about things we see on the screen, but that’s not entirely a bad thing, right? Anyway, it’s been a lot of fun, and there are a lot of movies left to go! When there’s not time for movie night — random weeknights when we finish dinner early enough, random weekends when we finish dinner too late — we have taken up the show Ultimate Tag, which has led to a few episodes of its progenitor,  the 80s classic American Gladiator — to much hilarity, of course. And we’ve played a lot of games — Jenga, Uno, Clue, Monopoly, Jumanji the board game, etc. — so, like I said: silver lining. :-) 

Business as not-at-all usual
At the beginning of the shutdown, every kind of “non-essential” service and appointment was shut down, but eventually most things got re-opened, with new protocols in place, and we were able to continue such things as regular dentist appointments (in which I waited out in the car, they came to fetch the kid and took both of our temps, and he or she went in alone) and the Journey of Orthodonture. For Lukas, that meant starting Phase 1: spacers, then a palate expander (just like Annika had); for me, it meant trying to get Invisalign started (why not, there’s nowhere to go that it would interfere with and nobody to even see it); and for Annika, it meant waiting just a few more months to start Phase 2 (which we’re going to let her do Invisalign for, if she wants, because of her absolutely stellar following of the rules / being a model patient in Phase 1; we’ve let Lukas know that this is how you earn it). The ortho office has the same protocols: You text from your car when you arrive, then either the kid goes in alone or you both go if there’s something the parent has to see/pay for/consent to. No chairs in the waiting room, and you both get temperature-scanned and hand-sanitized, and of course everybody has to wear their masks except the patient while being worked on. Exhausting, but that’s how it is now. 

School Daze
A month or so after the official end of the school year, Castillero put out a schedule for kids to pick up their belongings, so we did ours at the same time Niamh did hers, and the girls got a six-feet-apart end-of-6th-grade photo together. Meanwhile, the Los Alamitos teachers all established times for kids from their classrooms to go get *their* stuff; Lukas’s teacher was practically in tears. There was talk all summer long about whether there was going to be in-person school in the fall; R. said categorically that we would not be sending our kids until there’s a vaccine or a cure, and I had to agree — right now, there is no safe way to do this. In the end, SJUSD decided that at present, school would be 100% remote, which was kind of a relief — we wouldn’t have to argue with the district, or deal with social issues with some kids going back and some not. Of note, though: Due to bad experiences in the spring, plus their perception of the district’s lack of effort and preparedness, the Marshalls decided to put their kids in a private school that costs $30k per kid, per year. It’s unclear whether the private school will be able to do in-person (they don’t start till August 31) — it may end up just being a very expensive Webex session. Annika and Niamh were both very upset, understandably, about this whole thing, but R. and I reminded her that she wouldn’t be able to see Niamh at all anyway, what with 100% online school, so … At any rate, we got serious about getting the kids — and R., who’s been told they won’t be back in the office until AT LEAST the new year, and probably longer — set up with proper desks and computers. Annika got a desk from Pottery Barn Teen, with drawers and a hutch with a cork board, and my current computer; I got a new one so I could pass on the 18-month-old one I was using. Lukas is using my older computer, and will be getting a stand-up desk that will go in the movie room; they’re backordered, because everyone had the same idea a the same time, so for now he’s at the dining room table. R. got a 30”x60” stand-up desk, which we put in the Very Nice Room after we got rid of the old futon (RIP, thank you for your service). In the week before school resumed, we went to both campuses to pick up supplies; Castillero had the students go in alone and (as always, for everything) masked, and handed them a very well-organized stack of everything from science textbooks to art supplies, while Los Alamitos did the same thing but curbside and parent-only. Lukas got Mrs. Felsoci, one of the teachers I was hoping for, AND so did all his old runnin’ buddies: Manir, Emmett, Brayden, Sam, the Noller twins, and a bunch of other kids that I like. It’s so sad that they won’t actually be in class in person, but we take what we can get. Annika will be in Art 3, and Algebra (with Raina, yaaaay!), plus science, PE, social studies and language arts. Finally the first day of school was here — August 12. The morning dawned a little chilly and overcast; our traditional first-day photos, out in front of the house, were the first no-uniform ones of the kids’ school careers. We started the day with one of my few successful innovations: a short (10-minute) walk around the neighborhood before breakfast. This year is going to be a LOT of sitting staring at screens, so I feel it’s very important to make sure they get at least a couple of lungfuls of outdoor air, and move their bodies just a little to shake off the cobwebs, so every day that it’s at all possible, we’re going walking. And with that — Annika acting like she lives in a rooming house that provides meals which are the only reason she leaves her room, but grinding away at all her assignments and needing no supervision; Lukas farting around as much as possible while he’s supposed to be engaged in class, and crawling into our bed almost literally every night between about 1:00 and 6:00 — 7th and 3rd grade commence!

