david and marta's bloggy blog

david and marta's bloggy blog
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Monday, June 1, 2020

quarantine chronicles, week 9

week 9 of quarantine, and everyone was getting quarantine fatigue, and people all over the country started planning protests to the shut down while numbers of infection kept climbing. it was starting to feel weird, and tense, but we stayed on track in an effort to minimize any risk of exposure to ourselves and around us. we celebrated mothers day with just the 4 of us, right here at home. we got ourselves all set for another week of school at home, work at home, and the usual quiet, go-nowhere, do-nothing lifestyle.

but then on monday may 10th, the day after mother's day, our personal lives had a little earthquake, and it all changed.

the man we wrote a letter to 3 or 4 years ago finally replied. our first letter to him said "if you'd ever like to sell your house on sherman on the lake, we'd be interested" and he never responded, so we put moving out of mind and proceeded with a big basement renovation and the plans for a garage/driveway renovation. the monday morning he called happened to be the same morning that we received the final contract in our inbox, to sign and start our construction project. auspicious, no?

what did we do? well, BEFORE we knew about the possible sudden unexpected house situation, we celebrated mother's day with scones (lemon AND blueberry!),



and giant homemade presents, filled with hours of painstakingly created child love notes,


including a note that ramona wore on her own chest.


these two goofball showed their stuffed puppy the progress on the new rain garden.


we picked a bunch of the backyard rhubarb and made a pie (it was delicious!)

we took the kids on a run around lake monona--my favorite run in town--and talked a lot of ahmaud arbery. 

james discovered that his hair can stand on end with just a little coaxing from a towel.

aretha discovered that the modem is warm and cozy for naps.

we took a beautiful family hike to hemlock draw state natural area and had a great time. there were streams to wade in, fallen trees to climb over, and rocks to scramble upon. total super find.

a project deemed necessary prior to finding out about a possible move started when our neighbor mark came over the rebuild our front steps, which were peeling and chipping and rotting and in a general state of dilapitated disrepair. he made quick work of the project, and the only real negative of the project what the noise he caused that bothered our virtual piano recital video productions in the house and frightened our local front door mother robin over the front light. 

buy bye, gross rotten wood.

homeschool involved puzzles and fort building this week,

as well as homemade mancala, geography, art art art art art art, and a successful group project report on india. 

i made homemade brat buns from sourdough, and they were so so good.

we also drove all over the county to deliver surprise front yard signs to teachers' houses for teacher appreciation week....which was the week prior, but the signs were a little delayed because of COVID..... this really was a highlight of the week. 

you know what? this was actually a hugely awesome week, in retrospect. the kids also decided to camp out by themselves, set up camp by themselves, and for the first time ever, actually made it all the way through the night in the backyard tent all.by.them.selves. 

we gave away snowball and her sister num-num, which were the stumms' chickens and only stayed with us for a few months while a more eager home was found. adios, snowball, mi amiga.

so during allll this whole long wonderful week, david and i were completely distracted by one thought: now what?

this house that is suddenly ours if we want it, this house on the lakeshore which has always been a dream, in a pre-market easy deal for more than we'd like to spend in a super tight housing market where lakeshore homes come up rarely and always go to the highest bidder (read: never gonna be us).  at first, i said we should look at this, at minimum, but david said it seemed like a waster of time. then we thought about it more, and we scheduled a tour, and then i was of the "absolutely not" mind, when david became more of the "i don't know, let's be open minded" and then we toured the house and i was like "ugh NO WAY that is going to be so much work" but david said let's do it. 

here's the house.

and here we are, after the tour, just sitting up on the lifeguard chair at the beach, watching the sunset, listening to the kids tell all their stories and jokes while david and i just quietly sat and contemplated it alllllllllll. like, just how good i have it with these people, in this place, at this time, when it is so bad in so many places for so many people. 

1 comment:

a4anna said...

Such a great telling and wow for the house!!
Good luck, it'll be awesome ... and some hard work I suspect ;-)