May 31, 2020

While we were in the woods today, a police officer asked us to leave the area. I wonder if that has to do with what’s unfolding tonight. There’s a curfew here and in Chicago. 

Pictures from the woods.

May 30, 2020

Our screen-free Saturday trial went well (waking through the afternoon). I hope it’s a new tradition. So there aren't any photos from today. Here’s one from May 30th six years ago.

May 29, 2020

Today we had the last teacher conferences. School ends soon.

May 26, 2020

Halina made Buttercup’s roomy non-wire cage even more roomy by connecting it to Maple’s old bin with a plastic tube. She gave him sand and soil areas in the new bin. He still gets paper bedding and wood shavings in the other one. 

Creating more space for him is something she’s been wanting to do for a long time and it must feel good to accomplish it.

May 25, 2020

Some portraits.

May 24, 2020

Today was straight up summer. 82 degrees at 7pm. A gentle breeze. Lots of porch time for us. Hard to do the right thing and go in for dinner, it was so nice out.

Luke saw a snake on the road when he was scootering around. It raised its head from its coil and looked at him, he said. A moment later a car ran over the snake. He's talked about it many times since, and took each of us to see it. Processing, I imagine, that the world can have this in it. This — I don’t want to say cruelty — maybe enormous and quiet bad luck. Later, he told me he named the snake Stevie.

May 23, 2020

Halina and I saw a giant crack of lightening on our walk today. It split across the sky, cloud to cloud, intensely bright, with a edge of gray along its jagged line. You could feel it, too, a pressure. And smell it. A tang. Thunder came immediately.

Just an hour before, we'd been out in the sunshine gardening. Now we hustled back home and took shelter on our front porch. First summer-feeling storm and lots of porch-sitting going on up and down our street.

With the rain pouring down, Halina worked on her letters. She's writing a letter to each kindergartener at her school and recently started joining their Wednesday Zoom calls, too.

It must be hard, she observed. Kindergarten via Zoom. Unlike her grade, they aren't alone on the calls. Parents are with them. Sometimes just a set of hands gently sliding a chair back into the frame.

Halina and I stayed up late sewing masks tonight. She made the first one by herself, finding the pattern, cutting, pinning, ironing and using the sewing machine on her own. Which seems like a rite of passage.

Tomorrow night she promises to go to bed on time because I, at long last, have finished The Dutch House. We want to read more, so we've each decided to give the other a gift of some sort when we finish a book. Her bedtime is mine.

May 22, 2020

Somersaults, cartwheels, and head and handstands at dusk in the newly overgrown backyard. Throwing Cinnamon a toy and then laying down like him, belly in the grass, getting a head pat. Looking for fireflies and seeing none. Screen door slapping as dark descends. First mosquito bites.

Farm camp, last year. Luke is signed up again this June. Zoom meeting today with parents and staff. How they plan to run camp with masks and social distancing and cohorts, sanitizing, tents on beds. We need to decide by June first.

Halina got selected as a counselor-in-training at the SPCA in Oakland, along with her best friend. Same week in June as farm camp.

Are all these things canceled for us, we're wondering.

May 21, 2020

Visited goats in Austin today.