COVID Lockdown - April 2020

April was approximately 40,818 days long this year. We were in lockdown the ENTIRE month of April.  Basically, we went for walks and Todd went to the grocery store once a week but that was pretty much it.



And of course, mother nature had to remind us that even though it was spring, she was still in charge of the weather and sent us a little snow.

The kids had to adapt to the ever changing online schooling.  Grant's was pretty straight forward after about the third week, but Natalie's kept changing.  Every week, they would add more Zoom's!

Meanwhile, I was bored, so I bought a puzzle.  Seriously. THAT bored.

Of course, it HAD to be a U.S. Army puzzle!  It was honestly the only puzzle I could find on Amazon as everyone was also bored and buying puzzles.

Naturally, we went on walks.  I thought this was SO cool!  On this spot was the former Darling Woolen Mill which would probably be fairly insignificant, but the sign reads, "Lost to a fire in 1933.  Owner Ellen (Thayer) Darling's son Ernest Thayer was the author of the classic American poem, Casey at the Bat." 

All that remains is a dam backing up Factory Pond as it releases into Bogastow Brook.

We look so happy to be out of the house and taking a walk around the neighborhood!

We were staying in a fairly small AirBnB.  Actually, it was twice as large as most things we stayed in during our European travels, but too small for four people to live in for several months.  Everyone had to find a spot to "get away" from everyone else.  Grant's happened to find his spot halfway under his bed.



April 4th Covid-19 statistics in America.

This online learning was tough, especially for us.  Most people are in their own homes, with all of their stuff.  So when the school suggested an art project that required Popsicle sticks and hot glue guns... well, I don't have those things!  On this day, they suggested a game of outdoor bowling for P.E.  Yup.  Those are beer cans my kids are playing with.

All I have to say, is that if we didn't have the FABULOUS Erica, we might have lost our minds.  She dropped off SO many games and a CROCKPOT!  A crockpot is one of the kitchen utensils I use the most, so I couldn't have been more excited to have this.  And the games!  We got the game Apples to Apples in this batch, and it became our instant favorite.



Walking the Holliston rail trail became a thing we did  multiple times a week.

Grant liked to go outside when Seamus was out and throw the ball around.  Seamus was all bark!

When we took our walks, we would walk by this tree on Washington Street that was blooming so beautifully!  Signs of spring really made us happy.

Oh my gosh!  Someone left this on the side of the road and I just couldn't believe it. I'm certain my mother had this in her kitchen where I grew up!



When we walked down Locust Street, we would always pass this house that had turkeys in the backyard.

There was a super moon early in the month that was also known as a pink moon!

I just DON'T KNOW about this kid. He is SO funny.  He would crawl under the coffee table and say, "I'm at Club Nut!"  Which is apparently a club that the squirrels go to.  Such a funny kid!

For STEM one day, we managed to scrape together some things to make a boat float in the sink.  That's an egg carton, a pencil and the sail was made out of a cereal box.  He's like a mini MacGuyver! We just had to work with what we had!

We Zoomed a lot with family, too.  We even got to see Madison, who is in South Korea!

We also celebrated Easter in April.  Mmmm.  Peeps.

And of course, I always love to make a big Easter dinner but this year, we didn't have an electric mixer to make mashed potatoes... so Todd had to use an old school manual hand mixer!  Using that thing was an upper body workout!

Pardon the mess ... we are living out of 11 suitcases in the middle of a pandemic.

One night, we lost power because of a big wind storm that took down a tree on Washington Street.  Forced family fun!

Todd also celebrated a birthday. I swear one day I will learn how to frost a cake!  It always starts out a hot mess (and I don't mean literally hot. I know to let it fully cool!)

But then it always turns out okay.

Our new house (that we weren't able to move into until mid May) has a flagpole so I got Todd a new flag for his birthday.

We finally got some decent weather around the end of the month, so we decided to pack a picnic lunch and eat it in our car before we hiked around the Ashland Reservoir.

If everyone else is cold, Natalie will be hot.  It was a nice day but you still definitely needed a hoodie.  Not for Nat though!

It wasn't super hard to social distance at the reservoir as you can see Grant is doing here.

Ashland Reservoir in bright sunshine.

