Misty Central Coast Recharge

After thanksgiving's big hurrah, Nancy, Jessica, and I packed up our cars and drove down the coast for a Sunday-Wednesday escape. It was absolutely what I needed and I'd do this again in a heartbeat. 

We booked a small apartment at The Briarwood in Carmel. This is where I stayed with my Grannie and Mum in January 2010. Lots of special memories for me here. What people don't often realize about Carmel is, that despite it being full of high-end shops and fine dining, it's also full of much older Inns with rates that are a bit lost in time. They aren't flashy but not dives at all. It's usually much cheaper to stay in Carmel than in Monterey and quieter and more secure for night strolling and parking.

The other fantastic thing we booked was day passes at Refuge. This is an outdoor spa settled in the hills above Carmel. It's utterly beautiful there and really reasonably priced for lounging and rejuvenating. 

We had some wonderful brunches at Carmel Belle and a dinner at the legendary Dametra. We also had a lovely evening of tapas and a lot of champagne at Promesa. The rest of the time we hit up the quaint local delis and made charcuterie/cheese boards. 

It was very chilly and thick with fog but we did get out for beach strolling and we did a day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Cannery Row. 

Hosting Again

To me, one of life's greatest pleasures in that moment of a house brimming with energy, laughter, clinking glasses. That moment when a party starts to run on its own energy and you get to enjoy it fully. Everything up to that point is a bit of a mad dash, little details, cooking and baking and decorating. Anticipating needs and crossing things off lists. There's a deep creative pleasure for me in creating tables for gathering. I think about it and collect pieces all year. My co-conspirator in these plans has always been Renee, who my kids call Gigi. She's an antique collector and creator of really creative and spectacular events in her home. She's always pushing the envelope with quirky fun ideas mixed with history and then above all... comfort. Nothing should be too austere. 

My other co-conspirator in great hosting escapade is often Nancy. My BFF of 34 years from Eastern Ontario homeschooling days. This year she flew down to visit just in time to help me pull off this event.

My client, Heirlooms Events, loaned us linens, tables, chairs, crystal (and those moss colored hobnail tumblers that were amazing) and Renee, who was in the middle of downsizing her home, sent up a collection of hotel silver to hold flowers. I scored a whole bucket of dahlias at Trader Joe's the day before. They turned out just the way I'd hoped. Those dewy peachy petals juxtaposing the tarnished silver. 

It was a lovely afternoon and night, with lots of hugs and catching up. I wish Renee had been able to come up and join us too. Jessica made it up from LA though and the following morning, after SO much cleaning, Nancy, Jess and I hatched a plan to decompress and do the opposite of hosting...

Summer Cottage on a lake

It's the key ingredient of a Canadian kid's Summer if you live in the Eastern provinces with lots of lakes. Having grown up in cottage country it was odd when we moved to BC at age 10 and there were relatively few warm, clear lakes to dive into in the Summer. There were also few days that got warm enough to want to swim! A BC Summer is more like spring weather, wet, breezy with occasional warmer days but it rarely gets sticky hot. When we lived in Vancouver all my Ontario Summer clothes lived in a bag. And after moving to hotter climates we have learned not to bring things like flip flops and sun dresses with us in July because they just live in the suitcase. We were utterly astonished this Summer to be arriving for our first ever heat wave during a BC Summer. 

When we got to the cottage with Joel's family we were treated to weather that was right out of an Eastern Ontario childhood. Jumping in the warm lake multiple times a day to stay cool. Sitting by a fan with a cool drink after. Warm evenings playing long competitive games of Risk and pulling out the secret stashes of treats we hid when the kits were up. 

We also had really lovely weather to have a lot of outdoor time in Sooke with my family and music festival time with my brother and his family. Joel and I got away for one night to the Empress Hotel where we wined and dined and got a luxurious sleep in. 

Roaring 20s and COVID

Do we, or don't we?  the parent party committee mused over Zoom. The gloomy chart from the Country showed the COVID levels in the wastewater were in a bullish upward trend. Parents were expecting us to put on the first year-end party in two school years. But imagining people filling the indoor venue didn't sit right. What if we have a super spreader event and land our little charter school in the local papers? There's a journalist there that just won't be able to resist tearing us a new one. 

We drew up a new plan to have everything outdoors for our roaring 20s fete. The setting was stunning, with twinkling lights under the canopy of redwood trees. Black and gold decor hung from everywhere, dancers demonstrated the Charleston, the bar was stocked with supplies to make my signature cocktail list: French 75, Sidecar, Old Fashioned. We pulled it off! And it was beautiful.

