Sean at some point in late June, early July looked at me and said, “We all need a weekend that is different.” Every weekend has been the same, usually some form of puttering around the house. Luckily, friends of ours had already sussed out a solid, socially-distanced weekend that was different. They had booked a little house along the Guadalupe River (a dammed up place perhaps over-poetically called Lake Placid). It seemed like a solid idea, but when I finally got around to doing the same thing for a weekend before school started, I was dismayed to find that all the weekends were booked. But we have reached “fuck it” here on so many levels, so we just scheduled a weekday visit instead. What else are we going to use our vacation time for?

Socially distanced vacation, FTW!

We let the kids know about our big exciting vacation. They were thrilled. Let’s fish! Let’s kayak! Let’s swim! When is our vacation? Is it in two days? Is it this weekend? We just had to get through the month of waiting.

Origami hummingbird.

Luckily, we are getting pretty good at occupying ourselves at this point. Continuing the origami trend, Maya wanted to fold her *second* favorite animal – a hummingbird. Other than the super skinny beak, it wasn’t too fiddly, and so we have folded several. The kids have also taken brown construction paper and fashioned it into conical nests so their origami hummingbirds have a nice place to sleep.

Swimming at Emma Long

I know it sounds insane, but we have even less time now than we did before coronavirus. In the juggling of priorities and needs, we decided to continue to have our house cleaning service come, but only once every four weeks. And so the cleaning ladies are coming less frequently but for more time. We’ve opted to just leave the house while they’re here now. On one of our scheduled cleaning days in late July, after thinking it over, we decided on to again take time off from work and take the kids swimming at a local city park. We didn’t *tell* them this was happening, just in case it was too crowded and we’d have to abandon the plan. We felt they had had enough disappointment. Luckily though, we found an open spot at the water a good distance away from any other people and just played in the lake for a couple hours. (This was at Emma Long Metropolitan Park.) The kids were so happy. They found “sea” shells, they rode the waves from passing boats, they raced, they floated. As we were leaving around 4:00 to head back home, we noticed the park was starting to fill up, so it may be a tougher outing after normal work hours.

Dragon fruit

Because our local Central Market had a tropical fruit event, and because Maya has been wanting to try dragon fruit (which ties into her dragon obsession), we decided to make a bit of a thing out of it. We loaded up our curbside cart with papaya and guava and dragon fruit and mangos. Maya has always loved mango, but it turns out, she loves guava too. None of us were too keen on the dragon fruit, though Maya for her part really *tried* to like it. A friend of ours suggested that it possibly wasn’t ripe enough and that we should give it another try. The big surprise though was that Ian liked the papaya! Ian liking a new food item is always cause for celebration.

Not the best picture, but here is a small subset of our flock of grackles.

Our backyard bird habit is still going strong, however, toward the end of July, we were invaded by grackles. Honestly, I’m surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. They’re the ubiquitous central Texas parking lot bird. Some of them are a muddy black-brown. Others are a deep black that shines an iridescent purple-blue in the sun, an oil slick come to life. Anyway, once the first one showed up, their numbers quickly ballooned to a regular crowd of probably 20-30 birds. I don’t mind so much – finally someone will actually take a *bath* in my bird bath, but it bugs me that they go out of their way to run off the littler birds. Additional new bird visitors have included house finches, a female summer tanager, and lesser goldfinches, who seem to have a particular affinity for whatever tiny bug is eating up Ian’s sunflower plant.

To add some variety to our lives, Sean has started doing a family game night every now and then. So far, we have played King Domino, Catan Junior, and a cooperative game called Karuba Junior. The kids are still learning strategy and solid life skills like how to cope with losing and how to be a gracious winner. They seem to actively look forward to game nights though, so hopefully we’re on the right track.

Ian has latched onto American Ninja Warrior. He routinely requests the videos on youtube and has tried to set up a course in our living room. We need to get that child to a place were he can test out these skills. The little dude needs to MOVE and our living room just isn’t up to it.

Dragon girl in her dragon shirt with her dragon sculpture

Maya has been making all manner of dragon sculptures from pipe cleaners, of all things. Our overflowing stockpile of art supplies is full of things to add to them like jewels and googly eyes and feathers, so they are often well decorated. They all have names and stories and, recently, little dragon children as well.

Ian and Sean have a new obsession: Rubik’s cubes. Ian has even cleared space in the shelves in his headboard specifically to house his Rubik’s cube collection. We’re kind of tickled because between those and American Ninja Warrior, finally Ian has some things that he enjoys that don’t specifically revolve around his sister’s interests.

School was intended to start on August 18th. AISD had a board meeting on the evening of  August 6th were they voted to delay the start of school till September 8th. It seemed that despite all assurances to the contrary, our schools and staff simply hadn’t been adequately prepared to handle a coronavirus classroom. The first four weeks after that are, I think, distance learning only. After that, for the families that have chosen to do so, they will transition in phases to in-person learning. Again, we have elected to stick with distance learning for the foreseeable future.

There were bunk beds. The kids LOVE bunk beds.

