The Day I Dug for Four Hours

So 'dug' is maybe a bit of an exaggeration....more like raked and tilled and then got down on my hands and knees and pulled chunks of grass for four hours. And it was GLORIOUS. We are putting a garden in this year -an actual in the ground garden, rather than another raised bed creation. We are putting it in right next to the street. Technically...this is in the hell strip between the street and the sidewalk and the city has all claim to it - except when it is time to mow it. However, it just looks like wasted space and opportunity to me - so we rotatilled it up and I am going to plant somewhat short plants and see if anyone gives me a hard time. Tomorrow we are going to put some logs around it and fill it up with mulch - and then I am good to start planting.

Our first week of distance learning was pretty brutal - but we made it through. Our kindergartner has a pretty good handle on the things she has to do - her teacher does cute videos and she only gave the kids a lesson or two a day. My first grader? His teacher is fantastically old-school and I love it - but she is trying to continue a full day worth of curriculum at home and we just can't do it and keep from having mental breakdowns. So I did end up calling her and negotiating to a schedule that is more manageable for our house right now. I feel a lot better having talked with her and adjusted our schedule a bit, hopefully next week will be a much better week for us.

Today was the day our high school daughter should have had her senior prom. She is with her mom right now and they got her all dressed up and went for car visits to family and took pictures in her dress. She looked just gorgeous. I keep waiting for her school to come up with some kind of senior send off plan for all these kids to make up for these missed milestones, but I think they are waiting just like the rest of us to see what the future brings. We are already plotting about holding a hillbilly prom for her and some friends out in my sister's pole barn once we are free to move around the world again. Just tough not knowing when that will be. Her grad party is planned for mid-June and it isn't looking like that is going to work out right now either, so we will have to adjust again. I should be fantastic at adjusting by now....

We have done some fantastic things in these last few weeks - there is much to be said for silver linings. My husband is going gangbusters on projects we have been talking about for a while. He has our basement almost completely remodeled. What once was a bedroom and a giant holding space for all our stuff is now two bedrooms, a workroom, a family room, and a workout space. It makes me super happy. It almost didn't happen. He and I have a pattern we go through. I am a dreamer and a planner and a reworker - I am always looking at stuff and thinking how it could work better. He always half listens to my ideas, tell me they are ridiculous and/or impossible, and then eventually comes around while complaining still, and then at the end tells me how fantastic it is. We make a good team of vision and know-how... we just have to iron out the middle part of the process to be more efficient. So the basement is almost done, we have a new garden in, he rebuilt the downstairs shower, he retiled in front of the fireplace, he painted twenty different things outside red, and has burned a lot of stuff in the fire pit. A LOT. None of this EVER would have happened right now normally. Normally spring is the beginning of crazy season for him, normally I have to hunt him down to have a conversation and run the house pretty much alone while he is out bringing home the spring bacon. So silver lining....my honey to do list is getting decimated.

Also on this silver lining list...waking up without an alarm clock, movie nights cuddled with my kids, Zoom Catan, family meals, as many campfire nights as we want, going out on a Thursday night to watch the stars, all the acts of kindness I see happening all over the community, unlimited garden time, reading an entire book, puzzling with my husband on my new puzzle board, bike rides....and on and on and on. We have belly laughed every day and are spending time on our family and our home together. I miss many things, but keeping focused on all these silver linings is going to keep me going.

The Day I Did Math

Ok, so what exactly are the consequences for NOT doing distance learning? Apart from all of social media either shaming me for my poor parenting choices and/or hailing me as their new hero?

I am distance learning -with worksheets- with a 6 and 7 year old. Just old enough to have to do homework but young enough to not really be able to do it independently. And apparently their teachers do not read my blog, because if they did they would have seen that I specifically requested NOT to distance learn with worksheets because it is torture and I do not want to be an alcoholic. My kids loathe worksheets. We were very content bumping along with our learning apps and reading out loud. We like Zoom and Google Classroom. Worksheets are just soul crushing. For example...

