Three-ish weeks ago, I realized I was getting incredibly twitchy over the fact that we weren’t doing anything this summer. Normally, we’d have at least one big vacation trip planned, and have kid sports or other such activities on weekends, but all of that has been shut down because of the Covid pandemic. We couldn’t even go to visit my parents, because of some family health issues.

This hits me much harder than anyone else in Chateau Steelypips, because I’m not good with having nothing to do, and I don’t really have sedentary indoor hobbies. The kids are happy to watch YouTube and play Nintendo games, and Kate does cross-stitch, but my preferred hobby activities are all out-of-the-house stuff. I’ve been taking a lot of long bike rides and going hiking with my camera, but even those things get kind of monotonous after weeks of being stuck in one place.

Having realized that, I went on AirBnB and looked for someplace safe to visit within driving distance, and found a rental cottage in Stowe. It’s a free-standing building so no need to interact with other people, it had a pool (and, as it turns out, a basketball court), and there’s no shortage of good restaurants there doing take-out. It’s also near one of my close friends from college, so we were able to get together with them outdoors in a park.

This turned out to be exactly what we needed. Okay, the attempt to do a little hiking wasn’t a smashing success– the parking lot at the very top of Mt. Mansfield was full, and after the half-mile walk to the top from the next lot down, the kids refused to go any further (I walked back down by myself, and brought the car up to get them). But the pool and the basketball court were a huge hit. The kids even tried new foods, which is a huge development, since they’re both insanely picky eaters.

So, yeah, that was our much-needed change of scenery for the weekend. That recharge will hopefully keep us sane through the next couple of weeks of prep for what’s sure to be an incredibly stressful re-start of school…