This shindig coincided with my parent's visit down from Canada. They'd arrived a week before, in time for us to have a fun weekend with the final season baseball games and family dinners. Then I got sick with a sinus infection and after isolating for a few days and testing negative each day, I opted for antibiotics and immediately got better. Phew, I thought! I dodged COVID again. I was better in time to enjoy the event I'd helped plan and we got that glittering evening in. 

We had a lovely weekend after that, outdoor brunch at our Barefoot Cafe in Fairfax and a hike in Deer Park with the kids and a late evening scrabble game for the adults. 

Monday morning I woke with heavy, wet-feeling lungs, a bit of asthma. I wandered upstairs to grab a cup of coffee and a Zyrtec. Once back downstairs again I thought, well maybe I should do a rapid test. The tiniest of tiny test lines faded into view and I just froze in shock. That began a the frantic process of isolating me downstairs again. I diligently reported my test to the County, they responded by texting me  my quarantine schedule. Then I did the iphone exposure notification for the state of California which pings all close contacts from the past few days. That was a little less simple as I had to get a number sent to me by the state health department to put into that app but it worked. I reached out to the parent party organizing committee members from the party and heard one other person had tested positive the same time but with so much going around, we likely weren't even linked. 

And so that was day one. I quickly developed a fever, cough, headache and nausea and joint pains that were more severe than I've had in the last 20 years. I was not expecting a breakthrough infection for me to be this dramatic. I couldn't keep anything down, not even liquids. I had a call with a nurse to monitor my O2 and a follow up the following day from a Dr of Internal medicine and was put onto prescription anti nauseants so I could take in fluids again. 

I had three days of being phenomenally ill and thinking I might get rolled out of this place on a gurney afterall, and then on day four it turned and started to recede. Just as the Dr said it would. By now Joel had joined me in my quarantine lair, only he won the lottery and got the cold version. He had a feverish night and lingering cough but really never got very sick. Our story is pretty typical of Omicron's BA.2. People are getting either this harsh flu or a cold and then it goes away. We felt we were being pretty careful still when we caught it. We were not dining indoors, we were masking with KN95 masks for shops and school, and being very conservative with any socializing. I think I may have picked it up having a drink outside on a patio at a local cocktail bar. My Dr. confirmed that yes, many people are reporting the same suspicions about outdoor spread. "It's just that contagious now" she said. 

My parents have been isolating with the boys upstairs. Joel and I, with our own house entrance are well set up to isolate in the lower part of the house. Joel even taped up the air return vent (he laughed that it reminded him of Station Eleven). My parents have been delivering meals to us (we've been ordering in a lot) and leaving all kinds of needed items outside our door. The boys are enjoying some grandparent time and lots of hikes. They haven't tested positive or been sick at all. After a week of isolating from us they went back to school today and are taking in their last three days of school before Summer holidays begin.

And so that's our COVID story. Glad to have caught a later variant which, after lots of jabs, seems self limiting. But I still wouldn't wish what I had on anyone. We are still both waiting to test out of quarantine. My tests are coming back positive at day 8 and Joel's at day 5. My parents have to drive up to Canada tomorrow so we're hoping we change the tide in the next 24 hours. We couldn't have cared for the kids  without them and are incredibly grateful for family.  

Cautiously Optimistic

It's May 1st, the birds are singing and it's not terribly hot out so I've been gardening while Joel is fishing with the boys. A perfect lazy Sunday. Loads of coffee, cat conversations, and just a sense that I'm perfectly happy with a day at home. In January we branched out from just school to having the boys in various after school things. Skateboarding, Capoeira, Baseball, Carpentry,  and they still do piano too. Children's programs dropped outdoor masking after the Winter surge and then in March, at various dates, some districts made masks optional everywhere. That was a huge change for everyone. Having been burned by that happening right before Delta most of our circle have been pretty conservative unmasking when out shopping or in a classroom. But also opening up our risk profiles a little more as this time goes on. 

We took our first family holiday to our old stomping grounds in LA since fall 2019. It was a fantastic week.

We had a home exchange place to stay in just in Santa Monica walking distance from where we used to live. We saw some old friends and ate excellent Mexican street food. Took did a spa day with a friend and Joel took the boys to see the space shuttle and we honestly caught up on a huge amount of sleep. We were cautious about crowded places and masked a lot indoors for shops but generally with all the outdoor time it felt like a perfectly relaxing family trip to do and happy to have been doing it at a time where things are on an upswing and the mood is really joyous. 

After spring break in LA we all had to COVID test again to have the kids return to school and were very pleased when our school had only two cases after that wave of testing. A testament to the care folks are taking (and our 98% vaccination rate for ages 5+). 

Easter came next. Again we did something we haven't done in years, we hosted the egg hunt in our garden and enjoyed a sun filled happy day basking in the rays and sipping mimosas.