Pandemic, Week 9 (Crappy Birthday)

This week the world hit 4.7 million COVID-19 cases and 311,000 deaths. Growth in U.S. cases seemed to slow this week with a total of 1.5 million cases and 90,000 deaths. That might change, though, since a number of states re-opened this week, including Wisconsin, who's supreme court over-ruled their governor's stay-at-home order. Senator Rand Paul told Dr. Anthony Fauci during a hearing that [Fauci] wasn't the "end-all" of coronavirus decisions. The President asked Lindsay Graham to force President Obama to testify about the Russian investigation – Graham demurred. Instead, President Obama gave a virtual commencement speech for all the classes of 2020.

It was a big week for us. Sunday was Mother's Day which was celebrated with green french toast for brunch (pandemic substitutes keep life interesting...) followed by an amazing crab stuffed flounder for dinner. We moved our pub quiz to Monday to accommodate birthday celebrations – and were killing it until a Mission Impossible question proved impossible for us. On Tuesday I had an early birthday/fancy dress zoom call with my college roommates. Wednesday we celebrated my actual birthday with flowers, a family zoom call with ice cream cake and wine followed by dinner from Rose's Luxury and cocktails (arguable one too many). Thursday we recovered (and finished Nora's class graduation slideshow), Friday we had a zoom call to celebrate our friend Megan's birthday, and Saturday we made strawberry-rhubarb pie and then snuck up to Maryland (which had lifted most of its restrictions) for a belated dual birthday celebration/family reunion at Katherine and Lee's.

It was also a big week for the kids. Owen's teachers started uploading grades for the final term, which prompted our discovery Owen hadn't turned in (or in many case even started) most of his assignments since April. He's now relegated to the dining room table during school hours so we can better monitor how he spends his time. It made for a rough few days, which were brightened by two deliveries from his teachers. First, Mr. Simmons dropped off Owen's second cello which Owen had left at school, thinking that the quarantine would only be for a few days (we were so naive..) and that we've been trying to reclaim for months. Second, Ms. Perguson stopped by all the eighth grade drama student's houses to present them with a gift commemorating their time at Stuart and reminding them that they are always welcome there.

Nora (mostly) finished her science project, recorded her "minute" for fifth grade graduation, and starred as a cow (and Romeo's mother) in this week's podcast, The Tale of Juliet and Romeo and Romeo-o. She also helped decorate her hand-me-down new bike and rediscovered her love of crafts.

But most importantly, Allen survived all the Mother's Day and birthday celebrations, and even managed to make them anything but crappy.



(To see all of this weeks pictures, click here.)