My 7 yr old is a math whiz. Has been since he was tiny. Fought phonics and reading every single step of the way and couldn't blend a word to save his life, but asked me to quiz him on math facts for fun at 4. I should take him to a bar and make some money off his mental math game. He just has this number brain. So he can do a 'math minute' app that I bought and get all 15 right in under a minute for anything adding or subtracting to 20. ONE MINUTE. His first grade math worksheet? Twenty simple addition facts? It took him FIFTEEN MINUTES. Because he hates it and whines and complains. Or because his brain doesn't work on paper...in our house...for me. Which is also possible.

But alas...we must press on...for now.

I keep trying to adjust it so it goes more smoothly. I did part in the morning, part in the afternoon. Then I took them out star gazing and ruined their sleep schedules and started late today. Tomorrow we are going to try doing one big block of time. We have moved locations - from the very structured table to the reading nook on pillows to their desks in their room. Eventually....something is going to click. I am sure. We just aren't there yet. Today I bribed them with snacks, which seemed to work well. My kids are highly food motivated.

It just feels like so much right now. So many hats to wear, all of them half falling off...not one of them too much on its own... but all of them -all at once -during such a stressful time- it feels HEAVY.

Soooooo...I give it next week still and then things may just have to drop off. Or get turned into summer school. I will be calling and negotiating with teachers. How about I turn in half of those worksheets....but bump up reading by 50%? That sounds like perfect distance learning math to me.

The Day We Biked in Parking Lots

So tonight we went for a bike ride with the two little kids and, despite all the neat places within our range, they led us to parking lot after parking lot. Because they could go in big circles really fast. Fact #503 proving that kids are easily entertained - don't waste your money buying them crap. Right??? However, even parking lot circles were exciting for us, too. It felt good after this cold snap to get outside for a while today. We also went to our neighborhood park and ran up and down the big grassy hill while Dad hit golf balls with his pitching wedge and dreamed.

Our household underwent a pretty massive shift this weekend - dropping from 7 to 4 inhabitants. My baby sister was living with us for the last month, keeping away from our parents who are considered higher risk- but part of the generation that apparently thinks they have some built in magic left from the 70's that will keep them from getting anything. So we have quarantined them for their own good, but amid much protest. Anywhoo...my baby sister moved out to my other sister's barn. That sounds rough, but it is heated and has its own fridge and tv, soooooo not really hard living. We played Catan via Zoom yesterday - nothing is going to stand in our way of conquering the world of board games.

Our older two kids switched back to their mom's house this weekend as well. They have been with us for three weeks, but as it becomes apparent that this isn't ending anytime soon we adjusted and sent them off armed with masks to rejoin their mama and family they had been missing. Such a weird world this is right now. So now we are down to just the four of us, which is a very VERY different dynamic than the one we had with seven. Life is adjusted once again. This mama is getting a divine lesson on going with the flow this year. I hear ya, God. I'm trying.

Tomorrow starts our distance learning. Our first grader appears to have a significant amount of actual learning to be done. Our kindergartner....not so much. We sat down all together to agree on 'school time' in an effort to head off complaining and whining - and had a conversation about how this isn't summer vacation yet and we still have work to do. We will revisit how well this goes tomorrow night - but just to be safe, I had the hubby grab me a new bottle of Gentlemen Jack on his grocery run. Self care.

The Day My Baby Turned Six

Alternately...The Day We Had a Covid Birthday Party

AKA...The Day We Received Clear Confirmation That Our Littles Get Wild Without Routine...

Ok, we had a great day. I worried a bunch for nothing. Baby Girl woke up this morning super excited to be the birthday girl for the day. She understood right from the start that people wouldn't be coming over and was just excited for her mail and the people that stopped by to say Happy Birthday through the door or from the driveway. She had lots of calls and facetimed with her friends. She loved her birthday cake that her big sister made her. She loved all the letters and packages that came in the mail - there were so many she had to take a break in the middle of opening them all. I can't thank my cyber tribe enough for coming through with all that. She got a big girl gift from Mom and Dad that she probably wouldn't have if it were a normal birthday. So she can thank coronavirus for her makeup and vanity table. Mama probably would've declared that too big for her during normal circumstances, but these are not normal times and some things should be good surprises. It is also why Baby Boy is allowed to play Fortnite with his big brother. Exceptions are being made.

