Why I'm banned from texting

Seclusion. Isolation. Quarantine. Words that all mean pretty much the same thing in the long run – stuck at home.

My family has gone through a lot of this recently. It started at my home when one of my daughters and her grandchild arrived from California for a visit. Shortly after they made it here from the airport my son-in-law returned home to announce he had been exposed to COVID at work. We were all vaccinated so we were not overly concerned, but needed to test and quarantine anyway.

Tests came back negative the day before they returned to California but we had one more day of ‘house arrest’. The kids went back to California the next day and the daughter that I live with, flew to Austin Texas, to pick and return with my great-granddaughter.

My grandkids had flown to Texas to visit family in June. Within a week of their arrival, my granddaughter went into premature labor and delivered a 1 pound 1 ounce baby boy named Willow. He immediately went into NICU and the grandkids all went into seclusion.

Our preemie could not have any exposure to the possibility of anything, so his three-year-old sister spent two months inside the Ronald McDonald House. By the end of August, everyone had had enough of this nonsense, so Prairie Tom is now in residence in Washington, where she will remain until the rest of her family rejoins her. Willow The Warrior, as I like to think of him, is now a little over four pounds and thriving so he may be home within the month.

In the meantime, another granddaughter and her partner arrived from California to stay with us while they look for jobs and work. The first week they were here their dogs killed all three of our ducks. Seems there was a hole in the fence we were unaware of. The burial was somber.

The day my daughter returned from Texas with my great-granddaughter, Prairie, my newly arrived granddaughter and her partner returned to California because her daughter had been admitted to the hospital, with what turned out to be gallstones.

As it turned out, when you have a child in this hospital, anyway, if you want to see, them, you must be rapid-tested and COVID-free. When you go in you can’t go back out. The Doctor decided to also remove her gallbladder so both my granddaughter and great-granddaughter spent a week in the hospital, together, in isolation.

Toward the end of all this madness, I realized we were out of duck eggs. Prairie is allergic to chicken eggs, so I sent a text to a neighbor with ducks and asked if I could buy one-half dozen duck eggs from her. She replied she only had five. I said that would be fine and she told us to come by and pick them up anytime.

Which my daughter and Prairie set out to do … returning with five ducklings. When I reread the text I sent, I discovered I had left out the word ‘eggs’ and just asked for ducks.

I am currently banned from texting.

And now word has just arrived that the great-granddaughter, who gave birth to a beautiful little boy in July, is planning a visit after she recovers from her gall bladder surgery.

Fortunately, I managed a 22-room bed and breakfast for five years in Bisbee Arizona, so I have this revolving door thing down pat. Breakfast buffets, baked goodies and plenty of wine and coffee, – and as Prairie would say, “You’ve got this Granny.”

Kathleen Anderson writes this column each week from her home in Olympia.  Contact her at  kathleen@theJOLTnews.com or post your comment below.