News and Notes, Forced Fall Family Fun Edition

Another week down.  I guess it was an interesting one.  Mostly because I ended up getting a COVID test on Wednesday.  I came down with a cold on Monday night.  It was mostly just some post-nasal drip and some fuzzy-headed congestion.  By Tuesday I had some body aches.  Nothing crazy, but enough to make me uncomfortable at my desk all day.  I was functional, and under any other circumstances it was just a simple cold, but under pandemic circumstances, it was worrisome.  After all, we went to a picnic at my cousin's last weekend, and we probably had a little more indoor time than would have been ideal.  But then again, Carter had a short-lived cold last week and sneezed all over everything (because he did it about a thousand times over the course of a day), so it wasn't a stretch that I just caught his.  But then a friend of mine knew someone whose kid had sniffles for two days and tested positive, so that really made me wonder if it was possible Carter had it and passed it along.  Either way, with two kids in school and a handful of activities on tap, I wanted to make sure I wasn't passing along something I wasn't expecting.  

The test process was fine.  It took a little bit of figuring out that I was best off going to the local community college for free state testing.  I wanted whatever was fastest, and while it seemed like the community college was quick enough, I still checked in with my doctor.  They initially recommended an urgent care, but that would involve paying an urgent care co-pay (which on a high deductible plan is obscene) so the free test it was!  It was a drive-up thing, and pretty much you just made an appointment ahead of time, showed up, put your ID in your window, and drove through with the windows up.  They found your paperwork and stuck it in a crack of the car hood (since it was pouring and the wipers were in service), sent you into one of two lines, and you drove into a semi-permanent structure in the parking lot.  They review your paperwork (which you approve through a closed window), and you eventually pull up, lower your window, pull your mask under your nose, and get a swab to the brain.  I thought I'd be OK since I had a lot of time with a scope up my nose last fall during my sinus infection from hell.  But no, the 7-10 seconds of swabbing was really uncomfortable.  My eye watered for a solid minute afterward.  After that, the wait was on.  I checked the portal (and my email) a lot over the next day, and finally my result showed up after 11pm on Thursday.  Luckily, it was negative.  So, just a cold and back to life as usual.  Much ado about nothing...but better safe than sorry.

What else is new...?  Not much, I guess.  Mostly we're just counting down the days to the election, dealing with subpar weather, and surviving the usual mayhem the kids throw at us.  The fights have been on the rise lately despite Jacob promising he'd try to be nicer at our last therapy session.  Even when we call him out on it, he just doesn't seem to care, which is discouraging.  So, in the meantime, they find every possible way to annoy the heck out of each other.  At least they're separated all day, so at least we get that break.

Carter's home schooling has gotten in a bit of a better groove, but it still takes a lot of time to walk him through every assignment and his focus is crap.  We really need to get him evaluated.  I'll be interested to hear what his teacher has to say about him during our parent-teacher conference this week.  On one hand he seems to do his in-school work well and his teacher doesn't seem to have any specific beefs that come through on video calls (and trust me, she'd call stuff out if she could--she's not afraid to shame a bit if it's motivating), but his focus at home is so abysmal that I can't imagine that it doesn't come through a bit at school.  I want to get a seat belt and strap him into his chair just so he has a physical reminder he shouldn't get up.  He ran laps about a dozen times behind me during my work call the other day (much to my co-workers' amusement...and amazement), even though he was supposed to be doing his math.  It's exhausting.  So if she mentions anything (and probably even if she doesn't), I feel like we need to get him checked, just so we know what we're dealing with.  I know remote school is hard for even typical kids, but this is nearly impossible.  We're managing through the tag team, but Craig is likely going to be spending more time at work soon, so who knows how that's going to work out.  Not well for my work, I'd guess.  I desperately wish they could up the number of days of in-school now that we know infections aren't exactly running rampant, but I also know that distancing isn't really possible that way, and closer contact could mean a higher likelihood of exposure.  Plus, the holidays are coming and that could get dicey.  Ugh, the holidays...don't even get me started.  Thanksgiving is one month from tomorrow and Christmas is two months from today.  And I have no idea what we're going to do about either.

After our last fun fall outing, Carter was being super affectionate and sweet.  Part of it is probably that he loved getting back on a playground and getting a little one-on-one treatment, and part of it was probably that I finally downloaded Roblox for him.  One night he randomly climbed on my lap while he was playing and sat there.  While it was a bit awkward and I essentially only had one functional hand, I had to document it because I know these moments aren't going to last much longer.  He's finally hit 50 pounds and I laughed this morning when we went through his overflowing pants drawer and stripped out about five pairs that were fine in the spring but now at least an inch too short!