I'm such a nerd - this is Cold Spring Brook that is released out of the Ashland Dam.

Someone couldn't even get Kesha's lyrics right.  It's supposed to be, "I am nothing more than recycled star dust and borrowed energy."  Maybe that was on purpose.

A quiet day on a cold lake.

This was when we were only about 75% of the way around the lake.  I had over 12,000 steps- whew!

This was really a sad picture that Natalie took from the backseat.  On April 20, Natalie had an orthodontist appointment in Hopkinton, and as we were driving there, I told her this was the road on which the Boston Marathon should have been run on that day. So sad.

On a lighter note, if you haven't dialed the "Callin' Oates" line, do yourself a favor and call!  It doesn't disappoint!  John Oliver is so funny!

More school at home with Mom.  He's a surprisingly good speller, but they weren't working on spelling, so I bought him this book to keep up with it.

In about 2 weeks, we went from a little over 8,000 deaths to over 42,000 deaths. Incredible.

By the end of the month, we were taking walks pretty frequently.  Holliston is pretty!

This was one of my best hands EVER in Apples to Apples.  Mostly because one time, Todd got the card, "Puffy."  Not even kidding.  So then you have to find the word that most aligns with that word.  And wouldn't you know it, I had Puff Daddy!  Which was hilarious because as soon as he pulled the card, he actually said, "Puff Daddy!"  Imagine his surprise when he saw my card!

More belly rubs for his buddy Seamus.  Most days Grant was half in pajamas, half in real clothes. Literally.  Like, pajama bottoms with a real shirt. Silly kid.

We wandered around the East Holliston Cemetery a few times and the lady that lives next door came out one time to tell us that it was the cemetery for the poor house, which had been across the street, mostly in the 1800s.

Grant was almost always a willing participant in our walks!

By the end of the month, it was time to move AGAIN - this time, to Acton.  The AirBnB we had rented in Holliston had been rented from the end of April all the way through the end of the year by someone else.  We did not love this place nearly as much.

Mostly it was because of the frequent smell of weed, people being hauled out by ambulances (Covid?) and people having swearing shouting matches on Mother's Day morning when I was trying to sleep in!  And then I read there had been a shooting there the year before. UGH.

Meanwhile, the kids just stayed in Holliston Public Schools through the end of the school year.  His teacher, the sweet Mrs. Spino is retiring at the end of the year.  During teacher appreciation week, one of the moms got the idea to make a little video for her with the kids saying thank you.  Naturally, we had to do ours in German!

Acton DOES have a nice rail trail.  It's wide enough so you were never really close to anyone else (even on the warm days) and it was scenic in either direction we chose.  

Ah, a mere 0.6 mile to Concord!  But over 12 miles down to Framingham!

Here, the kids are reluctantly going back to our weird apartment.

Sometimes I wouldn't walk along the rail trail.  Instead, I would walk around the neighborhoods behind the apartment complex.  You can find signs for the Line of March from April 19, 1775 as the Acton Minutemen started their march to Concord where they would fight at the Battle of Lexington and Concord.  They started at Issac Davis's house in Acton and marched about 6 miles to the Old North Bridge.  Issac Davis died in battle and was the first commissioned officer (in what would eventually become the United States) to do so.  There are markers set up all along the route.

Anyway, those were our April adventures.  Now it's on to May!

COVID-19 Lock Down - March 2020

I'm being a little dramatic on the "lock down" part of my headline here, but we have been under "stay-at-home" orders since the middle of March due to a terrible coronavirus that burst onto the scene (aren't I making it sound like a cool new K-Pop band?) back in the late fall over in Asia and made it's way to Europe and the United States earlier this year.

As much as I love to travel, and as much as I seem to really enjoy people... I'm actually an extroverted introvert.  So the idea of being stuck in my house for months was actually VERY appealing to me.  What?  I get to stay at home and watch TV and don't have to bother with other human beings? Yes, please.

That is... of course... if I could actually be stuck in MY OWN house with MY OWN stuff.  Instead, I've been stuck in various AirBnB apartments around the Boston metro area living out of 11 suitcases.  So this has really been less than ideal for us.  And let me be clear- we are lucky!  We are healthy and employed.  Well... I am now RE-employed, so let me start with that part of the story.

