The Curtis Clan - Spring 2020
Spring Equinox to Summer Solstice
COVID Spring
(Sheltering in Place, Teleworking/Telelearning, Social Distancing and Keep It Together with all too much Togetherness)
The COVID pandemic colored much of our spring in so many ways it's hard to know how much or little to dwell on it here as the intent of the family blog isn't to record general history but only that of the family. Struggled with it a bit but hopefully got the mix right.
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Bethany, Jane and Pepper
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Never a fan of teleworking previously, at first Randy struggled to put in 8 hours in a day and ended up taking annual leave to make up the difference the first day or two. By the 2nd week, this wasn't an issue and the issue of spending way more than time working was. Arriving at a balance took a few weeks.
The first couple weeks of spring included a marked increase in drinking, enjoyed Greyhounds, Margaritas, Bloody Marys, Vodka Tonics or even just simple Schafer Lights on the back porch with spring erupting around him at the end of the day. A noticeable weight gain made it clear this was not a sustainable behavior (being able to prepare a substantial lunch while at home also contributed to the weight gain).
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Happy Hour on the balcony
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Midwest Rite of Spring #13: Snowing on the daffodils
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On the last Friday of March, we bought a chainsaw on a stick at Harbor Freight for $60. The electric pole saw does an awesome job in knocking out the task of trimming hard to reach limbs in seconds as opposed to the tree saw on a stick we had been using. Cate loved using a chainsaw for the first time cleaning up the limbs and was glad to help with that part of the job. Is this a great country or what? The impetus of tree limb trimming was to deny a highway of access to the squirrels and raccoons that considered the attic space a 602 Tuxedo their own (After battling them himself for way too long, Randy broke down and hired professionals to come in and trap them and repair the holes in the soffit. It was not inexpensive.).
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On a ladder in a tree with a chainsaw on a stick. What could go wrong?
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Jane and Pepper, pre-hair cut
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Cate turns 16
On 30 March Cate had her 16th Birthday. As group gatherings during the pandemic were out, so celebrations of even the most modest kind were challenging. Cate had been talking about a Gatsby/Roaring '20s theme party for months but several weeks out it was clear that idea wasn't going to work. Disappointed but not crushed, she didn't mope around the house because of that (at least not noticeably more than her normal teen angst).
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Cate at 16
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After finishing up her "remote" zoom classes for the day, Cate donated blood for the first time at the Red Cross (min. age is 16). It was a moment of pride that this was one thing she wanted to do on her birthday, reflecting her progression to adulthood while giving back and doing something useful. Placing it in juxtaposition to the classic American depiction of what a girl's 16th birthday is supposed to be (e.g., 16 Candles, Chuck Berry's Sweet Little 16, etc.), it was a refreshing feeling that the Kids are Alright.
Later, we went on a Townie Sage decorated yard parade at the WW (Warson Woods) Sages and the Shaws (maintaining safe distances at all times, of course). The packages & posters/decorations made for a fun drive by and really helped make it memorable for Cate despite the limitations. We had some Paneer Tiki Masala from Himalaya Hut in Rock Hill.
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VanGwenJoe B Day wishes
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The Shaws wishing Cate Happy Birthday
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"He calls me Pineapple Princess all day"
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April
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COVID To Do List
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More than the normal amount of family movie nights but still not as many as Dad suggested. The films included: Mike Nichol's The Birdcage; Amelie; When Harry Met Sally; Only You; National Lampoon's Vacation; Zoey Extraordinary Playlist season finale; SPACE FORCE; Air Force One; Bridesmaids (paying the $4 charge on Amazon Prime to avoid the argument over what movie to watch when we found out this one was no longer included in monthly services (i.e., free) and Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang.
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Formal Friday - Because why not?
