The After Times

It's hard to describe the feeling of living here post inauguration. We got to the end of the week on Friday and no one had a drink in their hand, because just juggling work and kids and the usual stress of the Pandemic hadn't worn us down quite the same way as it did during the T**** era. I don't expect the harm to be erased, or the fights to be over, but knowing that functional adults are back in charge is incredibly good news. Just that look of glee on Fauci's face when he addressed the press spoke more to the people than any words could say. Help is here. It will get better. 

New Year Wishes

I can't really make a resolution. 2020 is still lying on the floor laughing at my list from last year. On the 31st we wrote on wish paper, lit it and watched it rise off the table and fall in floating grey ash clouds. 

What I hope happens this year is that we get enough vaccinations out there that our front line workers are safe and the deaths in care homes from COVID end. I feel somewhat confident that by summertime we could see case rates fall to levels low enough to risk a road trip back to Canada. I feel fairly confident that the kids will return to some kind of school in person in the fall of 2021. 

I don't think we'll really truly take a family holiday till Summer 2022. Our dreams of returning to France or doing a trip to Northern England, Scotland and Ireland might be possible then. 

We wonder what world travel might be like then. Will EVERYONE be suddenly taking the trip of a lifetime just because now they can? Will the usual haunts be so crowded that it's all like the Louvre in August or will people step out cautiously... maybe the financial ruin of the pandemic will still hinder most from leisure. 

I do feel wildly optimistic about one thing, 2021 has got to be better than 2020. To that I raise a toast, may we meet in person someday not too far off, and HUG. Seriously, think about it. Hugging. 

Friendships and the Pod Evolution

It's been a hard year for relationships with people. Some friendships are the same as ever because we always had long pauses. We chat online and check in like it's no big deal. Other friendships have almost faded out without the frequent in-person meetings. 

The pod thing is like playing "who would you want to be marooned on a desert island with?" only you really do it. There was no way to include all our close friends here and I felt that the decision of who to quarantine with with came from being in lockstep with another family in our circle. When people ask how we decided I have to really think about it. 

And so, when the lockdown began we rode out the first couple of months in isolation and then, the moment the local county said that we could, we podded up. It took a few weeks to hit our stride but eventually, we began to live communally. Taking turns cooking and hosting dinner in the evenings, and eventually, putting all the kids to bed together almost every night which oddly enough makes bedtime easier. We spend the evenings with cocktails and games or sometimes just sitting on our phones in that comfortable silence between good friends. 

The key to happiness in a communal living pod like ours doesn't lie only in friendship but also in how  people cope with the pandemic stress. I'd say most people would probably find our habits pretty hard to roll with. Because we have two members with high levels of health risk, we are at the highest level of lock down measures all the time. We all have 0 direct contact outside the pod. Everyone works from home, kids homeschool and we only go inside a business if we have exhausted every other means of getting that item. It's something that might happen once a month and undertaken with the solemnity of performing surgery. We don't grocery shop in person, we don't eat on cafe patios, use public restrooms or take public transit or taxis. 

We're also all news junkies and among us we cover a mix of British, Canadian, French, Singaporean and American news. We read a lot of scientific papers, journals and have been focused on the impressive research going on. It's helped keep the focus away from the scary headlines and on the progress instead. I find being focused on the goal of ending this pandemic to be very centering. Some people find the news keeps them up at night and makes them upset. To each their own. I think part of me would be happier if I could somehow be a scientist right now, pulling long shifts trying to save lives. I've always been good in a crisis, not so good at riding out monotony.

In the autumn we added a third family. This was is another classmate of the older two kids and her parents who are part of our mutual parent friends as well. They were also keeping their daughter home when school resumed and maintaining a similar level of lockdown at home so it was a good fit for us all. 

We know we are fortunate to have found a pod life that feels right for this adventure we are on. Where this will go or where it will end, we don't know. But I hope when we look back we'll see the growth that happened. 

The Election That Xanax Won

Usually elections are like a sports match here. Lots of parties, food, drinking, banter. The outcome matters but it won't end a friendship or a marriage. But the past five years have been different. We've seen the viterol of Fox news crazed white baby boomers tear families apart. Nearly every friend has some crazy uncle or parent who has adopted a level brazen racism that just doesn't seem real. The trend of anti-intellectualism was examined during the Bush years and much laughed about on late night TV, but I don't think anyone thought the cult of being uneducated could grow like this in a country with such value placed on innovation and growth. 