At her request, Daddy made a last minute pinata out of an Amazon box (pinatas are in short supply around here, but Amazon boxes are plentiful) and leftover Easter candy. They beat it with a baseball bat in the front yard - Baby Girl dressed in her fancy, flowered Easter dress and striped pants and snow boots. We picked up pizza for dinner and sang and let her blow out candles. We gave her some extra quarantine gifts, which included a bath doll and she immediately abandoned the cake and ran upstairs for a bath and jammies. And then, after chatting with some more friends and sneaking out of her bed, she curled up on Mama's lap and fell asleep while I watched Thor with Daddy. My baby girl, the youngest one, my brand new six year old. Bittersweet. Let me tell you, I enjoyed that late night cuddle - soaked it right on up.

This girl....she is just walking sunshine. She wakes up excited and ready to start her day. She throw her heart into everything she is doing - even if that thing she is doing is getting into mischief. She has the sweetest heart and thinks of others all the time. She is clever, her brain works in the coolest way. She sees the shape of things, the way they fit...she calls herself the puzzle master and she can sit down with me and work any size puzzle and make pieces fit. She just sees the pattern in her head. She makes up back stories for all her dolls and horses and bunny people. She comes up with the funniest ideas - since we have been quarantined, she has decided to wear all her clothes inside out and backwards 90% of the time. Not sure how I am going to talk her into fixing that when we can leave the house again. She talks to Jesus like he is her close confident and she sings about Him randomly all over the place. She is passionate and loud and exuberant. She just lights up our lives. Can't wait to see how she changes the world in the next 365 days.

The Day I Really Missed My Family

Happy Easter all! This was a weird Easter, right? It wasn't just me? It was so...unsettling? unfinished? uneasy? I don't know what the right word is, but family is such a giant part of how we celebrate holidays that it was just eerie without it. There was these huge gaps of time that just lay gaping there - the time we would have spent getting ready and going to church, the time I would've been rushing around getting dinner for 30 set up and served, the time where normally the kids would all run off and adults would break into groups to talk and pull out decks of cards. These big pockets of time that just hung there today like silent reminders of all we can't do.

On a scale of 1-10, how bad of a Christian am I, that on the day that is arguably the most joyous of the year, the day Jesus rose from the dead, I had to grapple with finding my joy? But I did, and there was lots of it. I just had to dig deep for it and not throw in the towel or spend too much time grieving my tribe.

Joy in waking up this morning with Baby Girl bouncing on my bed, yelling, "Let's go find some eggs!" and Baby Boy grumbling from where he was curled up at the bottom of my bed, "Go back to sleep, it's too early, we will find them later." These two couldn't be more opposite.

Joy in watching Baby Boy tell his dad that the Easter Bunny always hides chocolate eggs on the tops of doorframes, remembering I thought the same thing when I was little and my dad would line them up so high.

Joy in watching our big kids giggling about 'the Easter Bunny' and joining in hunting down baskets and bonus quarantine presents. They are such good big siblings to our littles, God really knew what he was doing when he assembled our family.

Joy in our big kids coming home from their moms with bonus Easter gifts for the littles from their mom - bonus family is such an unexpected blessing that you don't think about when you enter into a blended family, but there is just that much more love for all these kids.

Joy in our Easter feast, a fun mix of brunch and dinner that came together perfectly in the end - and in Baby Girl saying grace using the Our Father, skipping a few parts. Different but sweet.

Joy in cuddling for movie time and new scooter tracks in the carpet and boardgames and family messages...

So.Much.Joy.

Hard-fought-for joy still counts as joy. It might even count a little bit more.

The Day I Snoozed ALOT of People

There is this beautiful option on Facebook that lets you 'snooze' a friend's posts for 30 days so their 'stuff' doesn't clog up your feed if they are wound up over things. In the past, I have rarely used this feature. In theory, if you are my friend, I am interested in what you are doing. If I am not, I wouldn't have become your friend, right? However...

