This is how it happens, when part of my Birth Week involves staying overnight somewhere: I get a little bit behind in posting updates, because there is never the time (or the easy ability, without a personal computer of my own at hand; mobile devices don't yet make it easy) while I am away at some other place. I like to post about each day of my Birth Week once each day, and I am still technically keeping up with that: it's just that today's post is at the end of the day, even though it'll actually be about yesterday, whereas yesterday's post, about the day before, was posted in the morning. In effect, I am two days behind instead of one—or rather, I am at a point where I could update on two days' worth—but, I want content about each day in separate posts so they can more easily be tagged and organized. This is about spending time with Jennifer yesterday. I won't have a lot of time for it, but my aim is to write about spending time with Valerie today, in tomorrow morning's post.

Boy, that was all extremely important for me to get through, wasn't it?

Anyway let's start with the primary destination of yesterday, the second in my list of ten Washington State Parks to get through: Jarrell Cove State Park, on Harstine Island near Shelton. I had never heard of it before last year when I first researched what state parks to go to, and it's not actually that big a park. And, for the second day in a row, I didn't even need my Discover Park Pass—because I just rode with Jennifer in her car, her three kids crammed in the back seat.

This was all after I drove all the way over there in my rental car: first to the Seattle waterfront to the terminal to catch the ferry to Bremerton (that cost me $16.40 each way), then the 45 minutes or so to the new house Jennifer and Matthew (and Jennifer's kids) moved into, in the tiny town called Union—population 631, it's even smaller than Wallace, Idaho!—back in February. They all refer to the house they had lived in with Eric "Kristi Court" now. The old house had just under 3,100 square feet; this one, which is oddly narrow and tall with three floors, has just over 2,100 square feet. Jennifer said she yells less now, because the kids tend to be closer by and can hear her.

Jennifer asked when I wanted to go to the park within minutes of my arrival, and I was just like, "Whenever you're ready." And she asked the kids if they wanted to come, and all three of them did. Matthew did not join, because he needed to lay down all day due to some kind of sinus infection that was making him dizzy. He was fine by this morning so I did see him then.

It took about half an hour to drive from there to Jarrell Cove State Park about 24 miles away, at the north end of the island accessed by just one fairly narrow bridge. At 67 acres it's maller than a lot of the state parks, and we did not spend an extremely long amount of time there—just long enough for me to get 19 shots, including the one of us all hiding behind trees seen in the photo at the top of this post. Those account for exactly one third of the total 57 shots in the Flickr photo album that also doubles as my latest "Overnight with Jennifer" photo album.

We all walked down little trails to piers going out into the waters of Jarrell Cove (which opens out into Case Inlet . . . which is part of Puget Sound) in two separate spots, then did a very brief "hike" on a trail further into the woods where we turned around after that just popped us back out onto the main road leading to the park. We returned to the car, and Jennifer ordered pizza for us all to have for dinner. We returned to the house, where Hope, Chase and Ian all went back to their own thing for the time being, and I rode with Jennifer again to pick up the pizzas, from a drive-through window! Why don't more pizza places do this?

Okay, so . . . let's talk COVID. Or pandemic precautions. Or lack thereof. Or however you want to put it.

This was my first overnight stay with anyone besides Shobhit since he and I went to Australia, in March 2020, having returned literally three days before things began shutting down, followed by stay-home orders, etc. As of Saturday, when I arrived at Jennifer's house, I was three days away from being two weeks past my second vaccine shot. Had I not been vaccinated (as I had fully expected to be the case until about a month ago), I would not have done this. I even told them that, and they seemed surprised. Or, at least Hope did. We'll get back to her. Anyway, were I still not vaccinated, I would have gone ahead with going to Jarrell Cove, but probably made a day trip out of it and just had Jennifer meet me there. The vaccine made me more comfortable with the idea of staying overnight, and I was the one who reached out to ask her if I do so (she said of course).

This is also pertinent: No one else from a separate household visited while I was there. I never really discussed that with Jennifer, but that was still how it happened. Unlike when I was in Dad and Sherri's house for Easter, I did not wear a mask in the house. That said, I did wonder how much mask compliance there would be as a general rule out in public, or how much Jennifer and her family would adhere to it. So far as I could tell, compliance was actually high. Jennifer and I both put our masks on even when we were still inside the car and we pulled up at the drive-through to pick up the pizzas.

This was the kind of curious thing about Jennifer, when it came to attitudes about masks, and even vaccines: she seems to be just deferring to everyone else's level of comfort with it. In public situations, she clearly wears her mask because she knows it makes people comfortable. She generally wears a mask when she delivers mail, although she did say she found that people kept their distance more when she had her mask on, and were more inclined to get closer if she wasn't wearing one. That seemed kind of bizarre.

