Quarantine in November (Month #8)

Beach time with his friends...he's standing in the wave to the left.

The pandemic marches on. Infections are spiking across the US (everyone has THEIR rights* after all), but life in Hawaii doesn't seem all that different from 8 months ago, or 4 months ago. It's still warm, it's still fairly quiet, Ryan is bored/misses 'normal' school, and everyone is stressed/anxious. 

The only real difference between now and eight months ago is that three drug manufacturers have recently announced promising results for their vaccines, and that this could be 'mostly' over in 6-9 months. Although everyone I know has lost something (jobs, family members moving away for work, holidays, birthdays)...we are still a far, far cry from those who were already penniless before the pandemic started. So it's important to remember that although we've lost some $, social events, travel and the ability to walk around without a mask, that we haven't haven't lost people, food or shelter.

*Yes, I'm being facetious. (Insert eyeroll here)

In fact, we are quite sheltered here. It's so warm that we can safely and comfortably continue to exercise outdoors and hit the beach regularly.  In fact, Ry's primary recreational activity in COVID times has been to hit the beach at least once a week, often twice. Between hanging with friends or free diving, he loves the water.

We also had a few family events to celebrate and a restaurant reopening for my work...so we managed to semi-successfully eke out yet another month (#8) of keeping Ryan reasonably occupied. That has probably been the hardest part of this pandemic- trying to parent a bored, isolated middle schooler who is a bit lazy... Frustrating, but I also understand his lack of excitement about school (a first) and am trying to roll with the punches. 

Other more positive notes in Ryan's life...

• This month...karate returned (COVID-safe version), which restored a huge degree of normalcy, discipline and physical strength training to Ryan's life. We are SO THANKFUL for this. It's been one of the single greatest blessings in our son's life, hands down...and that he gets to go with his cousins most times is an added bonus.
• We celebrated my dad hitting 72! It's a privilege many don't get, and it's even more of a blessing during this pandemic to hit that milestone. We all helped cook his favorite Japanese comfort foods had a contest with whipped cream (you had to find the grape hidden in the pie pan of whipped cream). It was pretty hilarious. And...we might have 'accidentally' forgotten to put a grape in Riki's pan, thanks to Aunty Lynne's brilliant idea. ;-)
• We decorated for Christmas early this year...cause we figured why the heck not? What else is there to celebrate? May as well feel as festive as possible, as long as possible!
• Ryan's been free diving a bit more...he had his first formal class/lesson last month from a K-town waterman legend. He has also gone a few more times this month with his cousins and their friends. He excitedly told me he reached a new depth of 65-70 feet and his teacher showed him how to equalized pressure better. (He's also lucky that his older cousin Keni just bought him an early Christmas gift of a new, fancy dive mask!)  
• Ryan has now run two days a week (Tue/Thu) for three straight months with me- and 3 weeks ago, Riki started joining us.
• And just last week, Ryan finally hit 100 miles!!! He's getting a nice reward, as we're proud of him for not giving up along the way (the original deal was to run twice a week for a month). He's tripled my expectations, so that's been a very unexpected COVID bonus, as he never would have even started running if life had been 'normal'. (It helps having his much cooler cousin along with us most days.)
• We celebrated Thanksgiving safely outdoors with the ohana. Since three households live on the same parcel (the family compound), we are always the only 'outsiders' that attend family gatherings. Sad to not have Friendsgiving this year, but them there's the rules.
• Our first restaurant (for my work) reopened this month. We reopen another restaurant (or two) in  mid-December, and another in January. It means lots and lots of stress, but it's so much fun to be a part of a bustling restaurant again, and Ryan does love his virgin daiquiris and mini sliders from On the Rocks! ;-)
• Ryan reunited with his social bubble last weekend at the beach...and this week we had the gang over or nighttime hide and seek, board games, VR games and cranberry bread-baking. There is nothing like the laughter of children to remind you that everything is probably going to be okay.

Posing with his chi chi dango from a former student celebrating #72...for his family dinner, he had teriyaki beef, handmade gyoza, maki sushi rolls (4-5 different types?), curry/rice, custard pie and pumpkin cheesecake.

We ran to my workplace a few nights ago and ended up grabbing take out for our post-run fuel! So thrilled to finally have our first restaurant back up and running!

Pre-COVID, I managed to take every member of our family to one of our restaurants before we closed down...EXCEPT Keni and Riki! They were the hardest to wrangle with their busy school, karate, work, sports, friends. Fortunately, we were able to take them this time! We all had a blast!

I know December will look a like November and October- zero social events/no parade. A bored child. But we can't let that get us down when we're still so fortunate. The goal of next month is to remain positive, help others and march on...six more months. We got this.