October was a good and bad month. If August and September were all angst and apprehension, October was making the most of it, sadness and loss, and then maybe a light at the end of the COVID tunnel.

Darth Nox laying on the Millennium Falcon

I spent the first weekend in October constructing something called armadillo eggs. I know, I know, mammals don’t lay eggs, but when in Texas …

Sean was told about these creatures by his boss. My curiosity was sufficiently piqued to look into it a bit, and lo and behold, I found multiple recipes for said creation. How have I lived in Texas for over 20 years and never heard of these? Start with the standard jalapeño popper and push it way, WAY over the edge. It’s nearly like something you’d eat on a dare. Here’s the recipe we used, and I swear to you, it was absolutely delicious. A couple tips: our Texas jalapeños are large and in charge. Mine measured about 4 inches in length. I gutted and quartered these, and the jalapeño punch was sufficient. I had some Fresno chiles growing in our little backyard garden as well. They’re delicious chiles, but perhaps not quite meaty enough to stand up to the meat quotient of this particular recipe.

Armadillo eggs!

I had been trying to book a cabin at Palo Duro Canyon State Park off and on for months and months and they were ALWAYS booked. Finally, I just said fuck it and reserved a tent campsite for a long weekend we had in October. I did this back in May, when I thought we’d have a four-day weekend. Alas, on a Friday, we let our kids miss school so we could drive the 7 hours up toward Amarillo. Since we avoided I-35, it was honestly not too bad, as 7-hour drives go.

Lighthouse formation at Palo Duro Canyon

We arrived at our campsite with plenty of daylight to get our tent set up and our dinner prepared … but then we laid waste to all of that by driving around trying to find a small trail to hike and a good view of the canyon to enjoy. We pulled up to the visitors’ center and got our first good look at Palo Duro Canyon. I think Maya amused the older couple hanging out nearby with her breathless “Wow!” as she got out of the car.

We found a huge yellow grasshopper who was missing a back leg and who Maya dubbed “Lemon.” We wandered out a bit on the trail we’d be walking the next day, just to get an idea of how things would be. And then we drove back and ate dinner in the dark. It was so BUGGY. That was probably the only real downer of the trip. It was hard to eat, day or night, for all the flies and gnats and who knows what else seemingly coating our food.

We hiked and no one got bitten by a snake!

Our evening was peaceful. We left the rainfly off the tent and looked up at all the pretty stars. We listened to coyotes yipping somewhere seemingly far away from us. And in the morning, we woke to find that Tent, Arthur Tent had a lovely praying mantis on the roof. Maya was thrilled. She had brought her bug house and net along and had been busily catching flies and grasshoppers and the occasional beetle. We elected to move the praying mantis off the tent so we could install the rainfly since some “weather” was supposed to be rolling in, but to let it roam free instead of being confined to the bug house. (When it came time to pack up the next day, there was another one on tent; that one I let her keep and observe for a little while.)

We had breakfast and then went on a hike that took us from the rim of the canyon down into it a fair ways. It wasn’t the longest hike the kids had taken, but it was probably the most difficult. Plus, I had them each carry their own backpacks with full water bottles and an extra liter of water as well and a few snacks. Even with the extra weight, they did a wonderful job. It was sooo hot. Mid-October and well to the north of Austin, it was still around 100 degrees out while we were hiking. There’s a lot of truth though to a dry heat feeling less awful than a humid heat, so we just made sure we were all drinking plenty of water and powered through it.

Ice cream!

That afternoon, we took the kids into the town of Canyon for some ice cream at a local soda fountain type place: Rockin’ Zebra Soda Shoppe. They both had big messy ice cream cones, Sean had a lovely malt, and I had some kind of prickly-pear based Italian soda. I’m sure after a day of 100-degree hiking, we weren’t the freshest smelling folks in the joint, but it really was a nice break.

That evening, we had dinner in the daylight in hopes of avoiding some of the insect life. Alas, it just made it easier to see how many bugs you were potentially consuming. We adopted the habit of walking around and eating at the same time, which helped a little. Sean built a nice fire and we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows and generally had a nice time. Another kid in the camp had come by and introduced herself and she and the kids played before, during, and after dinner.

Once things settled down, we found ourselves staring up at the clear night sky, noticing that you could actually see the hazy cloud of the Milky Way galaxy. Another camp neighbor overheard us and invited us over to let the kids look through their telescope at the moon as well. It was so nice to feel normally social instead of COVID social. The big open space and the small density of people had us feeling safe, though I’ll be happier when my brain stops doing a threat assessment on every single social interaction we have.

Beautiful sunrise colors

The next morning, we hustled through breakfast and “out the door” just as fast as we could to try and get to the Lighthouse trail before sunrise. We were the first ones in the parking lot, and we were rewarded with lovely sunrise-lit cloud cover, red rocks that fairly glowed, and a quiet that we wouldn’t get once the “crowds” descended.

Nearly all of the trail is fairly flat. Thanks to the weather change overnight, it was nice and cool and cloudy for our walk. Things didn’t get treacherous till the very end, when we had a combination of rock scramble and cliffside hiking to spice things up. The kids again did great, and the Lighthouse formation is truly beautiful.

After lunch, we packed up all our camping supplies and drove up into Amarillo to stay at a hotel and have a shower and a good night’s sleep before the long drive home. The kids LOVE hotels and hadn’t staying in once since before the pandemic, so they were pretty excited. Plus, this one had an indoor pool, so they even got to spend a delightful hour swimming.