In any case, Jennifer's basic philosophy seems to be "live and let live" with this, which, honestly, I suppose is better than one might expect. But then, who knows what to expect, given her sometimes contradictory ideas. She got her first Moderna vaccine shot on Friday, the day before I arrived, and still needed to make an appointment for the follow-up shot four weeks later. I still don't know about Matthew—I never asked—but I know that none of the kids have been vaccinated. Hope, who turned 18 last October and has over the years proved to be a surprisingly smart kid, shocked me when she revealed she doesn't want it. She actually said to me this morning over breakfast, "I just don't want to see a commercial come on ten years down the road with someone saying, 'You may be entitled to compensation.'" The thing that gets to me the most about that wrong-minded attitude is how it willfully ignores the lives literally being saved right now by vaccines.

But, Hope now being 18 aside, Jennifer is just leaving the decision up to all the kids. They are currently 18, 16 and 14, which means as of right now Ian still doesn't qualify—but, as of recently, Chase does. And it was while we were driving back to the house from the park that Jennifer mentioned she had asked Chase if he wanted to get the vaccine but he still hadn't given her an answer yet. And he gave her the answer during that car ride: yes, he wanted it. Good for him, then. Jennifer was kind of just like, "Okay," so now she'll make the appointment for him.

Oh, and on a related note, here's a bit of a "small world" trip I stumbled across through Hope: she has a best friend who is living with another friend, whose dad's name is Justin. Hope mentioned Justin's last name, and I recognized it. I was like—wait. That Justin? He and his brother, and another boy, all lived with me in the same bedroom from when I was 7 until 9, and the same man sexually molested us all. On the upside, that man is dead now. But, those brothers have a little sister who is of course also grown now, is on my Facebook friends list, and is a vehement anti-vaxxer. This was how we confirmed that it's the same person Hope knows: she has also met the anti-vaxxer sister when over at the aforementioned friend's house. Their mom had been really close friends with my mom. Anyway, the anti-vax shit was too much on my Facebook feed so although I did not unfriend her, I unsubscribed her posts several months ago.

Hope told me this woman is so nutso about anti-vaccine sentiment that she was literally warned when she came over: "Don't bring up vaccines around her." Then someone started talking about vaccines, and the woman (whose name I'm just choosing not to put here) "was crying hysterically" about it. I asked for clarification on this, to see if maybe Hope was being hyperbolic, and evidently not. Jesus Christ. Hope says the woman knew a baby who had some kind of fatal, freak reaction to some vaccine (I have no more specific information than that, so I honestly don't even trust that this is strictly true) and it has made her basically an evangelist against vaccines.

I can't speak to that woman much more than that, as I have never known her particularly well, especially as adults. But Hope is a different story. She's absolutely smart enough to know better than this, which is what makes it a disappointment that she is resisting getting vaccinated. It's shit like this that makes the pandemic itself last far longer than it should, because people far too readily believe bullshit that has no evidence beyond what boils down to memes. And memes are not evidence. (Neither are anecdotes.) It seems like Hope believes she is making an informed decision, even though clearly she is not. But, we're still stuck with the fact that she is eighteen and can make whatever dumb choice she wants.

Anyway. It's true that it would have been far safer for me not to stay overnight with them, but, that not being the option I took, with me being vaccinated the risk was fairly minimal. Getting vaccinated is easily the most urgent and important thing right now, and I have done that. I suppose I should just leave it there; I don't want to get too deep into sounding defensive. I made a choice and I know what the choices mean. (Incidentally, Shobhit's friend Sachin has been resistant to vaccination too, his girlfriend even more so. The other day he was nearby and wanted Shobhit to meet up with them at a bar somewhere, which Shobhit might have done—except Sachin and his girlfriend had another friend with them that Shobhit does not know, and I guess that was the line for Shobhit. Because of that extra person with them, Shobhit declined.)

I'm glad I went. I had a good time. Mercifully, there was not a single bit of political talk between Jennifer and me, which makes it better for everyone involved under any circumstances. I think it helps that the profound disappointment of her voting for President Fuckwit is now distanced by the man having lost his bid for reelection. She was never a fan of the guy, the vote was more one against Hillary, which in a way made it even more disappointing, but, whatever. I actually have no idea who she voted for in last year's election, and figure it best not to get into it no matter what the answer is. I really can't abide by this idea of cutting people out of your life because of things like this; Jennifer means a lot to me and always will. It's not like she ever did things like Sarah—then Jennifer's mother-in-law—showing up to family reunions wearing a MAGA hat. There's a clear difference between types of people there.

Besides, and I think this is particularly important to be reminded of: the experience of someone in person is wildly different from experiencing them online, or specifically on Facebook. I honestly envy the people who have jumped ship from that site. They're the ones no longer getting played by algorithms. I could never claim that I'm not.

As for this morning, I sort of lucked out that they all get tired and go to bed early, because after Jennifer made us several shots and then at least two cocktails—and I miraculously did not wake up with a hangover—she served us all blueberry cream cheese French bread casserole for breakfast. I slept in Chase's bedroom as usual; got up at 6:30 and was ready an hour later. After breakfast, I was able to head out by 10 a.m. right on schedule. From there I drove up to Port Townsend to meet up with Valerie, but I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

[posted 10:17 pm]