As news broke that we had our first outbreak of COVID-19 in Massachusetts in early March from a conference that (ironically) the biotechnology firm Biogen held in late February, the panic sort of set in.  And it hasn't really let up.  I took this picture back on March 11 and all hell broke loose the next day.

I took this picture the very next day at Shaw's in Ashland.  Time to panic-purchase all of the bananas!

Massachusetts folk are known to panic-purchase bananas because I took this picture at Roche Brothers in Natick back in 2011 right before Hurricane Irene hit.

But this time, the panic purchasing wasn't limited to produce.  It extended clear across the store to the frozen vegetables.  And this is pretty much how Shaw's has looked ever since. 

Good news though... St. Patrick's Day and spring cookies are still plentiful.

I've never seen lines like this - not even during times of natural disasters or 9/11.

I took this picture on Friday the 13th at Stop and Shop in Natick.  The bread aisle was bare and this guy has slim pickings.

 I'm gonna digress here, but I'm super mad I didn't take that Purell and my can of Lysol from my desk at Concord Middle School. See, I worked there for about 2.5 weeks.  I have been waiting patiently for CDM Smith to hire me (as they keep saying they're going to) but in the interest of self preservation, I needed to find a job in the meantime.  So when Concord Middle School announced that they needed a temporary secretary at their 6th grade building for about 5-6 weeks and that they used Aspen for their student management system, I jumped at the opportunity!  I won't say what they were going to pay me... but it IS Concord Public Schools, and it WAS 3 times what I made at Vilseck High to do the exact same job, essentially.  So, yes please!  So I worked there for three days before February break happened (no need to work if there are no students there, so I didn't.)  Then I went back to work for a whopping two weeks, when COVID 19 self isolation started.  On Thursday, the 12th, the principal made an announcement for all students to clean out their lockers and take everything home JUST IN CASE we didn't have school.  The anxiety level of the kids was VERY high.  They left school that day not knowing they wouldn't come back to the 6th grade.  The principal asked me to come in on Friday so there would be a face there to greet students and parents who wanted to get stuff out of their lockers, but most of the day I sat there and didn't do much.  I don't have any books with me... because they're on a boat of course.  THIS is what I spent my time doing.  Shaw's Monopoly game.  Which makes me pretty much the lamest person on the planet.

Anyway to say I never went back to Concord Middle School is probably already pretty obvious.

Well, hopefully this will last me through the self isolation period.  Eh, who are we kidding.  This might last me 2 weeks.

The first breakfast of self isolation was yummy!

The first week of this mess was kind of like spring break.  There was little input from Holliston Public Schools because they were all still trying to figure it out themselves.  They hastily put together a little "do these things for some structure" program, but the kids were super annoyed that this wasn't a vacation.  I made Todd run out and get some resistance bands and I made the kids do some stretching. Their faces pretty much show exactly how they felt about it.

I'm sort of glad I saw this coming, because I had ordered some workbooks for Grant off of Amazon including a spelling book, a timed multiplication table book, and an all-around 4th grade workbook for all subjects.  He also did a little work that the school sent that first week.  Over time, the schools were more organized and provided more challenging work, but it was pretty much left to the parents to teach all of it.  

These were the country's statistics on March 16.  If you're reading this, you know they went much higher.

At the very least, when we lived in Holliston, we had little bursts of happiness when Seamus would come outside and we could go play with him.  At first, he would bark at us a lot.  But eventually, that sort of stopped.  He really was the cutest dog!

Do you want to know what we really did in our self isolation?  We went on a LOT of walks. And we ate a lot, to counter that. This was our first ever walk in the 2020 self isolation period.

In March, signs of spring started to emerge.

For St. Patrick's Day, we had some Guinness and watched Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard sing us some songs.

This isn't my photo, but as if this month wasn't already batshit crazy... Tom Brady left the Patriots... FOR THE TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS!!!!  I can't tell if my Dad had something to do with this from the Great Beyond, but perhaps!  Or as my friend James in Germany says, "That's SUSPECT!"  

