Playing Catch Up

ONCE UPON A TIME: I used to blog darn near every night. I chronicled our travels, our home and school projects, our everything! And then ... COVID. What a disruptive change that made in our daily routines. Travel all but stopped. Our non-stop field trips dwindled down to nothing. The kids' college classes were all online. It was a different way of life, and it changed our ebb and flow in so many ways. 

However, in recent months, things have started edging back toward the familiar. We're going to concerts and ballgames, baking cakes for kids in homeless shelters and are back to serving in person at Teen Feed. The kids each have at least one in-person class weekly.  We had a dinner party last night. You know, normal stuff!

Given this, I'm going to make an effort to get back in the habit of blogging. There are stories to tell and photos to share. Wish me luck!

NUMBER 19: Back in April, CJ turned 19. The birthday started off normally, with us going to the diner at Easy Street, one of Seattle's best record stores, for breakfast. 

For CJ's special day, an old, familiar face made a return - the Sharpie Shar-pei. Some of you may remember that for a long while there, CJ was *obsessed* with Shar-pei. During this phase, Annabelle drew many a Shar-pei cartoon for him. This year, she drew the Shar-pei on one of CJ's presents.

And yes, he is saying, "Have a Birthday" instead of "Happy Birthday" on purpose, for you see, the Shar-pei isn't the friendliest of animals. He's quite aloof, actually.

While we were waiting for our food, CJ went outside a couple of times to blow his stuffy nose. He *always* has a stuffy nose in the morning, thanks to allergies. But as time went on, it seemed to be escalating. And then he said his breakfast didn't taste that good, which is a highly unusual thing for CJ to say. I started to suspect the worst. When we got home, we opened one of our COVID home tests and administered it to CJ. Much to our shock and dismay, it came back positive. Ugh! Obviously, we shouldn't have left home that morning, but hindsight is 20/20.

Despite CJ always masking at work and working mostly outdoors, he still managed to get the highly contagious strain of COVID that is going around. Darn it! He immediately notified work and school, and began isolating. Naturally, the rest of us felt like we were living on borrowed time, and sure enough, two days later I came down with it. It hit me at about 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning - a Saturday we had to make and serve 55 meals at Teen Feed! This was quite the huge, "Oh no!" 

The other family who was supposed to help that night was also hit by COVID. So that's a double, "Oh no!"

I stayed up from 2 a.m. until about 8 a.m. getting stuff ready for Teen Feed, and making three of the longest, most detailed TO DO lists you can imagine - one each for Kennedy, Christian and Annabelle, who were all COVID negative. Those three handled prepping, boxing and serving ALL of those meals by themselves. What an effort!

Our theme for April was Back to the Ballpark. 

From the get-go, I wanted to offer foot long hot dogs as our main entree. I spent hours and hours trying to source/buy them and ran into dead ends at every turn. Finally, I sent a message to the Seattle Mariners' general 'contact us' mailbox via their website, asking where I could buy hot dogs for our dinner.

Just a day later, I was shocked and thrilled to receive an email from Centerplate/Sodexho telling me where to get the coveted dogs: From them, for free!!!

They also donated all of the buns and dozens of bags of peanuts. Awesome!

Annabelle, Kennedy and Christian were our dinner service MVPs. The three of them managed the whole works, even when dealt a major curve ball in the form of a non-functioning stove. Way to go!

All in all, another fun and filling Teen Feed service made possible by a great team!

Gratefully,

Kristine

P.S. The Mariners clobbered the Kansas City Royals 13-7 on the night of our service, and currently are in first place in the AL West. This is our year, I'm telling you!

We had coney sauce and warm cheese to go with, if guests wanted. There was also sauerkraut and diced onion available. Sides were super big soft pretzels, and savory garlic fries. We had to offer something on the healthier side, so there were carrots and sweet peas (and ranch).

Sweet stadium treats took on many forms. There were the requisite Red Vines and a whole bunch of better-than-Cracker Jack flavored popcorn. And when I saw barrels of cotton candy puffs at a store this week, I just couldn't resist adding those to the mix.

Diners finished every drop of raspberry and regular lemonade we had on hand. We were surprised by how big of a hit that was, and will remember to serve it again some day. As an added bonus, Centerplate donated dozens upon dozens of big bags of peanuts to round out the baseball inspired meal. 

We brought some decorations, including a grass tablecloth, and some bobbleheads, to help decorate the buffet line.

Annabelle reported, "They love the fries and dogs!" via text, which I read while sitting in my basement, feeling COVID-y and hoping all was going well for them. 

A couple days after the Teen Feed dinner, Christian became COVID +, and Annabelle followed two days after that. Interestingly, the severity of our cases coincided with the order in which we got it. CJ was first and worst, Annabelle was last and almost asymptomatic.

A month plus later, we're mostly over it, but CJ still has a nagging cough, unfortunately.