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Redbuds at Tuxedo and Cornelia
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Jane mowing the lawn at Kenyon (Note: the sweet gum balls)
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In early April, the skilled nursing facility where Randy's dad is at called and told him they sent Ron to the Monterey ER with a 103.6-degree temperature. Everyone's leaped to the conclusion that it was COVID which with Ron's advanced COPD and daily coughing fits, his prognosis for beating it were not good. Fortunately, after a battery of tests, it turned out Ron ONLY had a severe urinary tract and lung infection; hardly his first UTI and definitely treatable with anti-biotics. Weird perspective to be relieved that a loved one had a severe UTI, which "only" required him to be hospitalized for 4 days. Oh, and when he got back to the nursing facility, the home had thrown out his significant stash of snacks and treats because the staffers assumed, he was a goner. At least they were able to locate most of his clothes, though we sent him a couple new pair of pants as they didn't turn up at all.
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Make your own pizza was a frequent family favorite (With dough from Dewey's)
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The Easter Bunny rememberd the Curti girls
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At the end of April, a dead 30+ year old sconce fixture in our first-floor bathroom and some ugly circa 1960s era bathroom lighting fixtures at Kenyon caused us to put new ones at our house and transfer the 16-year-old Master Bathroom fixtures to Kenyon. Jane did the 1st floor bathroom light fixtures which involved some creativity mixing old and new bracket features. Cate installed the 2nd Floor Master bathroom ones which required moving the middle fixture up a couple inches. They don't fear home improvements but also don't think they're the piece of cake depicted on HGTV either.
| Jane wiring a light |
Cate painitng around the new fixture |
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Randy donating platelets in April (note: the 3M P100 mask)
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May
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J&C on a S&S FF run (the Webster Groves Steak & Shake on old Route 66 is still going)
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By far the highlight of most days during Randy's COVID telework period was walking Gussie and Pepper through the neighborhood after work, usually with Jane, at least at first as Cate was stuck indoors with oak pollen allergies. There are many reasons for joys of these walks: getting outside, the beautiful spring weather in Missouri, the progression of blossoming trees and flowers, quality time talking with a daughter and the consistency of the dogs' happiness every single time. We all do things that benefit others that frequently are not recognized, acknowledged, or worst are expected, but the dogs are ecstatic and grateful every time you take them for a walk. The walks got up to about two miles on most days until the 90+ degree temperatures came out, dissuading going on the walk in the first place.
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Jane and dogs
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Randy at Eden with the redbuds (getting the dogs in the picture on a solo walk is nearly impossible)
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1 day's worth of oak catkins residue from driveway (aka droppings of oak tree male reproduction...now you really want to say Ewww!)
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Randy & Jane at VanGwenJoes Can you tell we rode in the convertible?
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Early May, the chainsaw on a stick allowed us to trim back the trees from the house and the phone/internet line even further.
| Chainsaw on a stick strikes again in the front yard |
6 Bins ready for Monday pick up (and no Waste Management didn't take them all insisting they be cut down to 4' or less) |
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Sage FFF Trivia Night
Forced Family Fun (FFF) nights returned for the Sage family as beginning on the last Saturday in March we began a series of family Trivia game nights via Zoom with a couple dozen participating some nights
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Sage FFF Trivia Night #1
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Van hosted the first night with a slick version a friend developed for a school/charity trivia night. This was followed by Justin, who made a game from the series he has written over the last decade at their parish school in Indianapolis. This inspired the older niblings and others to develop a trivia night as well starting with Jane, than, Erin, Lloyd, Katie, Justin Jr. Cate and Patrick.
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Curti laptop and TV set up (Jane's Trivia Night)
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Afterwards we typically hung on Zoom for a little longer, to chat with just a few people. It was nice to connect.
It was a learning experience for most people doing the questions that it takes far more work to develop it than you anticipate AND more importantly what you might consider an easy question does not mean other shares the same, especially if they are not that part of the fandom the questions are about (The Curti died on Sports questions most nights). Even if most people are fans of a topic, like Star Wars, it's a bad idea to use the internet to find questions from the World's Hardest Quiz regarding that topic, as even the nerdiest person is guessing on those questions.