Ring of Fire
Things can always get worse, so on August 16, they did. There was a spectacular thunder-and-lightning show at night, which was pretty thrilling to this Texas girl. A couple of days later, though, we were reminded of why that’s not all that great a thing in a California August; the lightning started a shitload of fires, two of which were supermassive and threatened the homes and lives of people we love — one down in the Santa Cruz mountains, coming uncomfortably close to the Maalgaards, and one over in the east hills, perilously close to Grandma & Grandpa. The smoke was so thick in our area by Wednesday that I had to use my headlights on the weekly pandemic grocery shopping run, and there was a quarter-inch-thick layer of ash on the car when I went out. Nobody could go outside — it was really awful, the burning in your eyes, nose, and throat, not to mention whatever it was doing to our lungs — nor could we either blast AC (which we don’t have) or turn on the whole house fan (it didn’t cool off at night anyway, plus that would just draw smoke into the house). We were all sweaty, achy, anxious and miserable … and we weren’t even in imminent danger! R. and I, with Aunt Amy’s help, made sure the grandparents took it seriously (and got their car running; its battery had died from non-use), and checked in frequently with them and the Maalgaards. Two weeks after this started, it’s finally easing up — the weather has for once cooperated (slightly cooler, no high winds) and although the air is still too bad for vigorous outdoor exercise (i.e. no running), our people’s homes are safe (this time) and we can, when the wind is right, air out our house. So that’s … something. Gotta take what you can, in this clusterfuck of a year. 

Quotable
—“That’s some serious tech! Nuclear level! Not like radiation, but …” Lukas on an ancient commercial for The Clapper
—"Right now, love is getting toilet paper.” —a wry observation for the times from Annika
—“On the plus side, the delivery went smoothly and much sooner than we had any right to expect, even in the Before Times, the Long-Long-Ago: the great meltdown happened Sunday (not yesterday -- brain fried, sorry) and we already have the new fridge up and running. The guys wore masks and gloves and whatnot, as did we; we moved literally everything but the furniture out of the kitchen, entryway, and hallway and tarped the place like a kill room; we had the kids stay upstairs with their doors closed; and we tipped huge. The prepping, and then the cleanup (wiping every fixture, every inch of countertop, every inch of the new fridge inside and out; mopping from the front porch to the back deck; etc.) took literally all day until now. I'm just ... I'm just really glad we didn't lose the vodka. Sixty bucks' worth of ice cream melted, but the booze is safe.” —me, on the refrigerator dying (posted on F**eb**k)
—“We're gonna take a spill in the dunes and break our coccyx.” —Lukas, to Annika, as we leave to go on a scooter/bike ride

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PS: I'm not even touching on the World Situation right now -- the BLM protests, the absolute horror show of the Orange Shitbag's "administration", etc., because although those things are present and being discussed and whatnot in our daily lives, I just seriously, sincerely do not have the energy to write about them here. Suffice to say, we are in a perpetual state of enraged exhaustion, with unrelenting anxiety as the sauce on every metaphorical dish. It's a lot, a lot a lot, and I just -- I can't. But future us, know that it was there, all the time all the time; we've cried about not getting to go to Disneyland, but the tears are also (more) about the state of the world in which nobody else can, either, if you see what I'm saying.