Coronavirus has brought out the brightest and the ugliest in people, hasn't it? There is so much beautiful, loving, giving vibes going out into the world. People everywhere sewing masks, putting rainbows in all their windows, donating food....businesses giving discounts and holding payments and making sure kids have internet and meals...teachers reaching out to their kids through any means possible. Prayer circles and online churches, birthday car parades and letter writing campaigns....so much good.

And the ugly. The ugly is filling up my feed and it just needs to go. I have snoozed anyone spewing the ugly. Here is my very blunt, very passionate, very measured response to all the people complaining that they can't go boating right now. Grow the fuck up. Yup, used the f-word. Don't even feel bad about it. As of 10 a.m. today, 23993 people in Michigan have Covid and 1392 people in Michigan have died. One hundred and eight THOUSAND, five hundred and three people have died in the world. 108,503. Dead. And you are being asked to sit in your very comfortable, heated home - stocked with plenty to eat, if not your first choices - with delivery and take out available - with Amazon and everyone shipping you anything you could need (but not in 2 days) - with Netflix and internet and smart phones and a hundred other things to do - with the ability to go out and walk or bike or fish from a dock or ROW a boat - safe with your family. But all I have heard in the last 24 hours is....how dare they tell me I can't go out on my boat. Do you hear how incredibly first world self-entitled that sounds?

There are 108,503 problems more important to deal with than your access to a motorboat. First, all the people that died and their grieving families. Second, all the people struggling with the diagnosis right now and hoping to be a positive statistic - and their families that can't be with them and are sitting home worried out of their minds. Third, all the people not affluent enough to own a motorboat - that are probably stretching their dollars hoping to make it until the unemployment shit show sorts itself out. Fourth, all the kids that have had their lives upended - seniors that lost their graduations, athletes that lost their season, all kids that were struggling in school and don't have the support at home to keep up that will start next year way behind. Fifth, all the at risk population like the elderly or handicapped that are isolated and going downhill from it - or worried because they know if they get it, the odds are stacked way against them. Sixth....well, you get the idea.

If you have your bills paid, food in your cupboards, family tucked in and safe - quit complaining about freaking boats. You are beyond blessed. Take all that time you would have spent boating and do something to put some good out into the world. Or at least quit spewing all your negative all over my world. I am trying to hold up my family in strange, uncertain, challenging times and you are shitting on my socially distant parade. Cease and desist.

The Day We Challenged Facebook to a Cake War

Oh yeah...you read that right. Time to make Easter weekend memorable peeps! (Haha...peeps! I crack me up...CRACK! HA!)

My family, who are all still asleep and have no idea what I am signing them up for, is challenging anyone out there to a bunny cake war. When they wake up they will be super excited about this, I promise. If we had two ovens, our house would have had several cake war challenges by now.

Here are the rules:

You must make a cake. You may not buy a cake.

Said cake can be any shape, any size...it can be from a box or from scratch...it can by in the shape of a bunny or any crazy shape with a bunny somewhere on it. It can be a straight up 9x13 pan with a toy bunny shoved in the middle. It can be a disaster of a cake where you over-believed in your skill set and ended up with a mountain of cake pieces held together with frosting...with a bunny mountain climber. Your call.

The final product photo must be posted in the comments of the Facebook post by 10pm.

Here is the criteria for scoring:

1 point for declaring your family in
1 point for a photo of your cake being mixed/baked
1 point for a photo of your cake being decorated
2 points for a video of a family member explaining your creation
5 points for a photo of your end result

It is my deepest hope that we have multiple ties for first place. It is within your grasp my friends. Winners will all get an all-caps winner shout out from me on their Facebook page. I know, contain yourselves. Ready....set....bake!

The Day I Got Shit Done

So today...was productive. Today I got stuff done.

