The Break In The Drought

Rain rain rain! We've had two or three of these atmospheric rivers come through so far. We usually get these in late December or January but we were certainly not complaining when the fire season came to an abrupt end with over 300mm of rain in a mere 24 hours. There was some short-lived flooding more due to the extraordinary high tides that were also happening at that time and it all resolved pretty fast. Then we had weeks of glorious warm sunny weather, shorts were worn and then another storm. This is what "winter" is mostly like for us. We get the rain stuff done in dramatic dumps and then get back to absorbing the vitamin D. The last two winters were very dry hence the phenomenal drought we were in but here's hoping this is a wet one to fill the lakes again and give us some buffer for the year ahead. 

Joel's parents drove down here as soon as the border opened to leisure travel to vaccinated guests. Our first family visitors in two years! There was much feasting and reading of stories with these bigger boys. They got their first fishing rods from grandpa and did a few fishing trips to Lake Lagunitas. 

2021 is wrapping up! Here's what would have gone into a Christmas letter had I any time to write one and get it in the mail this year. 

The boys have been in their new school now for 4 months. A is 8 1/2 and in third grade now. He is enrolled in a wilderness education program and an enriched math program and now that he's outside the Waldorf curriculum is catching up on lost time on everything. C just turned 6 and is reading everything he can get his hands on, and is eager to start skateboarding lessons in January. Both are in piano but they both are more interested in how the piano works and the music theory than actually playing music (who are these humans?) 

They both spend every moment while they are at home sketching machines, wiring circuits, programming robots to do things, or building lego. A is dead set on attending MIT to study robotics. C is so far angling for mechanical engineering. They have big plans. Needless to say, it was time to move them from the  into this inquiry-led program this year. I'm not hearing moaning anymore about everything being too slow or boring. I think we'll be well placed here for a few years yet. 

My work drastically changed this fall as I rebranded my solo self-named operation to TreeHouse and began to be known as a design group. We got really busy in October and are tapering off nicely heading into the holidays. Lots of branding work as well as some projects for me with returning clients and local government. I was featured in a book about women in leadership, which was deeply flattering and quite unexpected. 

Joel's company, VIM, has begun to reap what they sowed so doggedly over the past three years. The sacrifices,  and sleepless nights are turning into deals and partnerships with household name brands. Not many start-ups rose out of the pandemic hiring and growing. But here we are. 

We are heading back to Canada by car in a few days. Our first time back since Christmas 2019. We're keeping it small and safe, a week with Joel's parents and then a week with mine. A Home Exchange family is heading here to keep watch over cat and home. 

Whatever 2022 brings, lets hope it brings healing, good health, and lots of aha moments.

What We Did This Summer

 The Summer began with this burst of optimism as vaccination rates soared into the 90%s here. A few close friends we've only seen for socially distanced cocktails in the yard all year came in for a hug. I went away for a night with a close friend and stayed in a hotel and dined in style in Sonoma (though still avoiding indoors and crowds). We drank champagne and toasted our new year ahead. 

Look how happy!

After a massage and a walk through the gardens at Cornerstone I was feeling pretty great. The following week our pod family gave us a night away for father's day. Joel and I stayed in the legendary Olema House Inn and again enjoyed a patio dinner and once the restaurant cleared out late that night, we came in to enjoy a nightcap with the place to ourselves. Tiny steps toward normal. 

And somehow, we managed to take the leap of faith and send the boys to school last week. 

The Lost Birthdays

 

A couple of days before the beginning of lockdown in 2020 we were supposed to be hosting a 7th Birthday for A at the Lego play space near us. One by one all our guests had rescinded their RSVPs. We cancelled the party much to his disappointment but he is an incurable optimist and he rallied that day and enjoyed his gifts and cake and watched a movie with his friends online. As the year went on, every other kid had a COVID era birthday without the party or trip to the movies. Yesterday we had our very first gathering outside the pod with two families who we haven't seen in ages, we decided to celebrate all the kids birthdays. We sang, they had goodie bags and we hope they enjoyed a little piece of optimism of all that is to come this year. 

The Road To Normal

Things are rapidly changing in California now that counties like ours have inched past 80% vaccination in the 16+ age group. People (mostly boomers who are finished their second doses) are out on the streets, or sitting at outdoor cafes looking like they are with someone from outside their household and it's safe for them to do that - wow! Our numbers are down into very low digits for daily new cases. The CDC just announced that fully vaccinated adults don't need to mask outdoors anymore, unless they are in a crowd. It's so different to see that same group of seniors who were our most dedicated maskers now smiling and unmasked. In a couple of weeks we'll be far enough past our second shots to join the outdoor group getting rid of the 'ol masks tan lines (OK I don't tan but apparently mask tan lines were a thing). 

We went on a road trip to visit Joshua Tree National Park a few weeks ago and were invited to visit dear friends in Palm Springs on the way. In their pod, most are fully vaccinated and one person just partially vaccinated. Meanwhile we were partially vaccinated and kids are not vaccinated. It was tricky to navigate but we read a bunch of articles with epidemiologists laying out safe scenarios and we followed these new protocols. Despite the careful planning, it felt like a natural homecoming and a bit surreal. Just seeing our friend's faces and having a family catch-up. What a dream. 

Our next challenge for our pod all getting vaccinated is, how do we open up and with whom and how fast? We've had a lot of discussions so far. I think our priority is to each choose 2 families with fully vaccinated adults we would like to reconnect with and just stay at that level of open-ness for awhile. Keep kids masking and stay outdoors but it's a huge step toward being social again. There are things our group is definitely not going to do yet like eating inside a restaurant or going to an indoor gym. Apparently Dr Fauci is saying he also is not doing those things so we're not that unusual I think. 

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.