Team Curtis typically dressed in a theme as in typically STL trivia nights you get bonus points for the table dressing in a theme: Star Wars, Hawaii shirts, Harry Potter, Ghostbusters.
| Star Wars Night |
Princesses Leia #2 |
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| Ghostbusters Night |
Harry Potter Night |
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Cate's Trivia Night
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Sage FFF Trivia Night on the 10th round on Saturday, 6 June with Randy's Revenge of the Baby Boomer version with a main goal of seeing that the older Sage teams not coming in dead last as the Millennials and Gen X culture questions each week made them seem inept and out of touch. Isnpired by his job, love of 1940s culture and it being the 76th Anniversary of D-Day Randy came up with a number of WWII related questions that had the over 70 year old team out in front from the start and not looking back. While the A Sages (Amy and Alvan) appreciated a night of not being last, the other teams were less pleased of the shift in the standings and the obscurity of the questions (Who doesn't know who Patty, Maxine and Laverne were?). The weekly Triva night desire had been waning for a while but Randy's WWII edition definitely killed it for the summer.
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Mothers Day cake
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Cate rode with Randy in Rush Hour traffic back to the Corps' Service Base when he forgot his laptop there on his only full day in the office in spring (Monday, May 11) . Good company and a good sport as he lectured to her about the St. Louis Arsenal, the Corps of Engineers, NGA and the floodwall.
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The Mississippi River from the Corps' Service Base
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| Waiting for BK take-out |
Car ride? |
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The last weekend in May was fairly cool so we took advantages of the favorable weather to do some outside project at the Kenyon House. Jane and Cate helped Randy take down and rebuild the shed. Originally put up in circa 1964 after his parents bought the house, the poor quality tin doors and roof we unusable within a decade but instead of replacing it than ($ were tight for Team Curtis in the 1970s), the shed was outfitted with corrugated galvanized, steel panels for the roof and doors, and extended to a lean-to to store our bikes. This solution worked for another 45 years though admittedly the shed was in sad but useable shape for the last decade. We built a smaller replacement shed to house the lawnmower and tools, having salvaged the panels, simply flipping them over to hide the spot rusting that had occurred and scrounged some 4 by 4 posts from the basements walls we tore down earlier in the spring and used some 2 by 10 planks from the deck to tie it all together. The girls put in a lot of effort and felt good about being able to build something.
| Shed and lean-to Before |
Opossum Pete asks “Where's my home?” |
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Shed reframed and being reroofed
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A week later as the remnants of a hurricane/tropical storm were predicted due to hit St. Louis, we had to hurry up and really screw down the shed roof.
| Cat(e) on a Hot Tin Roof? |
Give me shelter |
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| HAMMER (drill) TIME! |
Cordless Drill |
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June
On the first of June, we had Happy Tree Service come and remove the large oak limbs hanging over the electric power line to the west side of the house and the roof. It took a month and a half to schedule this, not because of the tree guys but rather to schedule to have AMEREN cut the power at 10 AM . Happy Tree came at 9 and was able to cut out the limbs BEFORE Ameren even showed up, so no need for them to turn off the power. At the same time, Nelson Tree showed up to trim the trees from the front of the yard (i.e. north) as part of the Ameren power line outage mitigation program. The limb shredders were pretty loud here for a while, not that our youngest teenager didn't sleep through it.
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Tuxedo Tree Trimmers Times Two
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A Truly Lucky Break
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Our tree limb blocking Kenyon Court
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The high winds early June 9 brought down an 18-inch diameter limb from the large 40+ year old sweet gum ball tree at 1219 Kenyon Court, totally blocking the cul-de-sac. The responding Rock Hill police officer had called in the Department of Public Works Department, who arrived shortly after we got there. The DPW crew came in and very quickly took care of the limb and branches in a very professional manner, exhibiting courteous, efficient, and caring assistance to a citizen in need. Everyone from Rock Hill was super.
