It was a perfect early fall morning, 68 degrees, blue sky with puffy white clouds. I biked down to the Farmers Market at King Park (1/4 mile away), picked up 3 ears of corn, heaping baskets of little heirloom tomatoes and multi-colored peppers, half a basket of baby cucumbers, and one giant zucchini. Flirted a little with my favorite busker, who not only plays astonishingly good slide guitar but has the wit to learn to recognize his regular fans and greet them with a smile. What a cutie. That's how you get the tips. 
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When I got home the new blade for my blender had arrived so I could make gazpacho with all those fresh vegetables. There was also a new smoothie cup for the blender that I couldn't resist ordering when I ordered the replacement blades, so I made a strawberry banana smoothie while I was at it. 
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Had a quick video chat with Amber and the kids. Lena (as expected) had a great first week in 2nd grade, the boys were not too cantankerous, and I was relieved to hear that Amber's post-COVID brain fog episodes have finally ceased. But she is still having more frequent migraines and is a little overwhelmed with her school job starting up. So she was looking forward to the weekly visit from Laura (mother's helper/auxiliary grandma) so she could have a little time to herself. Laura showed up and we all chatted, then rang off so Amber could get her alone time.
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My new comic-geek friend came over to look through Richard's collection for treasures. We sorted out a full box of comics that he wanted to buy, graded and priced them. Gratifyingly, he wanted quite a few of the duplicates I had laboriously sorted out over the past week or so (which is nice, because Richard doesn't mind parting with duplicates) as well as a bunch more that Richard is slowly considering letting go of. Those are simmering to give Richard time to reread them and me time to look through them for key issues. We all took a gazpacho break (it came out great!) and chatted for a while. Then comic-geek and I finalized the first stage of the negotiations and he left with the first dozen or so comics, for which he paid me $1500! Holy cow!  I guess it's not entirely surprising that the first appearance of Bat-Girl is worth some money, but I didn't think it would be THAT valuable. And I never would have guessed that Hawkman #4 was worth that much. First appearance of "Zatanna" (whoever that is). Seriously? 
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Then Richard cooked the corn and whipped up a chicken salad for a nice little supper. I sat down to unwind with a little Candy Crush and was pleased to see that the Events pane was back after a hiatus of 2 or 3 days. 
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And I had an inspiration for how to spend that comics windfall. Amber pays Laura to watch the kids, although Laura loves them and would probably do it for free if she wasn't living on a fixed income. Amber would have her over more often but can't really afford it. And the kids love Laura. So I called up Amber and offered up the comic money to pay for additional Laura time for the next 6 months. Win win win! Help out my daughter, my grandkids, and a nice old lady all at once. Much more satisfying than just dropping the money into the checking account and paying bills with it. 
 

It's now Day 8 for Lena (Days 4-7 for the rest of us), with Richard still evading infection. We're all feeling pretty good, with a few lingering symptoms, but we still can't go anywhere. Incidentally, Lena still tests strongly positive despite being over all her symptoms. I finished a full course of Paxlovid yesterday and now feel well, but still tested weakly positive this  morning. Amber is at Day 6 and also weakly positive. So I continue to be deeply skeptical of the CDC's horrible outdated isolation advice, which strongly implies that contagion "normally" ends at Day 5. This is absolutely not true. There is now data (which you can find on the CDC site itself if you search hard!) that specifically shows that 50% of COVID patients are still contagious at Day 5. 25% are still contagious at Day 8. It isn't until Day 10 that most people are finally non-infectious. Amber managed to change their flight home to Thursday, by which date everyone in her family should be past Day 10. It is terrifying how many people are flying these days after a completely inadequate 5-day isolation period. 

Amber and I resurrected an ancient iPad version 1 (from 2011?) and managed to find a few toddler apps on the app store that still work. This has kept Harris and Leo happy except for when they are fighting over which one gets to execute Humpty Dumpty or chop the tails off the Three Blind Mice (a particularly grotesque nursery rhyme game is a favorite). 

Meanwhile, Olin and Lena went out for a drive (in the rain, because they were getting desperate for something to do) and ventured out of the car at a deserted sculpture park long enough to get a beautiful iteration of the standard Minneapolis Tourist Photo. 

Well, now everybody has it except Richard and Thorin, who have been  masking and avoiding the sick.

