why halloween is the best!

 Halloween is amazing! You get to run around In your choice of a costume and get free candy! You get to show all of your friends your costume, and it gives you something to do while you are bored before Halloween. I personally like watching a movie and sorting candy after trick-or-treating.

It gives you an awesome feeling when you run from door to door getting tons of candy. You just feel so free! The take one houses aren't as fun as the real person houses but still okay. Normally you do the king-size candy houses first so that you get the best pieces of candy first. It ends up being that we all have our own trading stores. That we organize everything in. "3 whoopers for your king-size" other person "4" "fine". and that is what happens all night long, of course, we watch a movie while it happens! 

Hopefully you changed your mind to having halloween be your favorite holiday instead of when the first dog went to space. Halloween is awesome and fun! you can do whatever you want and get yourself on a sugar high. Then you have a sugar crash on the beanbag and you watch a movie

Victor Ida-ho ho ho

 In Idaho, out in the middle of nowhere, where the snow-blanketed everywhere, a full 6 inches of snow throughout the flat farming lands of Victor Idaho. When we got out of the car we felt a cold, sharp, cutting wind. We brought everything into the house in shorts, well, at least I was in shorts. We were in a winter cabin full of rustic decorations. Cora and I ran around the cabin and sew every single room, well, except the ones with secured doors. When we went to Jackson Hole there were sharp, long icicles hanging off of all of the roofs. All of the pine trees looked like Christmas trees, except for the lifeless ones. At our restaurant, there were icicles as tall as my legs. Going home we got hot chocolate, well, warm chocolate, it was only about 75 degrees, but in 25-degree weather, it was amazing! We saw this ginormous elk antler arch, with real antlers. At home, well the cabin, we watched a show and went to sleep. I kept thinking of jokes from the movie like "I eat pieces of crap like you for breakfast!" "you eat pieces of frap for breakfast?" "no...".

COVID SUCKS

 Today I am sitting at home waiting for cora to get home. I set an alarm for when she should get home. It used to be that if cora did not squirm at the doctor to get a shot then we would get donuts, but now it is if I don't run away/squirm while getting my throat and nose swabbed. My mom said the nose swab felt like getting water up your nose. And the throat swab will feel like something scratching your throat. I think I want to get a donut hole cup.

Building/doing stuff

 Today is Wednesday September 9th and I am quarantined from humanity. Well not from humanity because I can still see Cora, Mom, Dad, and Daisy if she counts as humanity (maybe dogmanity). Me and my mom and Cora built a shelf! We put these black things around big metal bars and put shelves. Now if my mom asks me and Cora to build a shelf then we can, but before we would be really confused.  I think building shelves is really fun! I've been blogging a lot lately because... I have nothing better to do. I went to the doctor yesterday because I have a consistent wavy fever. I don't know if it is the correct term but I have 99.7 and then a minute later I have 98.7. The doctor thinks that I have a stomach virus. They swabbed my throat which hurt. In a couple days Cora might be able to earn us donuts by not squirming at the doctor so don't squirm when they give you a shot Cora! Last time she ran away. Anyways bye.

The Pit

 We have NOT had AC or heating in our house in 3 days! We open the windows at night and close them during the hot day. most of the time we are over at my grandma's basement to sleep and do stuff. People are digging a huge trench outside to try to fix our geothermal. It is like... 6.5 feet! I got to walk into it! They were using a diggy up machine to get the hole there. The pit is taller than my dad! I've been doing my school at home lately. Anyways, hope you enjoyed

Apocalypse life

Life is...strange right now. Our food storage looks like the apocalypse, we have tons of long lasting food. Cora thinks it might be the end of the world, and I get her point. The air is super smokey because of huge wildfires in California, there is a deadly disease going around. And when ever you go into public buildings you have to wear a mask, You can't even see the mountains!  You also have to quarantine yourself from others if your temperature even gets above 98.9 degrees fahrenheit. I'll give you some pics below.

The california wildfires are not just california wildfires, there are also huge 1,200 acre wildfires in Utah County, where we live. I don't think that we will have to evacuate though. The picture below is in california. And there are firenados in california, I kinda like the word firenado, but they look scary. Some of my cousins/aunts/uncles live in san diego where there are firenados. A firenado is basically a tornado that is going through a wildfire and grabs stuff on fire and makes a fire swirl. But, enough about firenados, now... Covid-19.

Coronavirus, the most annoying thing ever. Coronavirus is a disease that makes you cough sneeze and a lot other flu symptoms. The only way to tell is if  you go and get a Covid-19 test (Covid-19 is short for coronavirus). There are pictures of masks which you have to wear in public below. There is also a picture of what school looks like. At school you have to wear masks the whole 6 hours of school. A lot of masks bug my nose and my chair is at the position where even when you have a jacket on the vent gets into your jacket. Our classroom is really cold and I might be switching to home school. And winter is coming so Covid is about to get a lot worse.

Anticipating a pandemic

In February I had  a new obsession: checking stats on a website that was tracking the numbers on a new Corona virus that was growing in China. Decades ago my brothers gave me the nickname "safety Sass" due to my tendency to worry and prepare for stuff. Anything I see as a potential problem. The numbers in China were rising in a way that was familiar to my readings, and eerie. Early March we were buying a new car in Las Vegas, where we had struck our best bargain. By then Corona virus was on the coasts and major cities. We knew the wave was coming, but still felt like we could take our trip to Las Vegas. Lots of hand sanitizer and hand washing, and we had a great trip, but with a shadow that felt like it was always growing in the edges of my mind. It was an anniversary to remember. Cecily decided she wanted to buy me a new car, something that was AWD and large enough for teenage legs and her to ride in comfortably. I decided to not fight against it, but be grateful and help her find the best deal. Once I had bargained for a car and struck my best deal, Brian and I glamorously traveled to Vegas on the Greyhound. Having just come back from Spain the thought of public transportation was no big deal. However, upon entering the Greyhound bus I was reminded that the charter buses we rode in Spain are only similar in shape of transport. Over half of the travelers on the bus had a dog or animal with them. That was new. Also was the smell and the bulletproof casing around the driver. Luckily it was only 7 hours and we both got some good reading done. By the time we made it home, Corona was beginning to creep into our lives. (March 6-9, 2020)

Brian and I celebrating our 19th Anniversary at a Christina Aguilera Concert

By Wednesday Tommy had decided to keep his girls home from school in an effort to shield Su from any possible infection. I bought oxygen concentrators for myself, Cecily and my parents that Friday. While driving home with the kids that afternoon (March 13) it was announced that schools were closing. Three days of nothing to let the teachers prepare at least a little bit, and then some sort of instruction. Initial timeline: two weeks. I knew that was never going to happen.

This week was also filled with images I had only seen in Austin after a series of terrible hurricanes. People stripping shelves of water, toilet paper, food. I was torn between panic and peace. I had already been preparing for this sort of thing for months and years, but was it enough? Was I forgetting something? It became very hard to concentrate on anything besides the pandemic. How to protect my family and help others as much as humanly possible. Our neighbors had something stolen from their garage raising fears about crime rising as people worry and feel desperate. 

In all of the years of watching disaster movies I had often commented to Brian "And that's why we don't live in New York!" I finally got to say it in real life as we watched their health care system become overwhelmed. I am not finding joy in any of their suffering, just grateful to not be living in a high rise building, and to be able to travel in my own car which can encapsulate me safely as I do my necessary traveling