Lascours Lockdown, Day 451

Tuesday, June 8th. 

When we got to school, Maxime's brother Alexandre came up and handed me a bouquet of wildflowers and a snail shell "for Tiger." Their dog died two weeks ago and they buried him in their grandparents' yard with rocks piled up to mark the site, so he knows all about memorializing dead pets. Back home, I set up a little memorial with Tiger's favorite hippo pillow on his favorite napping spot and took a photo to send to Penny for Alexandre.

For the rest of the morning, I busied myself with groceries and errands, wrapping Maeva's gift for Laureva, various administrative work tasks, and setting up an appointment for fiber-optic installation. 

This afternoon, I was doing some prep for my detective fiction class when I heard Marie-Elisabeth bringing in some laundry and went to talk to her. As we were talking, she shrieked and jumped. There was a large centipede a good six inches long on the floor of our laundry room that must have just fallen out of the laundry or off her clothes and had started to bite her foot. Luckily, she shook it off before it could do much damage. I grabbed the dome from our cheese plate to trap it. Then before I could take care of it, the phone rang and I had to run down to the mailbox for a delivery. When I returned, Marie-Elisabeth had managed to kill and dispose of it.

After school, the girls and I went to the nursery. Laureva wanted to get little plants to give as party favors, Maeva wanted a plant for her room and I wanted a sorb apple tree for Frederique's birthday gift. Laureva picked out little succulents for her friends, and a yellow rose and some other pink flower for the garden. Maeva picked out a plant for her room and a new purslane plant for one of the box on the patio where we had one last year. No luck on the sorb apples. They said they hadn't had any since last fall. I might go with an aloe vera plant now, but I haven't decided yet. As we were checking out, the girls spotted the nursery cat, a gray tabby. They asked if they could pet it and were given permission by the owner. I didn't see the ensuing interaction, but they said they did get to pet it and that it was very soft.

Back home, Laureva baked her birthday brownies for tomorrow (she decided she'd prefer those to a chocolate cake) and I baked a batch of unicorn mix sugar cookies for some of my students who are throwing a graduation party tomorrow.

The radio was reporting today that the National Council of Medical Advisors says the outdoor mask mandate should be able to be lifted in July and August if current vaccination trends continue and half the population has received at least first doses by June 30th. There is some worry, however, about a fourth wave in September due to variants. The Delta (formerly Indian) variant is currently making a nuisance of itself in France. Several large clusters have been identified recently.

I've been wondering lately about what to set as a target for ending this series of posts: Full vaccination for Sylvain and myself? Full vaccination for the girls as well? The end to all pandemic-related restrictions? I have not yet been able to make a decision.