So here we are. Day two of ballot counting. Somehow...too close to call yet. Children are in cages. White supremacists are parading around with impunity, basic women's rights are at risk of being stripped back to the 1950s. It shouldn't be a tough decision. 

 

Dinner in the dark and turning 40

I was unsure of how to celebrate Joel's 40th or my own this past month and as mine drew closer, I felt a little pressure to figure that out. It's supposed to be a big day, it's supposed to be momentous. Finally we landed on the idea of Joel cooking one of his epic feasts out of two of our Ottolenghi cookbooks and I searched for the most ridiculous show-stopper of a Birthday cake I could find. We invited our pod and Joel spent the week preparing and receiving mysterious packages. Then we were given notice of extreme fire weather over the weekend and told the power would be cut for 24 hours starting during our planned dinner. We changed nothing but checked the batteries in the LED candles and lanterns and made sure the 2000 watt power inverter was set up beside the car and there were extension cords spread around the house to the fridge and freezer so we could be on back-up power in about 10 minutes when needed. When the day arrived the dinner was absolutely perfect, I'm going to share some pictures. The power went out as we finished the final courses and we cheered and made espresso by the flickering light of a lantern hanging in the cozy kitchen. 

Grilled Grapes with Mozzarella

Beet, orange and feta salad

Curried lentil, tomato, coconut soup

Palette cleanser: home made vodka lemon sorbet with champagne

Tri tip

Roast cauliflower

Baked home made gnocci

Asparagus with almonds, capers and dill

Roast eggplant with sesame, and sauteed shallots

We began with one of my favorite chardonnays sent by my parents

At the meat course this big peppery Cab Sauv came out

Dessert was a St Honore, butter puff pastry crust with Italian pastry cream filling; layered with sponge cake brushed with rum; decorated with chocolate and fresh whipped cream and pastry cream-filled caramelized cream puffs.

We also had a tray of assorted italian cookies by the same pastry shop

 

Thankful

Since it's the week of reflecting on being thankful, here is my big over-arching thing I am thankful for. What a gift it has been to be located here during the lockdown. We've had 7 months of blue skies almost every single day (except for the smoky time). And so much room to run, hike and lounge outdoors. I run or walk alone every day and Joel runs or takes a bike ride on the roads or mountain bike trails. It keeps us positive, no matter what is going on out there. 

Thanksgiving of course was not the same this year. We didn't have a sit down dinner for 40 in the back yard or guests arriving from all over the place, cooking and baking here for days beforehand. That whole festival of food will be a happy memory from the past for a while yet. 

This year we decided not to try to make it like anything else we've ever done. We skipped traditions and our pod of three families gathered here. We had a loose theme around a British pub night. Everyone brought beer and we ordered curry for the adults and the kids had steak and ale pie and chips. I made an apple pie and the kids all went to bed leaving the adults to sit out under the twinkle lights and patio heater and enjoy ourselves. 

Glass Fire and Red Flags

A screen grab from the San Francisco Chronicle this morning of the damage to one of the huge wineries destroyed this week by the Glass Fire. 

We had a lovely three weeks or so of our "normal" September weather. Skies in the deep blue that you only see along this part of the globe. The mornings were a little cooler and evenings filled with crickets and frogs in symphony. Days for lounging in temps around 30c. Perfect for sipping rosé and BBQing. 

We'd cleaned the soot from all our outdoor decks and washed all the cushions and hammocks. But as we feared that didn't last. Fire season resumed with a new fire exploding in wine country just an hour North of us. *Just* before that began we had word that our wine order had shipped from Terra Valentine but it's not here so we're a little worried one of our favorite places might be evacuated too. 

Marin is on high alert with a red flag warning this week too. No one is allowed to use power tools outside or use many of the roads through the parks and lots of parks are just closed. Red flags are something we're pretty used to having whenever the humidity and wind gets to the danger point. I hope that they don't need to cut our power but if there's any high wind this week, we fully support them shutting down the grid. We have a generator and are equipped to just carry on. 

Living anywhere on the planet is going to subject you to climate emergencies at some point now. We're gutted that all the most spectacular places we have been are going to be first on the chopping block it seems. 

Then The Sky Turned Orange

 One couldn't really blog 2020 in the Bay Area without marking that day the freaking sky turned orange. But it did and we were socked in along with the entire coast all the way up into Northern BC. 

But that dreadful week passed in a dim post apocalyptic light and then the wind cleared all the air and we are back to beautiful clear Summer again. Joel and I are happy to be back to our trail runs at sunset. 

