Here’s our roundup for the past couple weeks. I’m writing this on Sunday, but probably won’t get photos added till Monday. Maya started distance learning on April 6th. The teachers have organized a grid for each week. In each of five subjects, there is a “must-do” lesson and several “can-do” lessons. I’m rapidly learning which subjects Maya loves and which are met with indifference. She also has weekly assignments to complete from her art teacher and her music teacher (and possibly her PE teacher? Idunno. All this has been kinda vague.)

Maya also has a Zoom meeting with her whole class on Monday. And then we schedule her for a small-group Zoom meeting sometime during the week. So far, we’ve only been late for one meeting, so I guess we’re doing ok for two adults who are trying to do their full-time jobs while caring for the kids. Thank goodness those kids have each other. Sure, they fight a lot, but they also spend a lot of time playing together.

If you look closely, you can see a little beak poking out the birdhouse doorway.

We spend some time doing non-school-related things as well. We had one of the most amazing experiences week before last. As you may remember, Maya painted and built a little birdhouse a few years ago, and we hung it off our back porch rafters, not really expecting much to come of it. Earlier this year, two little birds were busily loading it up with all kinds of small sticks and dried grass and things, clearly working on nesting. We tried to identify them using a Cornell Lab bird app on my phone and believe them to be Bewick’s Wrens. Starting in March (I think), they started bringing all manner of bugs and worms to the birdhouse, presumably feeding their newly hatched babies.

Where this birdhouse is positioned, we can see it really well from our kitchen table. We had started seeing the little birds poking their beaks out of the “front door” of the birdhouse to receive the creatures their parents brought them to eat. One day during lunch, I warned the kids that probably those birds were going to leave their nest soon. Maya was convinced that she had seen one of the babies on a stone wall behind the birdhouse. She justified her assertion by explaining that she even saw some gooky stuff from the egg on its feathers. I figured this was wishful thinking and proceeded to explain to her and Ian that the odds of us being in the kitchen at the same time the little birds left the nest was pretty unlikely.

And then, right as we were watching, one of the little birds moved tentatively out onto the perch by the doorway of the birdhouse. It half-fell/half-flew down to the floor below. We watched for several minutes as it wobbled around and tested out its wings with hesitant little 2- and 3-foot high flights before it finally found a low enough spot on the stone wall that it could fly up and wander away. And Maya was right; it did look like the bird had a bit of leftover egg crud on its feathers. We watched one more wobble out onto the perch and fall/fly over to the stone wall before I had to give up and get on a call for work.

If the kids had been in school, they’d have missed seeing these baby birds, which had hatched in *their* back yard, fly for the very first time. Heck, I’d have missed it too – I usually eat at my desk. I’m not sure that’s worth a pandemic, but it’s better than nothing.

Apparently, we have a John Prine mural in Austin.

Then John Prine died on April 7th – the same day we saw the baby birds leave the nest. I knew he had been diagnosed with COVID-19 in late March. I knew he was an older gentleman and a two-time cancer survivor to boot, and that probably the outlook was grim. I was still heartbroken when it actually happened.

I can remember being maybe eight or nine years old. Dad and Carol had given me a little boombox type radio as a gift, and I loved it. It was the only thing we had in Mom’s house that would play cassettes, and I had a great deal of fun recording my favorite songs from the radio. At that point, my brother Jade and I were visiting Dad every other weekend, and Mom had asked if I’d record some of the John Prine records to cassette so we could listen to them at her house.

Dad showed me how to operate his stereo for recording. Showed me how to carefully clean and handle the records. Again, I loved it. Loved flipping through all the albums, looking at the covers, checking out the track lists. He had a handful of Prine records. I suspect I went in with a list of Mom’s preferred tracks and did my best to record those particular albums. While I’m sure I’d heard them before and certainly would have heard Mom singing some of the songs around the house, I’d never really listened to them before I had hunkered down in the basement of Dad and Carol’s house setting those albums to cassette.

He was twangy, which I didn’t care for since I was certain I didn’t like country music. His voice was memorable in the way that Bob Dylan’s or Tom Petty’s voices were – not traditionally crowd-pleasing perhaps, but certainly able to deliver on an emotional level. His words though. The man had a brilliant way with words. His unfussy lyrics could bring tears to my eyes and have me chuckling all in the same song, even as a kid. He had a way of sneaking in nuggets of universal truth into the story-songs he spun. I’m not sure I had ever heard (or noticed) such raw and honest verses before.

Anyway, I promised myself I wouldn’t go on and on. It’s just hit me so much harder than I expected it to. Maybe with everything else going on, the loss just carries more weight than it should.

About the time that Maya was lamenting the fact that the Bewick’s wren babies had left and the parent birds seemed to be through with her birdhouse, a hummingbird came to our feeder. We think we’ve identified it as a female Black-chinned Hummingbird, though it’s tough to tell – they move pretty quickly.

