AubrysInFrance - only we're NOT

The plan was to go to Anna's Fresno High School reunion, visit family in Fresno and the Bay Area, come home, wash clothes, pack again, and get on a non-stop for CDG.  Nathalie, our landlady had our dates blocked on her rental calendar, and we were looking forward to settling back into "our" apartment.  Then a sub-microscopic thing changed all that.

Suddenly our plans for France as well as all our fun meetings, grandkid visits, book groups, Happy Hours, MahJong games, volunteer activities, church, dinner with friends, getting hair cuts, going out to a restaurant, etc., etc. were gone.  Poof!  And, yes, we're using Zoom and Skype, but it's just not the same. 

Our priorities changed overnight: 

• Anna started cranking out masks for each us on her trusty sewing machine,
• We finally figured out how to change the name on the screen on Zoom from "Anna" to "David and Anna" so the folks in Rotary would quit asking David where Anna was,
• Anna did some research and found out how to get embroidery floss from Joann's (Anna had left hers in Lyon since she normally uses it there),
• David figured out that we could occasionally get nice restaurant meals from Maximilien's Restaurant in Seattle by ordering and paying online and then meeting our connection in an empty Starbuck's parking lot in Bellevue, a city near us (sounds cloak and dagger, doesn't it?),
• Anna cut David's hair and dyed hers,
• Anna got serious about spending time each day studying French,
• David spent tons of time on the Rotary CKC project - even repainting the very fading Northern Pacific Railroad logos on both sides of the old railroad track bridge. [Side note:  this is the bridge that is also known as the "truck eating bridge," and sure enough, the bridge caught another one while David was on a ladder painting. See below.]



This 12'6" high truck couldn't quite get through the 11'6" high bridge. 
And, yes, that is David on the ladder.



• Note - the Northern Pacific was an old railroad that ran through Kirkland and disappeared into the Burlington Northern after merging with the Burlington and the Great Northern Railroads.

Finished NPRR Logo 

On a positive note, we have actually seen rhododendrons in our yard in bloom for the first time, and we discovered how lovely all those bulbs that Anna keeps planting look when they are in bloom.  This is actually the first time in ten (10!) years that we have been home at this time of the year.