Olin (SIL) and Harris were pretty sick for a day or two but seem to be turning the corner. Harris had a scary fever over 103 on Sunday night, but it was down below 101 by Monday morning. However, he continues to be miserable, whiny, and clingy, pathetically moaning, "Me sick."  Leo has had a low-grade fever and a cough for 2 days, but just shrugs it off. He is a robust little guy, less sensitive to discomfort than Harris. I'm really glad I put together that wooden train set. Leo loves it, and it has done wonders to keep him occupied while everyone else was too preoccupied to play with him. Lena is also a real trooper, has hardly complained at all. She's just happy that all the usual rules about iPad use have been suspended, allowing her to create her Best Minecraft Level EVER! And Amber just keeps going, sick or not, as she always does. She came down with it on Sunday, and thinks she might be feeling a little better now. 

I'm definitely sick, but pretty clearly in the "experiencing mild symptoms" tranche of COVID sufferers. Not fun but not life-threatening. Runny nose, sore throat, cough. Going up stairs is more daunting than usual and I needed a 2-hour nap today. One way that this differs from an ordinary cold is that the sore throat has persisted into a second full day, so I sent Richard out for cough drops and throat spray. Just tried the throat spray and only succeeded in making my tongue numb. I'll try it again before bed, aiming a little higher? 

I did manage to get a course of Paxlovid in my hands by Monday evening (my first full day of symptoms). It did not make me feel better within 2 hours as several people have reported, but my symptoms weren't very advanced at that point. It may have kept me from getting worse on the 2nd day (i.e., today). Paxlovid is not without its side effects. I had a terrible taste in my mouth for several hours after this morning's dose (a common side effect) but it faded away as the day went on. We'll see if it comes back after tonight's dose. Also had a short bout of diarrhea, also a reported side effect. Of course it's also a symptom of COVID, so who knows? I haven't had much appetite, but no more gastric disturbances either. If it doesn't get any worse than this I'll count myself lucky. 

Lena wasn't terribly sick all day yesterday, but by bedtime she felt hot to the touch and was starting to feel slightly nauseated and chilled. A search of the medicine cabinets turned up none of those new-fangled electronic thermometers and no children's Tylenol, nailing us as totally unprepared grandparents. We did find an old mercury thermometer, which read 102. Yikes, that's an actual full-fledged fever! So Olin was sent out to an all-night pharmacy for Tylenol, which seemed to help. I worried about Lena all night, but she slept soundly after the Tylenol and woke up cheerful and energetic. She still has a little cough and feels a little warm, but not enough to even bother with Tylenol. I think she is on the mend. 


Amber tested positive this morning, and Harris is clearly sick. Amber is still pretty perky, but Harris clearly feels miserable. Olin and Leo feel fine. Leo had a great time all morning, playing with trains and doing a Sisyphus routine with an exercise ball he liberated from the attic. 

He lives in Reno, and I haven't seen him for a couple of years at least. Last night I got an unexpected text that he was stranded at the MSP airport and might need a place to stay for the night. We had a big pot of basil lemon chicken and it would have been perfect. He was trying to get to International Falls (no, really). Actually, he was trying to go to someplace even more remote (Baudette - look it up) but International Falls was as far as Sky West would take him. And last night the wind was so fearsome that his flight was cancelled. 

But strangely enough, they managed to get him on another flight 3 hours later to Bemidji, so we didn't get to see him after all.

His job is helping people set up brewing equipment. And apparently somebody in Baudette was so impatient to get their microbrewery up and running that they had to fly him up there in the middle of February and were happy to drive to Bemidji in the middle of the night to pick him up. They must be really bored in Baudette.

He also has a planned layover in Minneapolis on the way home, 8 days from now. So if that goes off as planned we'll see him then. Looking forward to it. And relieved to hear that his little plane cruised smoothly to Bemidji last night. 

The state of the fires in Clackamas County doesn't seem to have improved noticeably, but the official Evacuation Alert areas have shrunk. Amber's town of Milwaukie is no longer under a Level 1 Alert. But there are still out of control wildfires within 20 miles or so and the air has been declared almost unbreathable, so they aren't exactly out of danger. Winds are picking up again in southern Oregon, fanning the flames down near the California state line. If the same thing happens in northern Oregon, all bets are off. 