With as much time as I *should* have being at home 24/7, I should be rocking projects out like Ty Pennington. Sadly, that has not been the case thus far. For many reasons. Everyone is here all the time. Kids need things constantly. Mama is the one that creates the schedule for the day and steers the ship...if I step away from the rudder for too long, everyone is on Jetskis acting liking lunatics. Everyone always wants to eat. I am trying to teach these children something, anything for at least part of the day. Added to that, most of the time my job isn't something I can hop in and out of in between tasks. At least 2-3 days, I need to get sunk in and focused for a set period of time. I don't want to say I have it figured out yet (because I make plans and God laughs) BUT...I may have a working theory on how to work at least the weekdays. We are getting there...

Today I really rocked out all the things that I needed to accomplish so I can peacefully enjoy the weekend. I wrapped up a big chunk of a project for work - that is now in someone else's hands for a while. Breathe. I delivered groceries to my tribe that shouldn't be in a grocery store, sanitized and safe. Breathe. I successfully put the two little kids down for bed before 8 - which used to be our normal routine but has gotten off the rails this last week. Breathe. I took out my staple gun and put sheeting over all my vulnerable little tomato plants so this insane Michigan weather doesn't beat them all down and destroy my hard work. Breathe. I wrapped all the bonus quarantine presents I bought for Easter and have finalized my candy requests with the Easter Bunny. Breathe. All Baby Girl's birthday presents are on track to be here in time for her Quarantine Birthday Party on Tuesday. Breeeeeeaaaaathe.

My house is still a work in progress. The kitchen counter hasn't been clean one day this week. I assigned Baby Girl towels to fold and they have are still sitting in the pile on the carpet in the playroom - which reminds me, I need to grab a floor towel before I head to the shower. I have religiously sanitized the mailbox and front door, but am pretty lackluster about the rest of the house this week. But everyone has clean underwear and cereal bowls soooooo....life is good.

The kids are all doing remarkably well still. We had our first sibling yelling match today, but it blew over very quickly and easily. Honestly I am shocked it took this long. Most of the family went fishing yesterday and our almost-high-school grad caught herself the first fish of the year! Baby Girl continues to need her socialization and spends a lot of time talking to her friends on her tablet. Our boys have been pretty immersed in Fortnite, even pulling in the girls from time to time. We are continuing to do an hour of 'school' in the morning - rotating through stations of math, reading, and 'other'. I am really impressed with the Todo Math app we are using. It has a daily lesson and challenges - both kids like it and it is just challenging enough. This week we have been doing letter writing as our 'other' station instead of typing just to change it up. If you get a letter from my 7 yr old son and it says, 'Stay home'...please don't be offended...lol...he really means stay safe, but he is really blunt. He didn't really understand what I meant when I said he could soften it up a bit. He will not be a good politician. Starting on the 20th, the kids all will have actual lessons from their schools - each one looking different depending on the teachers. I have heard from Baby Girl's teacher and they will be using a Google Classroom for some paperwork and doing Zoom storytime three days a week. Then she will have a one on one with her teacher on Zoom once a week. She is in kindergarten. That is pretty much all I know for now. It might get interesting around here with four kids on different schedules all trying to Zoom or Google. It is either going to be great or I am going to need to double my wine and Milky Way order every week. Time will tell.

The Day I Mom-magic-ed Hard

I take my job as bringer of childhood magic pretty seriously. Not in a grandiose, giant-bouncy-house-tables-full-of-candy kind of way...but in a small-pockets-of-sunshine kind of way. There are a couple of days that get the magic ramped up though - Christmas, Easter, birthdays. And in a family that celebrates with our giant tribe - Easter and a six year birthday without our tribe is looming hard on my mama heart.

