March was a sleeper month for us. We spent so much time waxing and waning on whether to plan any kind of socially distanced trip for spring break that we ultimately just wound up staying home, trying to chip away at our giant backlog of house projects, and finding local entertainment to break up the week off school for the kids.

Maya and Ian are still doing virtual school, and will continue to do so through the end of the school year. The kindergarten parents did manage to organize a fully-masked play date at the kids’ school one afternoon in March, and by all accounts, Ian loved it. He is a social creature and is really feeling the pain being stuck at home with three people who have much less time on their hands than he does.

Early March daffodils

Last fall, we had planted a bunch of bulbs, largely because Maya wanted to have daffodils. Well early in March, she had them. We had bought a package of 15 multi-colored bulbs. In the end nearly all of them bloomed, and every one that bloomed was yellow. It didn’t matter to Maya; she explained to me that when she thinks of daffodils, it’s the yellow ones she imagines.

Yeah, I don’t think it’s coming back. What’s left of our palm tree.

The freeze has definitely taken its toll though. I’m still holding out some hope for a few of the natives to sprout, but we have had some truly glorious weather so far this spring (though maybe less rain than we might ought to have going into summer) and many plants are still showing no signs of life. There’s a palm tree that we planted pre-kid that had managed to survived the years of neglect post-kid and pre-pandemic. It even seemed to bounce back from having been all but dug up by our friendly neighborhood armadillo squad. Welp, I think the coating of ice and snow and more ice and 5-degree low and the week long sustained freeze may have finally done it in. We also have a bay laurel tree that was so vigorous it seemed like it was trying to outgrow our house. I basically had to cut it back to the ground. We scalped our primrose jasmines and our turk’s caps and our various tropical salvias. I’m juggling some lingering wait-and-see feelings with a desire to fill in the dead spots before the horrible heat sets in.

Titmouse Santa

Our bird population seems to be thriving. The bird feeders and bird baths are getting regular action from squirrels and birds alike. We even have a hummingbird visiting us again. But my favorite customer thus far has been Titmouse Santa. It visits the feeder, sure, but what it seems most interested in is unique nesting material. We have a few things sitting out back waiting for our trash service to do their bulky item pickup. One of those things is a fluffy old dust mop with a kind of a cottony head on it. This titmouse lands on the dust mop and spends several minutes at a time diligently yanking for all it’s worth until so much fluff is gathered in its beak that it becomes a little birdy Santa Claus. We have caught it in action many times now, though I really wish we could find its fluffy little nest.

At the drive-in

We tried to plan a few small things for spring break, though as I said, Sean and I mostly intended to spend a lot of time working on our disaster of a house. The first weekend of spring break, we took the kids to see a drive-in movie at Doc’s Drive-in in Buda. We watched “Sing,” which is certainly not a new release, but we hadn’t seen it and the kids seemed pretty into it, so win! We had to wear our masks except when eating, and we were far away from everyone except our bubble family friends Chris, Holly, Ruby, and Herbie, so it seemed like a pretty safe outing.

On St Patrick’s day, Ian had asked me make pancakes … with chocolate chips … and green … and in the shape of clovers! I tried my best, but I was yet again reminded that I’m an engineer, not an artist. Luckily, Ian is six, and he seemed pretty pleased with the end result. Last St Pats (you know, the beginning of this stupid COVID mess), I had corned a 5-pound slab of brisket. Knowing that we’d wear out on it before eating all 5 of those pounds, I only cooked half and stuck the other half in the freezer. The benefactor of this foresight was 2021 April who wasn’t really thinking too hard at all about St Pats – certainly not about food. But we got to have nice corned beef and grainy mustard. Maya is crazy for Irish soda bread with currants, and so we had some of that as well. We spent the windy afternoon taking a nearly-birdless walk around Mills Pond, our normal birdwatching spot. We did get to see a few turtles, so that was nice.

So tie-dyed!

That Friday, we had a play date at our bubble family’s house. The kids tie-dyed shirts, scarves, and tote bags. Holly spread out a big tarp on their front patio, and the kids just went to town. There were also foam sword fights and water balloon fights to round out the evening. We washed and dried all the colorful items the next evening and the kids swathed themselves in their tie-dyed clothing and accessories. Maya would now like to tie-dye our boring white COVID masks for us.

Always the *most* colorful kid

The last item on our entertain-the-kids list was to eat with the goats at Jester King Brewery. They have a huge property and eating is outdoors and very well distanced. You order your food and drinks with your phone and you pick it up when its ready. We reserved a table by the goat pen, hoping we’d get to see some of the baby goats that had recently been announced. We made a tactical error. We got there and placed our food order right away, figuring we’d have a while before it was ready. We had hardly walked to where the goats were hanging out when we learned our food was already available. No worries, we could go see the goats more closely after dinner. The pizza was, as always, incredible. The crust was so flavorful, the sparingly-applied toppings so well-balanced. The perfect weather was bliss. And then, while we were eating, they led all the goats out for grazing (I’m assuming). All. The. Goats. At least the kids got to pet the very friendly dog that had been guarding the goat herd. Plus we went home with a 4-pack of chocolate babka beer (they call it their liquid bake sale), so all was not lost.

