Movement

And then there’s movement. Staff have started returning to LAUSD campuses this week for special services, and a tentative start date for hybrid school is April 9th, as I predicted. I have no idea what that will look like - for sure it will shake up our now well established at home system, and I’m not looking forward to that aspect. But it will sure make the usual March slog easier to get through knowing there’s a definite end point! Now if we can just keep up the rapidly declining numbers and the variants don’t fuck everything up, we’re in great shape. 

Last night I finally pulled the trigger and booked our ten day summer trip I am calling the Great Southwest Road Trip. We begin with a night at a tiny house near Vegas as a good in-between point: 

Next we move on to a Conestoga wagon for two nights to check out Bryce Canyon:

Then, three nights at an earth hogan in Navajoland for Lake Powell and (hopefully) Antelope Canyon - I pretty much built the entire trip around this place: 

A stay in shepherd’s wagons near Zion National Park:

And a final stay in a cave house on our way back on the edge of Arizona:

I’ve booked these spots based on their uniqueness, not so much proximity or cost, so this trip is not going to be cheap and there’s a lot of driving that wouldn’t be necessary if I were just camping in tents or staying at hotels. But it’s all about the accommodations, so that’s what I prioritized. The BF’s car may not be able to handle this level of trip, so I may have to also rent a car (mine is too small). But I feel a certain urgency to make this trip now as it’s probably the last summer ever I won’t be working on an event and the BF *might* not have a ton of work still. I doubt we’ll have this kind of flexibility again. Now’s the time to get away as much as we can. I have us out of town practically every weekend this summer. 

Polarized

I don’t think I’ve ever seen coronavirus news quite so polarized as it is right now. Half my suggested news articles say we’ll have this whole thing in the bag by April, while half say with the X factor of the new mutations present, this thing could drag on for another full year. My opinion is the truth is, as always, probably somewhere in between. I doubt we’ll reach herd immunity in just a few weeks...but as of this moment the mutations don’t appear to be a massive threat. A threat, but not enough to make us start over. Mostly on my mind is of course schools - and the good news is teachers and staff are cleared to start getting vaccinated by March 1, with 10% set aside just for them. This is exactly correct. LAUSD is determined to open by mid-April, at least K-6, and it sounds doable to me. There are 25,000 elementary school teachers who could be vaccinated in two days. It can happen.

My online mom groups are on fire. Many parents angry at everyone for what’s happening (when really the thing that caused all of this is a virus, not a person, although people didn’t help), protesting the system, upset their special needs children have been left behind, upset their kids are upset, worried about their current and future academic performance. I’m just over here like “lol”. That’s a joke. But seriously - a lot of unpleasantness going on which is to be expected. I hear and understand everyone’s point of view. 

I had lunch with a friend with three kids on Saturday who told me her second grade son is struggling. Or not so much struggling but slacking. He’s in hybrid school and has not been doing his independent work. 100% if Bobby had been left to his own devices last year the same thing would be happening. I think it’s unrealistic to expect seven-year-olds to project manage like that - while avoiding the temptation to screw around on the computer since nobody’s checking in. Personally I’m glad these kids are home where I can check everything before submitting. Bobby mostly can handle this stuff alone now at nearly nine...but a year ago? Not so much. 

I stumbled across a cool outdoor art installation / scavenger hunt thing going on around Joshua Tree starting on Theo’s birthday weekend in three weeks - and wasted no time finding us a 1950s silver trailer to rent for the weekend. Hooray, we get to the desert once more before it’s too hot! I knew we could make it happen. I’m also about to pull the trigger on our epic Zion / Bryce / Antelope Canyon road trip this summer. I’ll start booking it this week. 

Here are the boys on our weekly jaunt to In-n-Out Friday after the boys are done with school. On this particular Friday I totally forgot Bobby had to log back in for small group stuff with his teacher for a few minutes in the afternoon. Whoops. 

Yosemite, 28 years later

When I first moved to LA in 1993, one of the first things I did was tag along with a group of established friends from my then church on a backpacking trip to Yosemite. It was great, and something I’d like to replicate at some point (I’m feeling like I’m up for more adventure than car camping, but need to find people to do it with me other than children or a partner who absolutely must have a toilet). Anyway, I had not returned since, until this weekend. 

We stayed at this awesome converted train caboose which did not disappoint. 

It was not exactly close - it was an hour and a half drive to the park, with over an hour wait each day to get in (tickets were limited due to covid - thankfully I found out about the ticket sale just hours before it happened last week and refreshed a thousand times, full of anxiety, until I got one for us). The first day it snowed, and we attached our as it turned out ill-fitting snow chains, but still spun out doing a complete 180 on the road, which was horrifying. Still, we survived the treacherous descent into the park in the snow and had a decent day. We even lucked into seeing the rare “firefall” phenomenon which only happens a few days a year (it’s when the setting sun hits a waterfall just right to make it look like it’s on fire).

We returned the next day for a very long hike to Mirror Lake and a visit to the Ahwahnee hotel, which is definitely a “return without kids” plan. 

