I thought that was a really clever subject line. School has started, temperatures are finally dropping. The corona rates are staying low, we’re down to around 2% positive on the test rates. For our county, that is really good news. We’re still not going out much, but we’ve taken the kids on a few errands on the weekends. We all have cute masks now (the kids have animal faces, I have Harry Potter and Schitt’s Creek, Joe has a Foo Fighters mask). It seems like they’ll be a regular part of life now if we go out. We make sure the kids don’t touch anything, and we wash our hands as soon as we get home.
School started a few weeks ago. Virginia got a chromebook from her school, it works great. She has two websites she goes to for assignments, and uses Zoom for meetings. Virginia goes on at 9 am, shes does a great job paying attention. I usually sit next to her and read, and when the teacher is done I help her turn in her assignments. Some days it goes better than others. Virginia is a trooper, but I’m not the most patient. Virginia’s teacher is great though, I think we got pretty lucky!
Luke hangs out upstairs while Virginia does her work. I bought him a few workbooks that we do occasionally, and I got an animal matching game that he likes to play. He was supposed to start speech therapy soon, but the school district contacted me and told me there is a special preschool class for kids with speech needs. There are 8 kids in the class, with one regular teacher and one speech therapist teaching. It sounds like a perfect fit for Luke! It starts on Monday, they’ll do hour long zooms four times a week. When school goes back in person, it’s two and a half hours four times a week.
There have been a bunch of forest fires all over the West coast for the past few weeks. Whole towns in Oregon had to be evacuated. There is a running joke that 2020 just keeps trying to outdo itself. So on top of us having to stay home to avoid corona, the smoke has become horrible and we have to stay inside. The air quality is really unhealthy. The kids miss playing outside, but we are lucky that we have a great big play room! It could be worse. We’re lucky the fires never actually got close to us.
Joe and I have really been sucked into the Peloton and working out. Joe always outdoes me on miles, but I’m close to catching him. One day. I’ve started alternating days on bike with yoga. I’m sore all the time, but I guess it’s a good thing. I’ve been baking a lot, so I have to offset all I’m eating!
Joe never looks forward to my “fall” baking, but I love it! I’ve made an apple cider pound cake, it wasn’t super apple-y, but it was delicious. I made a molasses upside down pear cake, it looked good but I actually don’t like pears. I’ve been working on a sourdough starter for weeks now, my first loaf was a total failure. My second loaf turned out pretty good! It was small, but really tasty!
I can’t remember if I’ve written about this on here, but Rebecca has been in jail since the end of July. She was arrested multiple times, mostly for drug charges, but apparently also for attempted robbery. Who knows. She was off the deep end. She went before a judge and he sentenced her to a year. Patrick had the same charges, but because he’s a “Fox” he got off with probation. Anywho, she’s been calling mom every few days. She seems to be okay. She still hasn’t apologized or said she’s seen the light or anything like that. I wrote her a letter and gave her my number, in case she wanted someone else to talk to. I didn’t say anything mean or rude in the letter, but I honestly don’t even know how to talk to her. I wasn’t even sure if she knew we lived in WA again, but I didn’t want to sound braggy talking about our new house. It’s a weird thing, for sure.
Rachel's Red Kitchen 