I made another Halloween trifle. Brownies, orange-colored vanilla cream, more brownies, Cool Whip, and decoratives on top (Reese’s Pieces, gummy worms, candy corn, and candy eyes).
Heather was a dragon and Corinne was a bat.
Both girls did actually help clean out the pumpkins this year for the jack-o-lanterns. Heather’s design is cat eyes wearing a mask. Corinne designed the goofy face in the middle. I designed the cat face. (I executed all the designs.)
And here’s the house decked out:
Ghosties hanging from fishing line, faux-fire lights in the sconces, flicker bulbs strung up in the pergola, and this year’s new entry: the inflatable dragon (hiding in the back next to the garage side door).
Jess’ parents drove out and visited us from the 19th to the 24th. On Friday I took the day off of work and we drove down to Saratoga to visit the Hakone Japanese Gardens while the girls were in school. We thought it’d be nice to actually meander around rather than be dragged about with constant complaints of it being boring. We were right.
Jess and I had watched a Great Course on Japanese history and we both agreed we liked the aesthetics of the gardens and then found there are a handful of such gardens in the Bay Area (which has a pretty long history of Japanese immigration).
It was cloudy (it actually rained every day her parents were here, the only rain we’ve gotten in 10 months) so my pictures are rather muted, so nothing spectacular. But I still enjoyed the trip.
We sat in a waiting pavilion for a few minutes which had a large window (that’s one of the pictures in the gallery). I went outside to try and get a picture of Jess with her parents sitting inside through the bamboo, but the dynamic range was too much for my camera and I couldn’t keep it still well enough for an HDR shot, so this is what I have. Now just imagine all the bamboo is rich green instead of blown-out white.
I had intended to set up a group picture of all of us before they left, but it kept slipping my mind until it was too late.
The girls enjoyed their visit. They warmed up to “Papa” and “Bubbie” much more readily than we had expected. Corinne was super happy to have more playmates around and Heather happily showed them projects she’s working on and read them things from books.
Before their visit we had asked Heather if she’d be comfortable with them visiting during her birthday. She was a little upset at that idea and asked that we keep her birthday to just us. So they scheduled their trip to move on to their next stop at the beginning of this week.
Their next stop was in Utah and they intended to drive highway 50, “The loneliest road in America.” But the storm system made a mess of the Sierra Nevada passes. One was closed due to flooding and the others were covered in snow and ice. Traffic wasn’t moving at all on them when they were leaving and there were chain requirements in effect. So instead they drove south through Las Vegas.
Two weeks after we picked up London from the shelter Jess brought home another kitten, Phoenix, that she couldn’t live without.
She’s a total scaredy cat. She hid behind the dryer in the laundry room for most of her first 48 hours at home. Then Jess used cardboard to block it off and forced her out into the rest of the house. It took several days, but she eventually became more comfortable in the house. She’s still a scaredy cat though. She’ll let Jess and me pet her if she’s in the right mood, otherwise she’ll bolt if anyone gets close. After the girls go to bed, and the house calms down a bit, she’ll come sit next to one of us.
She and London had a difficult time at first. London was not interested in having a new cat in her territory. There was a lot of hissing and we’ve been keeping them separated to try and make the bulk of the house into neutral territory. And we seem to be making progress. London has switched to being more playful and less aggressive. Phoenix still mostly runs away though.
Here’s each of them today after chasing each other around for a while:
A couple weekends ago we went to the county animal shelter and looked at the cats and kittens they had that were looking for homes. We picked out a tuxedo kitten (~3 months old) and Jess brought her home on Wednesday after she was spayed.
The girls have been ecstatic. Heather went into research mode and checked out books from the library all about cat behavior, how to play with them, how to care for them, and how to train them.
Her name in the shelter was “London” and we decided we better keep it to avoid an endless argument about what her name should be.
She came from the shelter litter-trained (yay!), with most of her vaccinations, and micro-chipped. But she seems to have picked up an illness before coming home because she’s been sneezy, a little snotty, and a little lethargic. But we had her checked out on Friday and she seems to be doing a little better today. The vet prescribed some antibiotics and she gave my leg a good scratch while we were trying to give her the first dose (one of her hind legs got loose), but we’re figuring out the trick to getting it done without blood.
She likes me (or at least my body heat) and will happily snuggle up on my lap or against my legs while she naps. She’ll happily nap next to Jess too. She’s still getting used to the girls and the girls are still getting used to her. They’re a little too excitable and fast moving to make her fully comfortable.