Back To School-ish

We went through many contingencies for Fall 2020. In the end we decided to just chill and homeschool and see what panned out around us. The crunchy Waldorf independent study charter where the kids were registered served up such a half-baked plan so late in the Summer that we hardly had a choice as all. Other roads were certainly no longer open. Flakey school planning when paired with extreme funding cutbacks from the state resulted in Caelen's class being cut from the school altogether a couple of weeks from his start date and Austen's class, which begins this week, lost its teacher. They combined the grade 2 class with the grade three class, creating a mega class... and are planning to have the kids in person on campus next month for outdoor classes. The details are vague, and the class size is more than double of what the Marin county health officer would like to see. We'll just watch to see what happens first.

Meanwhile, our little homeschooling situation is actually pretty sweet. We put the two TK kids together at one house and the two 2nd graders at the other each day, and each parent is teaching what they excel in. One mom is doing writing and reading and I'm doing art, history, and baking. The dads are in charge of STEM projects that include blowing things up outside (really) and woodworking and robots. The 2nd graders will participate in Zoom lessons with their Waldorf peers for the coming month just to try that out but given how fast they have already covered much of the curriculum planned for this year at the Waldorf school I'm not convinced they will really enjoy this in the long run. Time will tell. 

The fire in Pt Reyes is still burning with so much fuel that it is likely to burn for two more months despite being contained. It's still a little smokey out there some days. Our PM has been under 100 all week and often under 50 which is better than any normal urban city but occasionally we get a wind change and are socked in under a cloud that puts us back into a PM reading of 250 or more. 

I've been able to go for a run every day when it clears and we've enjoyed some days with fog in the mornings so despite the summer heat, the cool mornings and nights have been lovely. It's really got the crickets going in the evenings again which I love. Autumn in California is always a treat weather-wise in a non-fire year. It's still Summer till November and some years, even till December. We're hoping with continued closures of the parks and prudent power shutdowns, we can prevent another surge of fires this season. California could use some quiet nights. 

The Hills, They Are Burning

 

Ok so what we said about the hills, don't take to the hills right now. They are either on fire, about to be on fire or filling with smoke. We woke to the sound of our UPS beeping as it kicked in during a power outage while we were sleeping a week ago. The house was otherwise silent and of course pitch black but I had a bad feeling the outage was due to the storm we'd heard was on the way. Dry lightning is the enemy of anyone who lives on the West coast of Canada or the US. Late summer heat and dryness in the forests makes for a dangerous place for a strike to land. In 2008 we were here for the last dry lightning event in California and it was pretty catastrophic. 

I looked out over the valley saw in in distance some flashes of  lightening and when I stepped outside the dry hot wind kicked up and started to pull on our awning over the deck. The air smelled like sulfur. Joel got up and began manually cranking in the awning which is very difficult without the electric motor. The storm rolled closer and some drops of rain started and I had to run outside to cover the generator with tarps and huge rocks to hold them down dodging flying branches. Our phones lit up with alerts about fires from the storm that had started in Mill Valley, Pt Reyes, Forest Knolls/San Geronimo (very close to us) and I believe there were a few other strikes spots around the Muir Woods side of Mt Tam. Even with the rain starting we knew there was enough build up of dry tinder, these fires were not going to be easy to attack. I sat up with my phone and our wireless hotspot (the only way to get a signal in an outage here because we are just out of regular cell phone company range).  Our local firefighters heroically put out all the fires overnight except for the one in the Pt Reyes National Park which they could not reach. That is the one that is now nearly 3,000 acres and now drawing resources from Montana. 

 A week went by with over 650 fires raging across the state from the lightning event and then we had advance warning of ANOTHER lightning complex coming our way and were advised to be ready to evacuate if a strike were to land near us. So, along with all our friends in the area, we began to organize the plan for evacuation and pack up essentials in the car. A massive Red Flag warning covering most of Northern California was declared. Extra resources started to pour into the state. Luckily when the storm hit it has mostly dispersed at sea and there were just a couple of strikes near existing fires. Our Red Flag was lifted and life returned to our strange normal.  

Fairfax with unhealthy smoke levels still had a concert in the parking lot and diners sitting on patios

It's hazy out there but the sun makes it through. We usually have clear air in the afternoon & evening.

We're so fortunate to have central air conditioning (powered by our solar array) which pulls in fresh air from outside, cools it and then filters it before sending it around the house. Very little smoke gets inside. We had the system updated just a couple of years ago and are very glad we did. It has saved our lungs and sanity the last few years.