Next week marks week 100 since I began to track these Covid weeks. One hundred. While many of you may be a few weeks behind me since we were the ground zero outbreak for the United States here in Kirkland Washington, your week one hundred is close at hand.

Regardless of how much we want to pretend this is “over,” it’s not. Cases may be peaking with this wave, but hospitals are already flowing as admissions continue to grow. Deaths will surely follow. My friend Kristin and I keep joking/not joking how we will celebrate week one hundred next week. Perhaps we set aside a time to all scream together? Perhaps next week’s post will be as blank as my brain feels much of the time now.

PS. If you’re here to tell me that the pandemic is in fact over, please don’t. I will delete your comments. Pandemic Angela has no more patience left for that kind of nonsense.

Friday’s Frugal Five

1. Like 2021, a loose goal for this year is to hike new to me trails. I had plans to track them last year for a total of twenty four or more, but by spring I’d stopped keeping track. This year, I will simply do my best to seek out new trails and enjoy them as I walk their paths, without worry of logging the trips.

This past weekend, we ended up on two different new to me trails, the first cut short due to mud and closed trails after flooding, so we drove fifteen minutes away to the Brightwater Treatment Plant trails for part two of our hike.

The weather was beautiful and sunny, and while it was a treatment plant, they have lovely paved trails as well, which was what was needed after my mud soaked self fell multiple times on the original trail. Of course, the kiddo is now asking to go back to that first trail to watch me fall again…..

2. The chickens are now laying four to six eggs most days, with a record eight one day, which feels extra impressive since we have nine hens. With that surplus, the kiddo made his first sale of a dozen eggs, along with a bunch of carrots, a bag of kale, and branches of Korean tea leaves. After posting online to share pride in the endeavor, mine and his, another person nearby reached out, and then picked up another dozen later in the week.

For a kiddo who has asked to live on a farm since he was old enough to ask, the sheer joy of becoming a “real” chicken farmer with customers was palpable. And to be honest, the joy was mine, too.

3. I found a new book series Wings of Fire at our local bookstore at the end of last year, and since then we’ve been devouring them together. The kiddo is enjoying them so much that we’ve now gone straight to the audiobook versions to listen to concurrently with the paperbacks. We’re halfway through book three with the hard copy and just began book two on audiobook.

The kiddo hasn’t been super into reading, and it’s been a slow process (unlike math and science, which he loves). These books have been a game changer for us, and he’s now helping us read the books, even when it’s not officially “school time.” The books are fun, snarky, and quite enjoyable, even for us adults. Bonus, all the dragon tribes are ruled by queens.

4. Friends of ours – who have been even more cautious than we are – caught Covid this week. Really, anyone who thinks we can “personal responsibility” out of this needs to keep quiet. While clearly there are folks who are getting sick because they have zero regard for others, there are also so many who are getting sick because it is currently everywhere. At this point, it feels like sheer chance that we haven’t tested positive (*knocks on wood*).

To cheer them up, the kiddo and I delivered doughnuts to them. We stopped at our favorite shop, Factory Donuts, which one “Best of the Eastside” for good reason. The owners are absolutely lovely, and she sent along boxes of doughnuts as well as drinks and a bouquet of flowers to help them feel better. If you’re local, go check them out. The doughnuts are the very best, and the people are even better.

5. In other news this week, I have been working on an affordable, sustainable housing bill at the state level with my day job. Tuesday, it had a public hearing at the state legislature. If you’re interested in learning more, The Urbanist did a great write up (“my” bill is HB 2020).

When people ask about my early retirement plans / plans to go full entrepreneur with Women’s Personal Finance, I point them to what I’m doing at my day job. What I’m doing matters, and I am so proud to be helping to influence affordable housing and climate policy. They are our dual emergencies right now, and we’re out of time to move slowly.

So tell me – how should we “celebrate” / mark week 100?