Kitties

In between all this fun we tried to have, we worked. Sean took I don’t know how many trips to the Salvation Army to donate things. He took nearly as many trips to Home Depot to fetch me compost and fill dirt and mulch so I wouldn’t have to slow up on my Dead Yard Reclamation efforts. I cleared so much dead plant life. At one point, I think we had a dozen refuse bags piled in front of the brush pile that’s been in our yard since the freeze broke a bunch of tree branches and our tree guy had to come do emergency work. We emptied and reorganized a hall closet. Nox helped. The office Sean and I work in is far emptier than it used to be. You could nearly fit an actual car in our garage again. In short, we’re slowly making our house livable again.

Toward the end of the month, Sean finally broke down and got a haircut. Our normal haircut person emerged from her COVID seclusion and started taking some very careful appointments again. I pestered him into taking before and after photos, just because I knew it would be drastic. The last time any of us had haircuts (we think) was January/February of 2020. The next most uncomfortable person is Maya, so we’ve scheduled her for a mid-April appointment. Then maybe Ian and I will finally go.

Sean got a sticker. I did not.

On March 15th, Texas opened COVID vaccination to anyone age 50 and older. We were fretting that we still weren’t eligible, but were glad things seemed to be progressing. And then, much more rapidly than I was expecting, they announced vaccines were open to all on March 29th. We had been trolling various sites, trying to get our game plan together. Friends of ours had recently driven all the way up to Burleson to get their Johnson and Johnson vaccine. I woke up stupid early on the 29th, hoping to find something open. HEB had nothing close. CVS had nothing close. After some mad scrambling, I found an appointment for that Friday at a CVS in Waco, about an hour and a half away. I had sort of made up my mind, that for a two-dose vaccine, I’d try to keep it within 100 miles, and Waco *just* snuck in. That left Sean free to refresh the HEB site until something popped up that he could deal with. It just so happened that he managed to snag an appointment in College Station, about about an hour and a half away, for that very afternoon. So on Monday, March 29th, Sean got his first Moderna dose and on Friday, April 2nd, I got my first Pfizer dose. It’s a relief to be doing something other than just waiting.

The Crew.

We celebrated Easter this past weekend with our bubble family again! The kids and Sean dyed eggs together during the week. The kids and I decorated egg and bunny-shaped cookies after I got back from Waco. On Saturday, our friends came over, and we had a mad-dash egg hunt. I swear, those four kids fairly burst out of our front door. I could *feel* the anticipation mounting beforehand. Knowing that not everyone loves the dessert decorating and the crafts that we often do, I took a crack at arranging a few silly little games for the kids to play together out in the yard. I think it went … ok. We had a human ring toss with some duct-taped pool noodles (thank you, Internet). We did a beach ball and fly swatter race (that Maya won – she was so proud – it’s not the norm for her to win races). And finally, we did a spoon-egg relay. We also took a few short minutes cracking FIVE DOZEN cascarones onto each other’s skulls – so colorful! All told, I think some goofy fun was had and there weren’t *too* many hurt feelings.

Human ring toss and confetti hair. Holding what Chris calls “vacation water”

Now that we’ve had a full year of this coronavirus isolation, I keep trying to think of something profound to say. Some deep lessons that we’ve learned. Some life-changing perspective shift. I’ve got nothing. Honestly, I’m just tired. I won’t speak for Sean, but I could barely muster the effort to be excited about Easter celebrations with the kids. I’m thrilled that we’re on the path to vaccination, but how long will it be before our relatively young children will be able to do likewise? We’re fine. We’ll be fine. We’re just drained – like everyone else, I suspect.

The case numbers are looking less startling than they had over the holidays. I’m hopeful with all the vaccination going on, the trend will continue. That new strains and relaxed guidelines don’t ruin the dampening effect. Percentage of US population that has been fully vaccinated (7.2% as of 2/28 according to the data Google compiles, 16.6% as of 3/31). Travis County – 02/28 75,636 cases and 743 deaths – 03/31 79,217 cases and 817 deaths. Texas – 02/28 2,653,013 cases and 43,697 deaths – 03/31 2,791,910 cases and 48,252 deaths. United States – 02/28 28,605,523 cases and 513,091 deaths – 03/31 30,460,837 cases and 552,073 deaths. The World – 02/28 114,065,230 cases and 2,530,712 deaths – 03/31 129,006,800 cases and 2,817,932 deaths.