My side of the family rotates holidays - and my holiday to host is Easter. Obviously, that is not happening this year. And I have been spinning out a bit thinking of how to make this Easter different enough to feel like a true holiday with lots of magic when we are living in a time where every day seems to be bleeding into the next, with nothing to mark the days as different from one another. Normally on Easter, after the magic of the Easter bunny, we get all dressed up in new spring dresses and hairbows. Baby Girl gets a little matching purse. We go sing Hallelujah and then come home to meet our waves of family showing up. We do an egg hunt and run around and then sit down together and feast and drink. At some point, decks of cards come out or a bonfire gets lit and the kids get let wild while the adults relax. This year, the Easter bunny and I have plotted. Normal Easter baskets will be coming, with hidden eggs. Mom and Dad also got each of our kids an extra covid-easter gift that they can use outside during this shelter in place. I have an Easter ham in the freezer so we will have a big Easter dinner. And I have a gazillion plastic eggs floating around in my basement somewhere that can be put into service for an egg hunt in our yard. Easter Mass with the bishop is live streaming at 8am - is it sacrilegious to have the bishop in the background as my kids exclaim over Easter baskets? Cuz that is how I foresee the timing working out. Someone tell the bishop to conference with the Easter bunny next time we have a pandemic and adjust Mass time accordingly.

Two days after Easter and whatever magic I can muster...Baby Girl turns six. Not even going to lie - Mama bought extra presents this year. I think it is a rule. If you have a birthday during quarantine, your birthday budget gets an extra $50. (We will just say it was 50...) I asked my FB friends to send her cards and they have started to come in. Thank you so much to the people who are sending cards and gifts - our virtual tribe :) I ordered some streamers from Amazon last week and after she goes to sleep Monday night, we are going to streamer off the dining room and set up the table with everything everyone mailed in along with breakfast birthday cake - so she can wake up and break down her 'streamer wall' and see all the birthday love first thing in the morning. I am going to try and set up some Zoom video chats with family through the day so she can connect with everyone that would normally have been at our house for her live-in-person party. I think we are going to make homemade pizza dough and let everyone make their own pizzas. And obviously, have more cake and sing and give her our gifts. And then I think we are going to rent a new movie that should be in theaters right now off of Amazon and have a giant family movie night in the living room.

So if anyone has any mama magic tips for making Easter or birthdays special, I would love the ideas. Even if I can't implement them fast enough for this week's upcoming events - it feels like I am going to need some tricks up my sleeve for many weeks to come.

The Day I Bit My Tongue 100 Times

Here is how to best explain what kind of day I had yesterday...

I angry typed a blog post after I put the kids to bed, with lots of all caps letters and some ranting and a swear word or two. I used the phrases, "for the love of all that is holy" and "educate yourselves" in a mean spirited way. I got intense satisfaction of how impressively I was thwacking the keys on my keyboard - TWO typing classes in high school, take THAT techie millennials! Mama can type! With the right fingers! Without looking! THWACK. THWACK.

I almost hit publish. So close. Twenty year old Stephanie totally would have. Thirty year old Stephanie probably would have. Forty year old Stephanie thought maybe I should just hit save and sleep on it before possibly hurting the feelings of people in my life and sounding like a raving lunatic. Then I went to bed. And then I woke up at 4am, thinking of all the ways I could put this better, more succinctly. More likely to make someone listen. (For the record, if I wrote at 4am every night, I could be a novelist. I am most creative when the bats are out. However, I would be a freaking terrible mother.)

Yesterday, I ended the day seething with angst, bubbling up with frustration and heart wrenching worry. I spent the day working mostly. I manage a medical office - a medical office that is still operational and testing coronavirus patients. I have an entire staff of people I care about deeply that go to work every day afraid. I have staff that we had to lay off that are relieved to be home, but worried about how the government promises of help are overworked and slow to move. I have not stepped foot in the office in three weeks. My partner and our assistant manager are boots on the ground and doing an incredible job. They come from work and strip outside before going in to immediately shower and wash their scrubs so they don't bring any stray, sneaky germ into their homes. My partner sends me home paper packets - which I pick up with gloves or clorox wipes, sanitize the envelope, and then leave in a safe place outside for another 24 hours before opening - just to be safe. We have had to make decisions which we never even imagined would be on the radar and to forward think ten steps ahead to be prepared for something we have never faced.

And I look down my street and see a cable guy hop out of his truck - no mask, no gloves - and walk over to another parked truck and lean in the driver window to talk to the man driving - also not wearing a mask or gloves.

