Sequestered in Seattle, Day 370

Tuesday was Nicole's second quarantine birthday. The girls woke up early with my help and made breakfast in bed. Nothing fancy, but evidently appreciated.

I forgot that Colin's teacher told us she would be unavailable today. He tried to go to class, but no one was there. We figured it out pretty quickly.

I conducted an interview at 11 this morning, and then ordered lunch from Homegrown. I took Rachel on the e-bike first to the library to pick up three books she had on hold, and then to get the sandwiches. After lunch, Nicole opened her gifts, including the book box that Rachel had put together with a copy of Circe and a Mediterranean theme.

Yesterday, Nicole's parents told us they were going to quarantine, because they both had exposure at work to people who had tested positive. They were available during the day to play Kingdom Builder with Nicole, as a consequence. Hopefully it won't come to anything.

After work, I took the three younger kids to Coe. Eric biked, Colin scooted, and Lydia walked to meet up with her friend Parker. They ended up playing tag until 6. Then it was time to go home to get dinner ready. This turned out to be quite the operation.

I ordered Mediterranean food from a small restaurant at the bottom of the hill. I drove down there with Rachel shortly after ordering. When I went in, they hadn't received the order yet, but got started on it, and estimated fifteen minutes. I went back to the car. I had left the radio on for Rachel, and that was evidently too much for the battery, or some other part of the electrical system, because shortly after I returned, the radio went off. However, the way the car indicated the problem to me was to show a message that my key id was unrecognized. This was unhelpful.

I went back to get the food, and when I returned, the car wouldn't start, but still complained about the key. I called Nicole, but she didn't answer. Eventually I thought to use the speaker on the Nest camera to hail the family, and Nicole called me back. She decided to bring her key down on the bike. But when she arrived a short time later, we found that hers didn't work, either.

She called our friend Matt. He was willing to come down and give us a ride home. But when he got there, we decided to try to jump start it instead, except the car was parked where it was inaccessible for his car, and it wouldn't shift into neutral so we could move it. He went home to get an extra battery. I took Rachel home on the bike.

Dinner was only about an hour late. Some of the food was still hot, due to foil. The guest of honor was conspicuously absent. However, the jump succeeded, and Nicole joined us before dinner was over, having returned the car to the garage.

We cleaned up dinner and immediately moved on to cake. Or so we thought. The cake that I helped Rachel make last night had three layers of brownie and two layers of raw cookie dough (no egg), with a layer of ganache between each. It was frosted with thick butterscotch frosting, and garnished with miniature cookie dough balls.

It very much resembles cake in appearance, but it's very little like cake in density. We only cut about a sixth of it, and didn't manage to eat all of that, among the six of us.

Just to be clear, it was delicious, and Nicole was more delighted with it even than I expected. It was just overwhelmingly rich and dense. I didn't even cut myself a regular piece, because I could tell just looking at it.

This will definitely be a birthday to remember, I'm just not sure which will be a better story in the long run, the car or the cake.