Finally the day arrived, we packed up our things and headed to Seguin, TX to our little rental house on the lake. When we were first getting ready to leave, Ian had been having trouble finding one of his loveys, a stuffed robin, so Maya helpfully drew him a picture of a robin to act as a stand-in. In the end, all requisite stuffed animals made the trip. The drive was just over an hour long, which is pretty darn close by Texas standards. Our stay promised to be a crisp, sunny 100+ degrees every day – excellent weather for chilling out in the water. The floor dropped out from under me though as we drove up and found ourselves presented with giant red signs in the middle of the river that prohibited swimming. Dafuq? That wasn’t in the advertisement for the rental house.

The Maya

After a bit of research, it was determined to be largely political and completely unenforced, and so our long-anticipated vacation was un-ruined once more. Not too many minutes passed before everyone was outfitted with life jackets and bobbing around in the Guadalupe River. After a good long swim, we baked our frozen pizzas and cut up our fruits and relaxed and watched TV while we ate dinner together. The only sour spot was that Maya managed to lose her goggles in the river, and unlike when she loses them at the pool, we were unable to retrieve them. The water was not even a little bit clear, so we really couldn’t even try. We didn’t make a big deal about the goggle loss, but for Maya it was very upsetting, and it seemed to have put a bit of a damper on her vacation.

Fishing!

The next day, Sean assembled our fishing pole and watched enough youtube videos to have half an idea how to actually *go fishing*. Maya was so excited; Ian somewhat less so. We had also brought along her little bug net to see if we could let her catch some little fish from the water. We tried the fake worms that were included in our fishing kit, but nothing in the river seemed to be interested in those. We eventually upgraded to hot dogs. Sean, Maya, and Ian had caught no fish, but Sean kind of relaxed into it, sinking back into his plastic lawn chair and, after taking a long pull from his beer, proclaimed that he could understand why someone might enjoy fishing. Maya managed to catch a little bait fish of some kind with her bug net, and the kids named it Thorny and housed it in a plastic bowl we had found in the house. When Thorny started to look a bit droopy, they chose to release it back into the river.

OMG, when is fishing going to be OVER?!?!

Ian was pretty bored with fishing. Luckily, he had found his very own pet dragonfly. He carried it around on his arm for quite a long time, trying out several release locations before finally settling on a little clearing under a tree to turn his somewhat battered pet loose.

There were kayaks on the property for us to use as well, and Maya and Ian were both very, very excited to take a ride in them. Maya in particular was excited to try paddling one herself. After lunch (hot dogs and cold fruits and veggies), we all got suited up to go for a kayak ride. Ian and I loaded onto a one-person kayak and Dad and Maya loaded into a two person one. We didn’t go far, up the river a little ways and down a cove that peeled off to the right. When we got back, we let each kid take a turn paddling the smaller kayak. Maya was definitely getting better at paddling by the end of her turn, but it was still a little much to manage for the Ian. Afterward, we spent some more time playing in the water. After Sean showed them how to swing out further before letting go, both kids seemed to have worked out how to use the rope swing – even Ian, who could barely reach it!

We tried out Catan Junior that afternoon. Generally speaking, I think the game was a good one for the kids, but between out-on-the-water tiredness and perhaps some lingering goggle-loss sadness, it was more dramatic than a board game has any right to be.

We relaxed away our evening, watching TV and eating the fruits, veggies, cured meats, cheeses, and breads we had brought along for a no-cook dinner. More drama ensued from the TV watching – apparently Bart Simpson set his toys on fire because he had lost his last baby tooth and was now grown up, or something. This hit several pain points for Maya – fire (which she hates), the impermanence of things (which has been bothering her lately), and growing up (which she does not want to do – ever).

A little catfish!

We decided to abandon the TV and head out to try fishing again. Sean loaded a fresh chunk of hot dog onto the hook and he and Maya waited, watching the pole for any sign of action. There was a hit! After a minute or two of reeling and tugging, they pulled in a little catfish! Everyone was very excited. After all that work, they had finally caught something. Ian was worried we wouldn’t get the little catfish back in the water fast enough for it to avoid death. Maya was worried we wouldn’t get our hook back.

The next morning, we worked in one last kayak ride while the river was calm and relatively free of boats. We managed to see a great heron-shaped bird of some kind and the ubiquitous grackles around Son’s Island, but otherwise, there wasn’t a whole lot of wildlife to be seen. And with that, we cleaned up, packed, and headed back to Austin.

Since our little vacation, the kids have learned who their teachers will be for this next school year, Maya has had a zoom meeting with her soon-to-be second grade class, and we’ve been trying to set up learning spaces for each kid. Maya now has a desk in her room, and on the other end of the house, we’re trying to fix up the desk area in the kitchen for Ian.

The coronavirus numbers below are from screen captures taken last Sunday evening, compared against the last time we managed to post. Travis County – 7/12 14,788 cases and 169 deaths – 8/16 24,144 cases and 335 deaths. Texas – 7/12 262,762 cases and 3,216 deaths – 8/16 555,394 cases and 10,396 deaths. United States – 7/12 3,304,878 cases and 135,203 deaths – 8/16 5,412,997 cases and 169,860 deaths. The World – 7/12 12,878,325 cases and 568,530 deaths – 8/16 21,593,607 cases and 773,649 deaths.