I have a younger sister who works in our office. She lives home with our parents - and my mom is high risk. My mom gets some kind of unshakeable respiratory illness every winter and was in the midst of one when corona came to town. So my sister moved in with me. She upended her normal life- a life that was mostly quiet and calm with lots of privacy- and moved in to my half finished basement rec room on a futon with her dog and my four kids and my cat. There are seven people in this house and one dopey loveable dog that is determined to befriend my arrogant adorable cat. (I know arrogant and adorable don't sound like they go together - you would need to meet my cat - he is awesome, if you aren't a dog) So my sister has made this sacrifice that is difficult on her - flipped her world upside down and has her living out of whatever she grabbed and stashed in her car that first day. My family had adjusted our routine and enveloped her in - but that was also not without growing pains.

And then I go to my parent's house armed with my sanitizers and gloves - and my father mocks me for sanitizing the lid of his trash can. And pokes at me for 'this nonsense' because he isn't going to die.

And then I go to Rite Aid because it is necessary - and I buy the strangest of assortment of goods I have ever bought from a Rite Aid, because if I am chancing going in public then I am damn well going to get every oddball thing we may need. Easter candy, batteries, more Cheetos, shampoo, and three bottles of wine....to name a few. And there are two cashiers sitting on stools side by side. Neither are wearing gloves or masks. The counter has a little bin of what looks like teeny tiny condoms - they are for your finger for the credit card machine. But if I reached in to touch one - I would touch about ten. (I totally had my own gloves on) The cashier probably touched my (gloved) hand three or four times while handing me groceries - he has zero sense of danger or caution.

And I go on Facebook and see people spouting theories - conspiracy theories and misinformation and sharing this like it is fact.

And I have close family members that use the phrases, "We are all going to get it anyway, who cares" and "I am healthy, I will be fine" and "we have probably already all had it and didn't know it anyway".

And I come home and my husband tries to argue something with me that I know to be 100% fact and his entire argument against me is "people know this, it is common sense, look it up" I have! I know I am right! And you sharing your opinion is not just annoying, but potentially harmful to people that need the correct information. And that isn't me needing to be right - it is me being informed and taking the time to find the facts.

And that was the last straw for me. I cannot fight the whole freaking world. I went upstairs, locked myself in the bathroom with every face cream and shower product I have squirreled away in my room and turned the water as hot as I could stand it while stress eating my (sanitized) Rite Aid Cheetos. I turned up some Casting Crowns on my phone, lost my shit a bit, and practiced self care. I came out, put the kids to bed, plugged in my headphones with my Christian friends still singing and found a Jodi Picoult book to lose myself in until I fell asleep. It was a smart decision.

I feel better now. Yesterday is closed. Done. One more day marked off on our corona calendar. Tomorrow starts fresh...in about three hours.

The Day I Cut Her Hair

Haircuts are a funny thing we never gave any thought to before quarantine life. I have been rocking the mom ponytail/bun/half up, half falling out style for many years now, so I am not in any danger of cutting myself bangs or thinking I know how to do fringe. However...my children are apparently very healthy and grow hair like gorillas on steroids. So we are learning new skills, my husband and I.

He used the clippers on our seven year old son - with pretty decent results. His bang line is a little somber - a very serious straight line. Apparently he doesn't want to learn how to do fringe either. But Baby Boy is a little bit of a serious child so he was pleased with it. Our teenage daughter dyed her hair a pretty pink color that washes out. Our teenage boy is refusing to let us touch his hair (he may be the only smart one here, time will tell) and is instead taken to wearing his hair in a little waterfall ponytail on the top of his head - like we used to do to Baby Girl when she was a toddler. Baby Girl has decided to dye her hair blue, but Amazon must not believe hair dye for almost six year olds is essential because it is taking a pretty long time to get here. Her plan was to cut her hair and dye it, but with the delay we went ahead and bobbed it today - and she is ecstatic. Which is great, because it was a pretty 50/50 shot that I was going to blow it and make her cry buckets of tears. So now Baby Girl is bobbed, Baby Boy is happy and serious, and our teenagers are rolling with it. One more covid hurdle jumped.