This year has been so absolutely weird that Todd and I have a silly theory that on our flight back from Germany, we actually crashed and died - and we went to The Medium Place. If you don't get that joke, you HAVE to watch The Good Place on NBC.  We certainly aren't in The Bad Place because no one is tearing off our skin, but things are just weird here.  With this pandemic, people are dying and everyone is in self isolation and we have been living out of suitcases for months and Tom Brady left the Pats... but not only did he leave the Pats, he went to the Bucs!  My hometown team! This is just a "new realm of mediocre existence."  A real purgatory.

We watched a lot of movies, including Wonder Woman.

Do you know what else we did on this day?  We signed the purchase and sale agreement on our new house in Ashland! But when do we close? In more than two months.  So we get to live out of suitcases for TWO MORE MONTHS.  Purgatory.

Grant played with Seamus a lot.  He always seems scared of Seamus, which is super funny because he's the sweetest dog.  But he's big, so I think that worried Grant.  It's probably why he loves little dogs, like pugs.

Mike and Erica paid the kiddos to clean leaves out from their flower beds, while Seamus got paid in dog treats to supervise.

And in true Massachusetts fashion, it had to snow in late March (and it wouldn't be the last time!)

Nobody left the house, except for walks, but Todd had to go out once a week to do some grocery shopping.  JUST once a week.  We definitely could have gotten away with going less if we lived in our own home, with a big deep freezer in the basement.  But we didn't have that here, so Todd had to go once a week.  When he gets home, we wipe down all of the groceries with Clorox wipes, just to be sure.  We probably don't need to do that, but we do it anyway.  Grant has asthma, so we aren't taking any chances.

In late March, I got some bad news, and I took it kind of hard.  My family literally rallied around me and I love them very much.  I wouldn't want to be stuck inside with anyone else!

Finally, the Holliston public schools released their Remote Learning Program, and the kids went back to work. Here is Grant on his first ever Zoom meeting with Mrs. Spino's 4th grade class.  Please note the pajama pants he still has on!  This whole thing was kind of hard on Grant because he didn't really make super close friendships with the kids in his class as he had in Germany.  Natalie made immediate friends because of a bond over Korean pop music - kids that months later, she was still talking to, despite not having been in an actual classroom with them.  That's absolutely the difference between my kids.  Natalie is me, Grant is Todd.

One good thing that came out of this was that Natalie learned how to wash dishes! We paid her, but she actually did a really good job every night after dinner, doing everyone's dishes because we didn't have a dishwasher here in Holliston.

We went on a LOT of walks during our self isolation, but nice days were few and far between in March, as they usually are in Massachusetts.  Here we are on the Holliston rail trail, heading north toward Sherborn and Grant challenged Todd to a sprint.

Sherborn, COME ON!  You're literally one of the wealthiest towns in Massachusetts and THIS is how we found the rail trail in your town?? So disappointing.  

Mike and Erica had a really nice house.  When we came back from walks on the rail trail, we would walk up their long driveway.

Seamus was also there to greet us at our back door.  Hey guys?  Anyone wanna come out and throw a ball around?

I got to Zoom with some of my Auburn besties - in this shot, we just have Ayala, Lisa and Stacie, but Kelly and Hope were also on the call (I could only see 4 faces at once!)  We did a virtual happy hour- something many people have been doing to help their sanity during these crazy times.  I also started doing a Tuesday evening FaceTime with Kristin and Jen (you know... from London and Amsterdam fame on this blog) which would make me pee my pants with laughter if I hadn't had surgery to correct that!  

I also started doing a daily post on Facebook that told everyone what we did that day.  Largely, it's not exciting at all, but it's a nice reminder for when those Facebook memories pop up many years down the road, assuming Facebook lives that long.  On this day, I saw a cardinal that I named Charlie - one for my Dad, because cardinals are representative of someone who has passed away, and Charlie was also the name of the mascot from Ball State, where my dad went to college.  Plus, my friend Charlie Sill, who I worked with at The Weather Channel was battling cancer, and hospice had just begun their work at his home.  

Additionally, Grant made this great work of art.  He said it was a "fox getting a giant wild raspberry."  I say it's a superhero fox getting a giant pink gumball!

I must say, if there has to be a "one good thing" about being in self isolation, it's that people have a LOT of time on their hands to make memes!  The memes have been killing me - so funny!

And we're on to April!