Cadillac Ranch

The next morning, we embarked on the last adventure of our trip: spray-painting Cadillacs. We drove over to Cadillac Ranch to observe the ever-changing public art installation and contribute to it, however briefly. In 1974, ten Cadillacs were planted nose-down in the ground at a jaunty angle, the highlight how their tail-fin designs had changed through the years. At this point though, they’re so coated in layers of spray paint, I’m not sure you can observe much beyond the topmost layer. It almost looked like the cars were made of a plastic that had started to melt and ooze.

And clearly, if you allow people to go wild with cans of spray paint, they will. The cars of course were well-coated. There was art painted on the ground, the fences, the rocks. Even stalks of corn had been spray-painted. We had gotten an octopus stencil for Maya and a unicorn stencil for Ian and showed up with everyone’s favorite colors of spray paint and some rubber gloves and got to work. Maya was all in (isn’t she always?) and could probably have whiled away a cheerful hour painting and repainting cars. Ian struggled to push button on the spray paint can and thus suffered with erratic nozzle aim.

And then, just like that, our little vacation was over and we drove the 7 hours back home again. On our way up to Amarillo on Friday, we had learned that my grandmother’s health had taken a downward turn. News came intermittently since we had all but nonexistent cell service in the park. It was a roller coaster: “she’s in the hospital not looking good” and then “her values are good, she’s stabilizing”, followed by “she’s going home.” Then the steep decline with “we think she’s had another stroke” and then “she’s not going back to the hospital; she’s chosen hospice.” We got back into Austin on the 11th. On the 14th, she passed away. She was nearly 94 years old.

Great Grandma Schmidt. We love you and miss you.

Even now weeks later, after a funeral, after seeing family I’ve not seen in ages, and after lots of remembering and the accompanying waves of sadness and joy, I still find myself tearing up. My brother and I spent a lot of time with Grandma growing up. She was our weekday babysitter. I can still remember her walking us out to the end of her driveway to catch the school bus, and then walking back up the drive after school to snacks and playing at her house. She was one of the people who taught me to sew, who taught me to crochet. We spent time in her kitchen, watching her cook. She had this big table-top that she could pull out of the kitchen cabinets – that’s where the bread dough or the cookies or the pie crust got rolled out. We would ride tricycles around her basement and get ice pops out of her downstairs freezer. We would play and play and play in the fields and barns around her house. She was my last surviving grandparent, and the sense of loss is hard to put into words.

I struggle with COVID anger sometimes, especially when I tally the time and experiences that the virus has stolen. This is especially pointed when I think about how we haven’t seen Grandma / Great Grandma since December of 2019. We could have had several more visits between her and the kids, and it’s hard to feel anything but raw anger.

Grandma was able to make her wishes known right up to the end, and that certainly suited her best. I personally take some comfort in the fact that she was able to choose what was best for her, though of course, I very much wish I could have spent just a little more time with her.

After the few days back in Missouri for the funeral, I spent a week or so kind of catching up, but then it was full-on Halloween. I had gotten the kids a couple of kiwi crates for making a Halloween haunted house and some little luminaries and we spent a fun weekend building those. We bought pumpkins to carve. As is our tradition, Anna drew the faces on the pumpkins, I gutted them (yay?), and the kids and I carved them out. Their carving stamina keeps increasing. Maybe next year, they’ll do them entirely themselves.

An owl and a Minecraft creeper

Ian made my Halloween costume life easy. He chose to be the Ender Dragon from Minecraft. This was a super-cool costumer that I could purchase from Target. Maya has been really into birdlife the past couple years, and so she asked to be a rufous hummingbird. That one had to be made. After a bit of research, I was pretty sure we could fabric-glue some feathers to a shirt and go from there. We purchased wings and a mask and appended a thin, paper hummingbird beak to the mask. Her burnt orange shirt had iridescent black/green feathers around the bottom, orange feathers in the middle, and white feathers around the neck. She admitted it was a little uncomfortable to wear, but she was thrilled with how it looked.

Ian the Ender Dragon.

On Friday, we went to the trunk or treat / Ice Scream Social at the kids’ school. Then on Sunday, after taking the year off last year, we donned our masks and went trick or treating around the neighborhood. We are really lucky – so many of our neighbors really go all out for Halloween. There were so many great decorations. One of our neighbors dressed up as boxed wine; his costume was even functional.

Maya the rufous hummingbird

COVID-19 cases have continued to decline in our area. But the best thing has happened this past week. The Pfizer vaccine was approved for emergency use for the age 5 to 11 set. Maya and Ian are scheduled for their first COVID vaccine shot early next week. All of our December travel plans hinged on this happening, so I’m extremely relieved that we’re finally here.

Percentage of US population that has been fully vaccinated (56.6% as of 10/12, 58.0% as of 11/6). Travis County – 10/13 117,807 cases and 1128 deaths – 11/5 120,366 cases and 1167 deaths. Texas – 10/12 4,162,922 cases and 68,245 deaths – 11/5 4,257,615 cases and 71,802 deaths. United States – 10/12 44,681,561 cases and 719,515 deaths – 11/5 46,446,975 cases and 754,061 deaths. The World – 10/12 239,115,805 cases and 4,873,400 deaths – 11/5 249,421,209 cases and 5,042,829 deaths.