Today I packed up my to-go bag of covid essentials: hand sanitizer, face mask, sanitized pack of disposable gloves, and giant container of sanitizer wipes. I loaded it into my used-to-be-a-soccer-mom minivan with the two teenagers and we headed off to bleach/sanitize mailboxes and stair railings at mine and Brent's parents house. They live across the street from each other - so I just wandered between houses with my arsenal of virus fighting tools and wiped stuff down while my kids assembled patio furniture for my dad in the backyard...wearing masks and avoiding touching anything. Then we sanitized the entire deck, all the new furniture, and everything we possibly could have touched outside all the way back to the mini-van. If felt....surreal. Like a weird sci-fi movie. My mom waving through the front door as I wiped down her door handles. Having to second guess every thing I may have touched. Wearing masks at my childhood home. Feeling guilty and furtively glancing around like we were skirting the law. This is such a very strange time.

The Day School Was Cancelled

How is everyone doing? School is officially cancelled for the year and I don't know whether to be sad because life is so weird and I am not sure how this 'distance learning' thing is going to go - or to be happy because it would have been hell on wheels trying to shove these kids back into a school routine after being off for a month. Also, we have a high school senior in our house - which is heart wrenching. We have all her graduation party announcements sitting ready to go out - but in all reality, we may not be free to congregate in groups on that date so everything is in limbo. We are still hopeful her school district will create some kind of senior send off with a prom and a graduation of some kind. If not, we are improvising with a hillbilly prom in Aunt Em's barn when it is safe - viruses are not going to keep us down!
(
We have tried some fun new things the last few days. We took chalk and went out to graffiti people's cement. Super fun. (PSA: chalk is incredibly hard to find, I couldn't get any online. My husband went to Menards for plumbing supplies for the bathroom and I asked him to check there and he stocked us back up.) We subscribed to Zoom so we can video conference with anyone we can badger into talking to us if we feel cut off. Baby Girl is on my tablet right now with her kindergarten teacher, walking her around our house and showing her our cat - sorry, Mrs. S - you may be seeing way more of my dirty laundry than you wanted to! We have video-ed with our cousins and school friends. We have tried out our two new games - Blokus and Even Steven's Odd. Both fantastic! And both easy enough to play with smaller kids, but still competitive with older people - which is important with our span of ages in this household. As a newly-home-teaching mom, I am very impressed with Todo Math. Both kids have done it now and it is engaging for them and has the repetition and fact skills that I want to see in a math app. Our seven year old's level has word problems, too, which I really like. I highly recommend it - I think I bought it for a year for $40 or something.

Our at-home learning has settled into a groove - just in time for the new 'distance learning' to get organized. I am half ready, half anxious. It feels like I just figured out how this will look at our house and it is getting tossed in upheaval again. If anyone at my kids' schools is listening....PLEASE make this project based and internet accessible....PLEASE don't give me packets of paperwork...please, please, please. I will set up Zoom classrooms for all of you every day if you want to talk to them. I will email you anything they type. Or send you pictures of any project. Please, just no worksheets. I tried this already - and I tried hard. Paperwork at home at this time is just soul crushing, for them and for me. I pinky promise that I am reading with my kids and hitting math facts every day - just don't make me push paper......whine, pathetic sigh, whine. Ok, I am done. I will do what you want - because I am a rule follower. But I may binge eat Milky Ways and drink a lot of whiskey...in the middle of the day. So that is on your head.

Moving on....

Eleven years ago today, we lost my grandpa. He was a great big ray of sunshine in all our lives and we could really use that right now. Every year, on this day, we all go to his beautiful bride's house and drink whiskey with her. She is straight up quarantined in her house right now - she doesn't think that is really necessary, but I think being in your 90's qualifies you as high risk. However, I may go sit in her front lawn with my own bottle of whiskey and toast him from 20 ft away. I am sure he will laugh at us. Love you Gramps.