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Rock Hill Public Works Department on the job (Note: the use of the front end loader as an adjustable and movable platform for chainsawing. Can't see the unhappy carpenter bees though)
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Afterwards (the 20% "white" patch is the only part of the limb that was solid and holding the reast up)
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It's unclear if the rest of the tree HAS to come down but this seems the impetus to cut the unloved tree down. Although stately and it provides some great shade, the ankle twisting balls are cursed by anyone that has to walk across the yard or rake them up. Add to that a root system that runs a couple inches above ground level making mowing around it a bit of a night mare and you understand why collectively the Curti want to say goodbye to this tree, including , planted it as a Mother's Day present in 1981 and was chagrined for being responsible for it. It seems stable enough to wait and have the tree guys come bid on it in late fall during the quiet season for them when we're likely to get a better bid.
The girls both took a summer school in June to complete requirements and allow more freedom in their class schedules. Jane took Personal Finance which happily was fairly easy for here (indicating we had covered many topics with her already). Cate got into the highly sought-after Geocaching class to earn her last ½ a PE credit as required by state law to graduate high school. It also got her out of gym during the school day. Geocaching involves using a GPS or cell phone triangulation location feature to located small containers, "geocaches", at specific locations marked by coordinates all over the world.” Not a lot of cardio but in order to get an A in the class, the kids needed to find a combination of number of geocaches found and miles walked/run to add up to 80 over three weeks (phones apps were used to track both); roughly 4 caches and or miles a day. Another hitch was that the students needed to find a cache for the walking to count, so it was usually a good to plan a route with multiple caches on the same outing as some were tricky to find or were missing. Over the last three weeks of June, it was nearly a daily ritual for Cate to merging family errands to Kenyon and dog walks with searching for a few “park and grabs” (relatively easy finds a short distance from road access). With time she got familiar with technique where to hide them in locations in plain sight
| Glenn Road Geocache #3 |
1 of 2 Park and Grabs from the GeocacheFairy at RH Metro parking lot |
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| Clever lampost hide in Old Orchard |
A micro at the Lorraine Davis Park on the Deer Creek Greenway |
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Geocaching with Jason (NOTE: Cate's HUGE head...oh wait social distancing)
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Black Lives Matter March at WG City Hall (Note: Bethany and Cate lower left with space behind them)
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Happy 246th Birthday Corps of Engineers and Army (aka Flag Day) from John Liss's truck at Tuxedo Park Station
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Before it really hot (i.e., the 90s, St Louis summer "normal" daytime temperatures), Jane used the hammer drill to punch holes to wire a couple outside GFI outlets and a water line to the front of the house (courtesy of a borrowed ling drill and an oversized wide drill bit at $40 for the frost free water spigot). The girls helped wire and sweat the copper lines in the following weeks as the basement would stay cool even as it was miserable outside. The water line had a number of missteps requiring multiple failures before success (soldering 8 joints in ~20 inches of line is a challenge).
| Cate sweating cooper at the water main |
Randy on try #4 |
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COVID crushed Jane's plans for lifeguarding at Camp Tuckahoe this summer but this allowed her for a more lucrative gig watching her 6-year-old cousin Joe who had nearly all of his summer camps canceled, Van and Gwen were happy to have a counselor for 6 hours a day for 6 weeks while they worked. It was a Win-Win-Win situation for everyone. Jane and Joe drew most every day, typically Star Wars characters with video tutorials; there was weekly swimming at a friends pool; 40 yard dash running on Monday and Friday with Joe going from 12+ seconds down to 8.05 plus trips for frozen treats once a week. On the negative side, Joe locked Jane in the basement (more than once) which since Gwen was in the house, it wasn't a risk, It did cause her Baby Boomer parent to grumble that such action would have resulted in an meeting with the “Board of Education” back in his day (actually two paddlings, one from the sitter and a harsher one with the parents).
| Taking Joe and Cate for a ride |
Joe liked geocaching at Queeny park so we did it twice; once just for fun. |
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While Jane took a couple on line courses, Cate filled in as counselor with Jane bringing him to our house.
| Cate and Joe in Padewan training |
Pie in the face fun |
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