Here she is sleeping next to me this morning, before her flower collar arrived:
Back in May things were really looking up. Jess and I had been vaccinated. Infection rates were declining. We were optimistic about being able to take a small vacation over the summer since we’ve done mostly nothing since March 2020. I looked to book a room at the motel we like in Fort Bragg and their first availability was in mid-August. So we booked it.
Then the summer actually happened and we watched as vaccination levels stalled out and infection rates soared with the delta variant. So we became a little hesitant about taking our trip, but our plans were to be outside pretty much the whole time except for our motel room and so we decided to go for it.
We drove out to Fort Bragg on Friday, Aug 13. We made it to Oakland before Jess was feeling really carsick so we got off the highway and stopped so she could get out, recuperate, and take some Dramamine. Then we sat in a lot of traffic all the way through Santa Rosa for some reason. We eventually made it out there, got checked in to the motel, walked along the beach a little, and ordered a pizza to eat in our room for dinner. The county had a mask mandate in place and compliance levels seemed to be fairly good.
The motel wasn’t serving breakfast, so breakfast on Saturday (and every other day) was toaster strudel, cereal, and yogurt that we brought with us (we brought a toaster). Saturday morning we had a reservation to ride the pedal cars on the Skunk Train railroad. I picked up some sandwiches from Subway and packed them for lunch and we rode the rail line up into the woods. The bikes have electric assist-motors so it was quite pleasant to pedal along up into the woods away from the noise of town and not get too worn out while doing so.
The company that runs the tours is building a little event space in the woods that’s really only accessible by rail. We stopped there to eat lunch while they turned our cars around for the return trip. Minus the construction noise, it was a really nice spot. Deep in the woods and shady. We ate our lunch at a picnic table and then walked around for bit until it was time to head back.
Since the rail lines fall under DHS/TSA railroad regulations we were all required to wear masks while on the ride, which is probably a bit silly since we were quite well spaced out, but presumably the railroad regulations were written with passenger cars in mind and not bikes, so, whatever. It really wasn’t a big deal, because wearing a mask isn’t a big deal in the first place.
Once we returned from our ride we walked down to the ice-cream shop for dessert, then back to the train depot to look at the gift shop (once their next train ride left so it wasn’t crowded with people). Then we went back to the motel and down to the beach.
After some time of playing about, Corinne got knocked over by a wave she didn’t see coming and needed to head back to the room to warm up. So Jess took her up and I stayed with Heather for a while longer digging a hole (’cause that’s what one does at the beach, I guess).
Dinner was burgers from Jenny’s Giant Burger eaten hunkered down in our motel room.
On Sunday we went out to the Mendocino Botanical Gardens, which is a regular destination when we go to Fort Bragg. We walked around for a while and then went looking for lunch. Heather continues to successfully grow in her garden.
After bailing on a couple of options due to being crowded with nowhere outside to eat we ended up in the slowest McDonald’s drive-thru lane ever. I think it took over 30 minutes to get through. We took the food back to the motel to eat.
Then it was more beach time for the girls while I napped in the room. We had more pizza for dinner and another trip to the ice-cream shop. Then we walked along the trestle bridge after dark as a novelty for the girls who are rarely up after dark much less out and about.
Monday morning we packed up and checked out. We stopped at Glass Beach to look around. This is an area of beach which use to be a garbage dump. Now timthough by the time we were ready to leave it was about lunch time so we ate our one and only meal in a restaurant. There were only two other customers in the restaurant (which was a “full-size” restaurant, lots of space) and they had signs like this up, which actually made me feel better that they were taking things seriously:
We had our lunch and then drove home. And that was our trip. Our only real vacation for 18 months. And it looks like that’s going to be true through quite some more time now.
School starts on Tuesday–thankfully with a mask requirement in place and vaccination requirements for the teachers/staff. Given how much exposure the girls are likely to get this year since the classrooms will be at regular capacity for full days we bought the girls some new masks that are supposed to help protect themselves from others as well as protecting others from themselves. Finding certified masks is a crap shoot–especially looking for things that fit kids properly, but the masks we bought don’t seem like they can be worse than the ones they’ve been using. They fit more snugly at least.
Hopefully the emergency authorization for the vaccine for kids 6+ gets approved soon and we’ll be able to have the girls vaccinated before too long. Maybe even get to go trick-or-treating for Halloween.