Overall thoughts? I’m glad we went, but I wouldn’t return in winter. It was just too damned cold, and almost everything was closed due to winter and covid. Of course we were woefully unprepared; none of us had snow boots (I thought we could get away with rain boots and heavy socks - nope) and the kids’ jeans were almost instantly soaked and freezing. So, big fail there. Had we had proper clothes we could have had a lot of fun playing in the snow. Instead we just got cold and wet. The kids, however, were total troopers and never complained, even when we dragged them on long, cold hikes as the sun set and night came on, just to see a river or a mountain. We walked a lot, saw beautiful things, and I felt my soul replenished. 

We were very cozy and comfortable in our little house, and the BF’s incredibly beat up car survived, even as it passed 200,000 miles on our second trip back from the park. We all applauded its heroism. 

So, now we’re home, and hooray for California, our Covid numbers have finally hit the threshold to reopen schools. This fact alone means nothing; unions and LA Unified are still obstinate about all staff being vaccinated first, even as our vaccine sites are being shut down for a week due to lack of vaccine supply. I’m starting to scratch my head a bit about the possibility that opening a school like ours - with tons of outdoor space and the proper precautions - might not be so impossible after all. Anyway, I’m sure it’ll be a big week for school news. I think if our numbers continue to plummet we may at least have a tentative reopening date soon. I’m thinking post-spring break still. Which means only six more weeks of this relentless grind. Could it be? We’ll see.

In other news, as is always the case, I spent our return drive from this trip planning our next trip, in this case, skipping ahead to summer. I’m increasingly thinking Hawaii is just too much of a pain until we’re all vaccinated - so I may not attempt a visit this summer. What I may do instead is follow up on the Bryce/Zion/Page AZ trip I’ve had bookmarked for ages. In investigating what to do near Page (which is the general area of this Navajo-run glamp site I’ve been dying to visit) I discovered Lake Powell, on which you can rent houseboats, which is something my camping pod friend and I had talked about. Within thirty seconds she said she and her family were into it. So I think that’s going to be my birthday week plan - some combination of sheepherder’s wagons near Zion, maybe a Conestoga wagon near Bryce, an earth hogan in Page and then a houseboat. I just have to secure all these rentals now before they get booked up. I have a feeling the summer is going to be nuts with everyone all coming out of hiding at once. 

Week 5,897

Our numbers continue to plummet, but we’re still in the same situation we were last week - not enough vaccines, no idea when school will open. Sigh. The minutes fly like hours.

I was however able to see a couple of friends I hadn’t seen in months over the weekend thanks to the return of outdoor dining and newly acquired N95 masks. I drove up to Ventura on Saturday to see a florist friend who’s shop had to refuse all future Valentine’s orders because they are so inundated with funerals (how fucking depressing is that), and Sunday got my hair done and then had outdoor lunch with a book club friend. We all want to stomp our feet with frustration and shout “no! I don’t want this!!!” to the void, but nobody will hear it or care, especially when everyone is doing the same. Tensions are high about school, but I have to say, I’m with the teachers on this one (acknowledging fully that I have the privilege of not having children or a career who have/that has been harmed by schools being closed). I don’t really care if agencies that have been wrong many times say schools can open without teachers being vaccinated and it should be fine...how do we know that, especially with new variants? There’s no guarantee. I say we wait. Forcing adults into a potentially harmful situation sounds bad to me (although again I recognize people are forced into harm every day working with the public). 

Today I set up my ring light to take the boys’ school photos for their yearbook. They didn’t come out great - I could not get these kids to smile naturally no matter what I did - but they’re not terrible, and certainly show just how big these kids have gotten this year. They’re growing like weeds. 

Six more weeks of winter

The groundhog has spoken - six more weeks of winter. Somewhat meaningless to us here in Southern California (despite my winging, it’s actually a very pleasant 70 degrees and sunny at the moment), but still makes for a good metaphor; whatever this second winter of covid is, it’s not changing in the next six weeks. 

In lieu of my usual open for registration day which would have been yesterday, I instead posted on FB to just check in and say we don’t know that there will be an event this year, but to stay tuned. I was surprised by the response. Over 300 people reacted to it, and of those who commented, some offered to send money. I realized I really didn’t need to worry about losing my entire audience if I shut down a second year, that people are just as invested in this thing as I am, and are as eager to get back to normal as I am. For a brief moment I felt like a person who runs events, again, and later in the day found myself feeling quite emotional about it. I realized I don’t want to put on a hastily slapped together event where everyone still has to wear masks and social distance, but I do want to put on a normal event with a normal lead time. The thought of starting to plan next year’s event this fall, open for registration, and open hotel reservations, actually makes me really happy. So perhaps I haven’t completely lost my desire to do anything after all. 

I had quite a fright Sunday night when I just happened upon an article about this “firefall” phenomenon at Yosemite that will be happening when we’re there in two weeks - and apparently you need reservations for the park right now, and apparently they were to go on sale at 8 the next morning and were anticipated to sell out almost immediately. WHAT. The thought of heading up there and casually cruising to the park gate only to be turned away because we didn’t have a reservation...I shudder to think about it. Long story short, after a lot of anxiety and constant refreshing, I was able to score a weekend pass. I will never again just assume National parks are open or operating normally, not right now. We’ve been very lucky thus far that, with the exception of Hawaii, none of our trips have been sabotaged due to the virus. 

Today we’ve been asked to take pictures of our kids and send them in to be included in a yearbook. I’m glad they are still making one; we can’t pretend this year didn’t exist as much as we may want to. Still no word on schools, but the head of LAUSD is insisting on staff being vaccinated first and I agree.