If you are looking at the map and wondering where Milwaukie is, it's northeast of Lake Oswego in that little jagged angle in the upper left corner of Clackamas County. 

 He drove himself. I was a little dubious about that, but the nurses said it was okay. Laparascopic surgery - what a great invention. It's like taking your car to Midas - you drive in and drive out an hour later with a new exhaust system. 

Well, it is indeed appendicitis.

Early in the process, but it is acute appendicitis rather than the leisurely kind. The doctor said that in a few days it could have reached the point of rupture, so good thing he didn't try to wait until the holiday weekend was over. The ER was pretty empty, and they told him that COVID patients were in a different wing or used a different waiting room or something so he didn't have to worry about infection. He got a CAT scan almost immediately and maybe an hour later saw a doctor, got diagnosed, and checked in. They told him he'd have surgery "tonight or tomorrow." It's now after midnight and we haven't heard anything more, so I'm assuming they'll tuck him into bed and operate tomorrow morning. 

I called Amber to tell her, and she seemed a little unsure where the appendix was located herself. What did I do wrong? Parents, don't put off The Talk because you assume your children already know the facts. Tell them where their appendix is! 

Portland just had its first snowfall of the season, to Lena's delight and her Daddy's dismay. He's from California and believes that when people tell you it never snows here past Valentine's Day that it actually means something. 

Lena and I built a table top snowman before breakfast. 





Sad little flowers peeking through the snow. They weren't expecting this either.

Funerals are the opposite of weddings. Weddings are typically over-planned, with the planning stage stretching out for months and months. Funerals, even when not unexpected, are thrown together in a matter of days. Both can be stressful, but different types of stress. Grandma Mary was 100 years old, but her final decline was surprisingly fast so it was still a little bit of a surprise. But the Tatge family is highly competent (as well as extremely nice), and the funeral was everything a funeral should be.The only snag was that about twice as many people showed up as the family had estimated and THE CHURCH LADIES RAN OUT OF FOOD, which is something I have never seen happen. But there were extra meat and cheese platters and crockpots full of BBQ sloppy joe filling and about 10 million pans of bars waiting at various family members' houses, so not a disaster. I was impressed with how well little groups of workers spontaneously formed and got things done without any direction needed. Of course most of them have lived within 30 miles of each other for decades and they have done this kind of thing many times before, but I'm still always in awe at how seamlessly everything just happens.

Typically I just stand around feeling awkward because I'm waiting for direction that never comes because everybody else just knows what needs to happen. But this time I did actually get to help with something I know how to do, which was nice. Most of the memorial services I have been to have had a lot of different people standing up to offer memories of the deceased, but in Benson they prefer the single eulogy model. This honor was offered to Richard as the eldest child. Although he is not exactly shy, he is not the most verbal person on the planet and was nervous about it. He finally agreed when told that it would all be written out beforehand and all he had to do was read it. About a half-dozen family members had gathered the night after the death and had it all pretty much written, so easy-peasy. Then Christopher emailed me the eulogy-in-progress, which turned out to be nothing more than brainstorming notes. I sat down at the computer and Richard read me his own random notes, which I rewrote into actual paragraphs. I put it into Google Docs and shared the link with whoever was interested, and a few more memories were added. The original author washed his hands of the document at this point, so I happily took over for the final edit. Marlene and Doug contributed the two best-written paragraphs, one of which I used as a lead-in to the memories and the other as a conclusion. While Richard and I drove out to Benson, various family members fact-checked and made minor edits. In the end, it was just what you want a thing like this to be - better than the sum of its parts. It's here if you want to read it.

And here's Richard, reading the eulogy in the church with the draped coffin in the foreground.


As a celebration of Mary Strom Tatge's endless energy and creativity, somebody came up with the idea of having family members bring in some of the many quilts she had made them over the years and laying them over the pews. There were about 85, which couldn't have been more than a quarter of the number she actually made. 


Mary loved dressing up and was known for the variety of colorful hats that she would wear to church. So as a tribute to that side of her personality, the women of the family all wore hats. The pre-funeral text storm of ladies discussing hats and wardrobe for the ceremony was like being back in high school, but look how well it turned out. Not sure how Jesus ended up in the picture, but he seems to approve.