November 2020

BIDEN WINS!!!

The most important news first: By the afternoon of November 4th, it was pretty clear Biden was gonna pull it off — but of course it was so tense and nerve-wracking to not have the race called that nobody could really relax. The whole week, the needle kept moving — in our favor, but still, teeth were grinding and shoulders very tense all around. Finally, on Saturday, November 7, the day of Lukas’s socially-distant party-in-the-park (date chosen so that those who were seeing family at Thanksgiving might have more than two full weeks to quarantine after, plus the conflict with Diwali on the 14th for Manir’s family), the news broke around 9:00-9:30 a.m. here on the west coast that the race had been called for Biden/Harris! Flurries of texts and calls between us and all of our friends, TV turned to actual news channels, every social media platform and email and everything else in full celebration — all was celebration and joy at last!!!! I went to Trader Joe’s to get some stuff for the party, and the mood everywhere was giddy and fun and kinda wild. At the park, it was all anybody could talk about — we drank high-ABV beer, showed each other clips of celebrations in other cities, etc., glad that we’d already planned to get together so that we had somewhere to go to share it all. Lukas and his friends had a great time running around in their masks and pounding back a bunch of cupcakes (while the older girls — Annika, Alana, and Niamh — disappeared together with their phones and the Marshalls’ dog), and we had a gorgeous day for it — high sixties and sunny, not too much wind, just as if we were all meant to be out there at that time. The party only broke up when we all realized it was getting close to time for Biden and Harris to give their victory speeches; everybody hustled home and got the champagne ready. The four of us watched it live in the living room, and I teared up more than once — it just felt so much like a horrible nightmare coming to an end, like we could see the dawn starting to break at last after a very very very long and dark night. We had a Sauce FaceTime call to celebrate, most of us more than a little tipsy but all in such buoyant moods — it was pretty much the high point of this fucked up year so far. 

And on the flip side …
Lukas didn’t feel great the next night, and the following morning, he had a fever, sore throat, and a stomachache, and finally he threw up and also had diarrhea. WELL. A quick glimpse at the list of the symptoms of Covid, and I was texting everyone we’d seen the day before to tell them what was going on — I told everyone this was the plague-era equivalent of the pink sheet in the white envelope from school (which they send home to warn families that they might have been exposed to head lice, hand-foot-and-mouth, or pinkeye), and that although Lukas’s pediatrician thought it sounded like a cold, she’d advised us to get him tested. So he and I went to the Kaiser drive-through testing facility and both got tested that Monday afternoon; it was weird to be poked essentially in the brain by the swab, but it was quick at least. Then Annika developed the same symptoms (although she cycled through it all in a day, whereas Lukas was so dogged by the fever that he was out of school for two days and probably would have been for a third if it hadn’t already been a holiday (Nov. 11). Anyway — we were negative, which was a huge relief, but it sorta feels like being tested is some kind of rite of passage for the plague times. Gimme a sticker! lol. 

Lukas turns NINE!
Time flies, even in a pandemic — and this November 18, we celebrated the little guy turning nine! His birthday started with the traditional decorated breakfast place (mostly in red, his favorite color), small gift, and cinnamon rolls. Then, school of course, and his classmates sang Happy Birthday to him from their little rectangles online. We had homemade pizza for dinner (his request), and the favorite raspberry chocolate cake. He got a million presents: lots of YouTuber merch and Disney stuff and books and other fun stuff, most notably including a Baby Yoda plush that quickly became his favorite thing EVER (he carries it everywhere, cuddles it, makes us give it hugs and kisses — so sweet!!!), and $50 in Robux from Grandma & Grandpa (for which he voluntarily for the first time in his life wrote a thank-you note the very next day — he was rich, rich, RICH in the land of Roblox … for a week or so, lol). This kid — he’s always been his own guy, and I’ve said it before and will say it again: He’s exactly the little brother this family needed. We all love him completely to pieces! 

Family/Daily Life Potpourri
—The garage remodel got going, big-time. A crew was here all day, most days, and the banging and slamming and buzzing and whatnot were constant background noise for all of us.
—We spent some time with friends, masked up and distanced as always, including walking in our park several Sundays in a row with Brandi and Alana (and once including Lukas and Ben); Annika spent most of a day wandering around the area and several parks with Niamh (and they sent badgering texts to me until I met them at Blvd. Coffee to buy them lattes …), etc.
—Annika decided she wanted to mess with her hair, lightening it and then dyeing it pink, so we took after it with a paste made of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide (which worked pretty well!), then applied a “rose gold” semipermanent color; it looked cool, and she liked it, but decided she wanted it lighter and then pinker, so we went back to the paste method, where we will be until she decides it’s light enough. I think a lot of people are monkeying with their hair in quarantine ….
—The kids and I made Christmas ornaments, as we do most years; Annika filled a clear ball-type ornament with green moss and a bird nest (complete with tiny red bird and a small clutch of eggs), and Lukas and I made Shrinky-Dinks (baby Yoda, the Mandalorian with a Santa hat on, a Disneyland 2020 “wish you were here!” … sigh). 

A “Skinny Thanksgiving”
When I was growing up, if there were fewer than usual people celebrating together (or a budget crunch that made gifts and “extras” harder to come by), the older generations of the family would say it was a “skinny” holiday — and so this was the skinniest Thanksgiving we’ve had in awhile. With the goddamned virus making it impossible to have Grandma & Grandpa over (and the cousins the next day), it was just the four of us (and a FaceTime call), but we did the whole thing anyway, from deviled eggs to a pecan pie, and it was really nice. We watched the Macy Day Parade (heh), which was super-weird, what with the no spectators, the masked correspondents, and the shortened duration, but was kind of great in that you could see they learned on the fly — most of the appearances were by more local acts (dance groups from the NYC area), Native Americans were featured prominently (a first, I think? which is messed up when you think about it, but very welcome now), and about three acts in, the producers figured out it was weird to end performances in total silence so they started cutting away immediately after the last note. And as  we cleared the food and put away leftovers, I set up the turkey carcass in my big stock pot with some onions, bay leaves, garlic, and peppercorns to make broth, because this is the kind of Prairie Shit that I do now, lol. Anyway: I felt especially grateful, in this externally-awful year, that we have our home, each other, and plenty of food on the table.

Quotable
“Is the sixteen chapel still living? Good, cause I wanna visit it!” —Lukas, on important cultural relics

“Good morning, my friends. You are receiving the modern equivalent of the dreaded pink sheet of paper in the white envelope from school: I regret to inform everyone that Lukas woke up this morning with a runny nose, a very sore throat, and a 102-degree fever. He’s currently asleep after a dose of Tylenol, but we’ll be getting him seen by his pediatrician in about an hour, and tested for both strep throat and covid-19. None of the rest of us have any symptoms whatsoever, and we did all get our usual flu shots a few weeks ago. Given our family’s general cautiousness about exposure, I feel the likelihood of it being covid is low, but it isn’t zero — thus me messaging you all. As soon as we know anything, I’ll let everyone know right away; take extra precautions in the meantime, and here’s hoping it’s, you know, Not That.” —me, to the people who’d been at Lukas’s party