One of the things that seemed to sustain the kids through all they have had to give up for this coronavirus mess was the upcoming Easter holiday. Grammy and Grandpa sent them each some legos to work on (which is PERFECT), and Lolli and Pop send them these cute headphones that are built into soft headband type things. They’re called Cozy Phones and especially Ian loves them.

Decorating Easter eggs!

Sean was smart and had bought all the easter candy, eggs, and egg decorating things pretty early, so we had a respectable supply. The kids had a great deal of fun dying eggs. He had also bought some chalk eggs and it seemed like they enjoyed prettying those up as well. We left everything on the front porch for the Easter Bunny to hide, as we do every year. Then Sean and I surreptitiously loaded up plastic eggs with candy and Sean assembled their baskets.

The kids had taken some pains to make sure E. Bunny knew which basket belonged to whom. And Sean chose egg colors and whatnot that would match the correct kid’s preferences. Then Ian promptly woke up the next morning and chose the wrong basket!

Sean Easter-bunnied outside in the sprinkling rain, while I ran interference with Ian. Maya has almost fully adapted to her later schedule since she no longer has to be at school at 7:45 in the morning, so Ian had to actually wake her up to tell her excitedly about the Easter baskets. She was just as thrilled as he was with the candy and stickers in hers.

Don’t they look pleased to be having their photo taken before they’re allowed to hunt eggs???

We had them get dressed up for the egg hunt, because when else are they gonna dress up right now. And then they went outside and happily hunted for their eggs. The black chalked eggs were particularly devilish to locate, but all in all, their baskets were full and they seemed to be very happy.

I had promised the kids we’d try to make chocolate-flavored roll-and-cut cookies, so Easter afternoon, we decorated those. I let them have full reign over all the decorations we had in the house from rainbow sprinkles, to colored sugars, to miniature chocolate chips. They took their time and carefully decorated their cookies, often coaxing eyes and feathers and fur out of the various creatures they had cut from the cookie dough.

Maya and Ian arranged for the parents to have an Easter egg hunt that evening. They had spent all week stuffing eggs and stockpiling them in their rooms so they’d be ready for the big moment. I love it that they were thinking about us!

Coolapeno – a jalapeno without the heat. I personally don’t get it, but the kids seem happy.

The next week, we were delighted to find that our “coolapeno” plant had already produced a pepper! Way before everything was locked down, we had made a run with the kids to Home Depot to buy some flowers and herbs to plant in the back yard. I don’t remember which kid, but one of they seemed really excited about this plant that was supposedly going to produce peppers that were jalapeno-flavored, but without the heat – coolapenos, see?

Anyhow, Maya now has an elaborate plan for some kind of soup that will use every herb she can think of plus the coolpeno pepper. I’m a solid recipe-preparer, but not much of a recipe developer, so we’ll see how it goes.

Sometime during this past week, we learned that Texas schools would be closed through the end of the school year. Good thing too, since we had no intention of sending Maya back to school even if it opened. I hear talk of them slowly “opening things back up” here in Texas. People have been allowed back to beaches in Florida. Photos have been popping up in the news of happy beach-goers basking in the sun, mask-free and in close proximity. I guess we’ll start to see how all that pans out in 2-3 weeks.

Folks have been protesting the closure of businesses and whatnot with our shelter-in-place, social distancing mandates. Given that Austin is the capitol of a very independent-spirited state, it’s not surprising that there are protests here too. I guess from the rarified air that I breathe, where I am “stuck” at my comfortable house with my healthy spouse and two healthy children working my not-yet-erased job, I can’t fully understand the situation. On the other hand, I see photos of people crowded together demanding to work, some of them wearing their N95 masks, and I can’t help but wonder where the disconnect is. I get that we’re choosing between two shitty options. Cause economic strain and hopefully control the spread of this virus or let people go to work and presumably allow it to spread more freely, sicken (and kill) more people, overwhelm the hospitals. But with the virus still spreading so freely (and with such a death rate) and no vaccine available yet, staying home seems to be the most logical choice.

The kids looking a little disheveled after having to sit for an entire music recital via Zoom.

Just this past Saturday, the kids had their first Zoom music recital. It actually went better than expected, in my opinion. I was worried they wouldn’t take it as seriously since we were just in our house like always, but they both did great. Everyone was respectful, and while the sound quality may not have been the best ever, we were able to hear everyone perform their pieces.

I’m not going to comment on the numbers today, just lay them out so I have them recorded. For Travis County, last Sunday we had 774 confirmed cases and 19 deaths. This Sunday, we have 1108 cases and 25 deaths. For Texas, last Sunday we had 13,748 cases and 286 deaths. This Sunday, we have 19,408 cases and 500 deaths. For the United States, last Sunday, we had 559,409 cases and 22,071 deaths. This Sunday, we have 764,177 cases and 40,591 deaths. And hey, I don’t think I’ve noted worldwide numbers yet. Why not complete the horror. Last Sunday, we were at 1,846,680 confirmed cases and 114,090 deaths. This Sunday, we have 2,402,076 cases and 165,106 deaths.