We had a pretty miserable weather week with a ton of rain, and I can definitely tell the leaves are on their way out.  It makes me sad to see that the bright reds are disappearing and more and more trees are already stripped.  I like fall...in September and October.  I love cider, donuts, pumpkin patches, apple pies, pumpkin spice, fall leaves, my glass pumpkins, my jeans, more comfortable weather, and to some degree, Halloween (it's fun, it just induces stress most years).  But once Halloween is over, it's often the equivalent of the first couple weeks of January when the Christmas sparkle fades--in the words of one of my favorite comics, "a cold, gray, bucket of suck."  But instead of cold, gray January, it's cold, brown November, when all the golden hues fade into early darkness and we have a long three-plus weeks of blah until Thanksgiving, just so we can eat turkey and get started on Christmas.  And who knows what all of that looks like this year.  I forced myself outside in the cold yesterday and today to clean up my yard a bit.  All that's left of the garden is the still-thriving tomatoes (and a lot of rotten ones that were out of reach in the mass of greenery).  I pulled a bunch of weedy junk out of the way back (so maybe it won't re-seed itself as much) and did another phase of weed whacking to try to clear out all the overgrowth back to the rock wall that was visible when we first moved in.  It's a battle with all the blackberry vines, but I'm going to keep trying!  While I was out there, I enjoyed what's left of the fall color. 

The neighbor's trees are so pretty.  They were skewing more red, but I think the red leaves fell off and the rest turned an orangey-yellow.

This is the way back that I'm working on.  Unfortunately the pretty reds are invasive trees that spread like crazy.  You can see off to the right where there's an area in front that's flatter than all the rest of the junk in the foreground.  The right is mostly up to the rocks.  I did another huge section today, so hopefully we'll be good to go in the spring.  Oh, and remains of a dead skunk are still in my way because I have no idea what to do with them.

Speaking of those last gasps of fall, we actually had a last gasp of summer on Friday.  It hit 80 degrees!  Carter had a half day of school, and I would have loved to make the most of it, but sadly I had a lot of work to do and my boss was off, which made taking off harder.  But I decided that I was going to cut out a little early and we should try to hit up a new pumpkin patch in the late afternoon-early evening hours.  I'd been seeing cool pictures from one across town, and with a gorgeous day and a little extra time to work with, I wanted to give it a shot.  Of course, between the two kids I was practically dragging them kicking and screaming.  Carter flip-flopped about wanting to go a couple times, and Jacob was refusing (which I was going to allow him to after his lack of enjoyment at Stokoe).  We almost didn't go after Carter said no again, but then Jacob changed his mind (likely because I was ticked off), and we all ended up leaving a little after 4pm.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but it ended up being a nice little visit (aside from Jacob's constant complaining).  As we got our bearings, we checked out some chickens.  There were some gorgeous feather patterns, but this fluffy, fuzzy one cracked me up.

We should have looked for a pumpkin first because there was a line to wait in to get into the store, which is where you paid for pumpkins and bought tickets for the hayride.  But we planned badly and didn't do that, and by the time we were done there was no way we were waiting again to pay for a pumpkin...so Wegmans it is!  Anyway, we got in line to go into the store and once we were in there we scooped up half a dozen donuts, two giant cookies, and a half dozen gluten-free cookies.  We got our hayride tickets, and headed for that line, but on the way (while Craig was dropping off the baked goods at the van), we had this photo op!

I happened to run into a friend of mine here (an old trainer at the gym) and marveled at how giant her kids are now.  Seems like not that long ago we were both pregnant (her son is just a few months older than Jacob and her daughter is a couple years younger).  

It was a lovely evening--warm and pleasant, with lovely golden sun.  Definitely a pretty view with all the pumpkins. 

Craig took some pictures while we were waiting in line for the hayride, and since I rarely make an appearance here, I'm including them here...even if you can see the tired in my eyes.

Yes, Jacob officially looks taller than me here.  He probably had a little boost from his shoes compared to my flip flops, but yeah, it's that close now...

Ready to go...even if everyone's eyes make us look miserable!

The hayride turns into a haunted hayride at night, but the daytime stuff was pretty creepy by itself!  Might be fun with Carter in a couple years, though!  It started off passing by the giant teepees (note the skeleton up top)....

The bats aren't real, but they look real enough!

They had lots of crazy scenes like this...

Creepy tree...notice the face!

They had a rock band that sang the Monster Mash!

The fake fog looked extra creepy with the setting sun...

Skeleton bonfire...

This actually tips as you ride under it!

Another crazy scene...

Near the end was a tunnel that lit up with eyes and some jack o'lantern faces.  Those pics didn't really turn out.  But it was neat!  When we got off the hayride, there were some animals to explore--sheep, goats, alpacas, a miniature horse, and a donkey.  I thought the donkey was a second horse, but then it made a very obvious donkey sound!

Hard to see but they all had pretty funny haircuts!

Our last stop was to see the inside of the teepees.  They were huge and filled with carved pumpkins!

Another chance to see the difference between cameras--above was the phone, and these next three were from my camera.  The phone had a hard time capturing the color in the snake below and the other pumpkins, and I wanted to zoom in on some faces.

They were really cool!  What a fun space!  I just wish the kids weren't being jerks fighting and then getting impatient to leave while we were inside.  Sigh.  This was what you saw when you looked up on the way out in the last teepee...

Before we left, I forced one more photo op...which almost injured Craig and Jacob in the process because Jacob was being stubborn.  Ugh.

So, while it wasn't exactly the dreamy fun second pumpkin patch visit #2, it did have some fun parts and I got a little more fall fun out of my system on what's likely the last nice day of the year.  I guess it's going to be a party of three at these types of things next year.  Or maybe it was just an extra few bad days for Jacob.  He's been extra tweenish this week.  

So, on to another week.  Halloween is coming quickly, but still some deciding to do on how we're going to handle it.  It never ends right now, I guess.