It's the Most Weirdiest Time of This Year

I have started to blog about ten times since I wrote almost a month ago. Kind of a lot is going on, and I have many thoughts about many things, obviously, but also I have quite infrequent moments of sit-and-write focusing that are available to me, plus I'm trying to finish two very good and very historically-detailed books that I don't know why I started concurrently... but there you have it.

We are continuing to be affected only in terms of convenience and normalcy by the coronavirus. My grandma has had to quarantine a couple of times since moving to a nursing home; my grand-nephew's dad was hospitalized and released with COVID; and my cousin, her husband, my aunt, and my uncle all tested positive after Thanksgiving. To my knowledge, everyone is on the mend, so that's good news.

My immediate family traveled over Thanksgiving, but did the same thing on the road as we do at home: masks when briefly inside public areas, and otherwise outdoors or only with our "pod." We drove to Port Aransas, eating common meals outside and each family renting a separate condo. It was a nice getaway.

I know people pooh-pooh "the third coast" as not having "real" beaches, but, man, it works for me.

Since we've been back, we've been taking advantage of outdoor Christmas stuff, such as our city's drive-through Christmas-tree lighting and the Wildflower Center's Luminations. We have tickets for Mozart's Christmas show and the Trail of Lights in Austin (it's drive-through this year, too). 

The other day, I got a little wistful when I saw a red Fiat 500 driving into the McDonald's parking lot... I was thinking, "That could be us, from the past, when we used to just go hang out at McD's so Mal could play and we could enjoy unlimited sodas." We're getting out to parks and meeting friends at places like that, but it'll be nice to get back to some indoor blowing-off-of-steam at some point in the nebulous future. Right now, Mal's regressed to his younger days' "nighttime crazies." He used to get SO active and engage in potentially injurious behavior late at night. He stopped for more than a year, but is back to it. I look forward to being able to pack him up in the car and take him to an indoor playground again. Here's hoping 2021 moves us toward that, sooner rather than later...