A Waiting Game

The earthquake retrofit is pretty much done. Here’s the footprint of my house, with the green representing already reinforced parts, and the red the newly done stuff. 

The back part of the basement, then and now:

Up until a few days ago, my keyboard was acting up so that every keystroke lagged behind by almost a second, driving me insane. I test-typed a sentence to evaluate the situation so I could report details to Molly (who later fixed it for me):

four score and sevenlk yeaers ago our foregtharet brough forth to this continent a new nation conceiced in livebery and decidated to the propositoin…

Not entirely the fault of the keyboard, I have to admit. I can type fairly fast, but my accuracy is challenged. As I recall from typing class 45 years ago, one measures words-per-minute by subtracting 10 words for every typo. By that calculation, I type negative-140 wpm.

I took Ember to Mr. Mopp’s toy store, a Berkeley institution, last weekend to spend her $3.83 credit. She wanted to use her allowance money for a huge plastic sword. I discouraged this, envisioning the energetic child racing around the house and flashing its blade in my face. Nonetheless, I finally relented, provided she promise to keep it in her room and far away from me. “Or,” she argued, “you could get a shield.” 

In the end she opted for a little box of rocks, while I racked up a big tab for a new jigsaw and more.

For my birthday, Lulu has already gotten my present, which was extravagant. I am spoiled. 

In my attempt to learn how to use it, I’ve been making about three lattés a day. Since one can’t just dispose of failed espresso attempts, my caffeine levels have skyrocketed. Last weekend, after pounding down my third bean beverage, Ember informed me I was talking very fast. (She also keeps telling me I talk loudly, which I guess is possible, because old and deaf people do that, but I never knew I was in that number, so now I’m self-conscious.) The next day, before I began to sip my third mug, I had the foresight to warn Ember that I’d likely be talking fast in a minute. “You already are,” she corrected me.

Have you ever tried the game Sedecordle? It’s Wordle on steroids, with sixteen answers to solve for. Usually I get only thirteen or fourteen correct and then run out of turns. But I’m proud to announce that I have finally joined an elite group, having—just this once—nailed all 16 in only 18 attempts.

A few nights ago we got to see just a wee bit of the Blood Moon after eclipse totality. Here’s Ember’s picture before the fog obscured it:

Hard to believe Ember is nearly done with her fourth-grade year here. Yesterday her class went on a field trip to Mission Sonoma, about an hour’s drive away. Because I’m a worrier, I didn’t feel comfortable having a stranger transport and monitor my beloved child, so I jumped through all kinds of hoops to get approved to be a chauffeur and chaperone. I was rather ill-at-ease with the idea of hauling extra kids in my car during Covid times (and also of having to manage said extra kids), but hoped for the best. I picked up my three from school, got them masked (only Ember had a high-quality one), strapped in and headed off. I had to keep the windows closed most of the time since the air noise from lowered windows is unbearable on the freeway. As we beebopped down the road, the three pre-teens listened to pop music on one girl’s cellphone and sang cheerily along with the endless refrain: “Dream of Californication…”

One of the planned activities at the mission was a lasso demonstration. The parks service docent showed the kids how to hold and throw the rope. But she was doing it all wrong. I know from cowboy skills because I used to be a good roper at summer camp in Wyoming when I was 12, when I had to lasso my chosen horse every morning. I even won a contest once in a camp rodeo (by sheer luck, but still). On observing the docent’s atrocious technique, I whispered to Ember about my long-ago abilities, unwittingly prompting her and her pals to urge me to give it a go. I demurred. But after all the kids had a try, the docent asked for adult volunteers and I found myself stepping forward. Nervous, not wanting to let down my granddaughter or to be the focus of attention, I picked up the lasso and tried to untangle it. That would have taken too long, so I just whipped the sloppy loop over my head a few times and let it fly. It landed on the horn of the plastic steer head I was aiming for and knocked it over. I didn’t realize it then, but according to a pleased Ember, all the kids cheered. One dad came over to me and remarked that I looked as though I knew what I was doing. Before I could stop myself, I heard myself boasting, “Well, I used to be a lasso champion.” A single win 55 years ago qualifies, right? And then a tiny boy came over and said, “That was so cool. You’re really good at that!” I can’t tell you how happy that made me—the elderly grandmother squarely on the outside of the social network of parents there—to be a momentary source of pride for Ember, who is usually embarrassed by me when her friends criticize things like my early dinners and bedtimes and my refusal to let her walk to school alone.

Minutes after my impressive performance, one of my little passengers became extremely lethargic and complained of a bad headache. On the long walk from the mission to General Vallejo’s house, I struggled to motivate her to keep up, but we were so far behind that I feared losing the group, since I had no idea where we were going.

The health of my little charge didn’t improve over the next four hours, and I finally asked her if she had any other symptoms, such as a sore throat. Why, yes, she did, she acknowledged—and had had for two days, it turns out. Uh… what??

While she lay on the floor of the museum with her backpack for a pillow, Ember and another buddy loyally by her side, the docent asked the other kids how adobe bricks were made. One child’s hand shot up. “Cow poop!” he eagerly volunteered. The docent asked for additional guesses. “Straw,” one kid said. “Cow poop,” said the first. “Hay,” said another. “Cow poop,” said the first. And so on.

Last stop was the park, where the kids ran and ate lunch and ran and played some more. Except of course my ailing passenger, now asleep on a blanket under the trees. When it was time to make our way home, there was nothing to be done for it but for the four of us to pile into my Subaru and spend another hour enclosed in an airtight box, with her crashed out in the back seat. Perhaps I should have been kind and let her sleep in the shade, leaving her with a little bus money?

Half an hour after we got home my phone dinged with a text from her mom: Yup, Covid-positive.

I’ve noticed two kinds of people in the last two-plus years: those who, when they get sick, assume it’s Covid and take precautions accordingly, and those who assume it’s merely a cold and carry on as usual. I am not suggesting this family is necessarily the latter type, since I don’t know what went down, but damn.

All we can do now is wait and see. I’m guessing the odds are against us. I’ve had to suppress my anxiety in order to reassure Em that everything will be alright, whether we get sick or not. The irony is that I’ve been extremely cautious for so long—to the bafflement of some of my friends, even. But I’ve noted here before that it’ll likely come for most everyone eventually. Stay tuned.

This just in: Molly’s friend Sarah, a veterinarian and all-round lovely person, rescued an ailing kitten, barely six-weeks old, from euthanasia a few days ago and wanted to find a temporary home for him. Ember has long hoped to foster a cat and we’ve been on a waiting list with one organization since January. Spur-of-the-moment, I agreed to take in the teeny thing. Em will, I hope, be ecstatic. He needs to be bottle-fed four times a day, which is manageable as long as we don’t get Covid. Sarah has said that if we do get sick, she’ll come take him off our hands. 

Later: Em has now met the kitty. When I told her about our need to feed him like a baby, she wasn’t happy. “Aw, I didn’t want a cat we have to bottle-feed.” Half an hour later, though, she was (and remains) enamored, already worrying about when we return him to Sarah, which will be in three weeks’ time if all goes well.