quarantine chronicles, week 11

quarantine had fallen almost entirely out of the vocabulary by week 11. memorial day weekend arrived, and things were starting to slowly re-open, and public health has been assuring us that small groups spending time in the out of doors are not a high risk, and despite the cancelled camping trip for david's annual big birthday party, we certainly had plenty to do.

it almost feels like the week count should shift to "moving house chronicles" because this would be officially week 2.

and then in the middle of all of the pandemic, the moving, the end of school year on campus and for our children---suddenly the world erupted with another reminder of racism and brutality when the video of george floyd's murder circulated, and everyone got mad. now it almost feels like the blog week count could shift to "when more people got mad about racism" because this 11th week of quarantine and 2nd week of moving house was also officially the first week of nationwide anger. it was a week of protests, rioting, and maybe maybe waking and learning and changing are all happen

2020 has been an electric year. there is no doubt.

here in our tiny world, we received acceptance of our offer to buy the new house on tuesday, we saw friends with more regularity than we have since march 14, and we shifted into high gear on readying the house for sale by thursday.

while we weren't painting and sanding and pressure washing and cleaning, we snuck in time to meet some very precious new neighbors,


order pastries from a favorite spot and eat them on the capitol square on a saturday morning, pretending we were at the farmer's market,


and we kept an eye on our growing baby birds.


the asparagus crown i planted a few weeks ago (planted when i believed i'd be in this house long enough to harvest the asparagus in two years), is growing!


we were pretty busy, obviously, so sometimes we had to eat our sandwiches in the shower.

this week's hike took us to festge park, where there were tons of dead trees but no morels, but cheery children and good views and very very robust wildflower blooms. it was a gorgeous tuesday morning. 

james also found time to draw this shocking nightmare. so proud.

back at home, ramona got in on the cleaning vibe, and washed the car including interior vacuum. SO necessary.  

david cleaned up the grossest roof in town (that's the roof over our leaky garage),

and he finished the terrace rain garden.  

i cleaned and straightened and shooed the kids away until the house was neat enough to photograph, and then i took a million pictures and made a website to sell the house. and while photographing the house, i feel deeper in love with it, and my grief at parting with the house worsened. it is so magical here.

i worked from home a lot this week trying to sneak in house jobs between patient calls. this little office mate of mine was very sleepy, but very quiet. i think his presence is HIPPA compliant.

here is a gross job i snuck in between work moments: power washing this gross patio, slick with years of lichen and moss. i cannot believe how different and good it looked when we finished.

the house projects and website came along so quickly that we decided to just get it up for sale ASAP so we shared the word to all we knew in the 'hood, and plopped 2 plastic signs in the yard.

we moved the yard sofa to a friend's house. i don't think it was helping the curb appeal.

and then we sent the kids to mormor and morfar's house, where their cousins were already visiting, and the kids had the time of their life while they were out of our way. without the kids, we had late dinner outdoors, and managed to schedule 8 showings on saturday. it was exhausting, but it worked. we had 4 offers to buy after all those showings!