This post is a little longer than the others because we had a lot of big feelings present themselves this weekend. Maybe you can relate.
Day 7: I stayed up till 10 last night watching the rest of season 1 of Jamestown. The other seasons are available at the library. I miss the library. I woke up at 5 a.m. unable to sleep so I read a little bit of the Poldark novel I’m currently on. Then I went back to sleep till almost 7. The world was cloaked in fog when I got up. It’s supposed to reach almost 80 degrees today.
I decided that I was going to plant the flowers early. I made my blueberry pancakes for breakfast and put a few pieces in the puzzle. Then I got dressed for yard work. I discovered a hole outside the house that leads into our basement. I have no idea how long it’s been there. I worked the ground in the flower beds, which was wet from the overnight rain. The dirt turned pretty easily. My daughter came out to help put me the flowers in. She has a good eye for arrangement. She placed the flowers and I dug the holes. We filled two beds in the front yard and part of a bed in the side yard. The flowers are already making me happy. Just a little pop of color in a world desperately in need of beauty.
I changed into workout clothes and had a snack, then did my daily workout. When I finished that, it was nearly lunchtime. I started some laundry, including the pillows on our bed, and our sheets. When you keep up with all the regular laundry, there’s time to do what feels like “extra” laundry.
We ate lunch and watched The Price is Right until the daily news conference from the President came on. It’s raining outside now, so I’m glad we got the flowers planted early. I get the feeling we’re not going to be away from our screens much again today. But we’ll try. It’s all we can do.
After lunch, I did some more laundry and took a shower and worked on the puzzle. I have almost no recollection of what the kids did. I think our son did some typing practice. And our daughter kept playing the Civics game on Brain Pop! We had a video call with the kids’ cousin (our niece) and her mom, and it was fun to connect with them that way. It had been raining most of the morning, and the sun started to come out, so I went to the porch afterwards and read for a while.
Our daughter made dinner. I helped her with the prep. Phil came home from work with more news of the outside world and further restrictions at his place of work. We talked about how we were going to get the groceries we need and how neither one of us wants to venture out. I don’t know how much online ordering I can do. I don’t know how we’re going to get through this except that we’re together. That is the only thing I know right now.
We made our weekly produce list for him to pick up at work on Saturday, and we sort of devolved into screens again. Around 7 p.m., I asked the kids to turn them off. They tried to play a baseball simulator game together, but they started to argue and get pushy with each other, so I shut everything down for bedtime. Our daughter stomped off and yelled and our son just gathered all his things and made noises with his mouth. I expected some pushing and shoving in the bathroom or bedroom, but they managed to take turns.
And then, as soon as our daughter was in bed, the real problem presented itself.
“I just want (my best friend) and school,” she said, bursting into tears. I knew this would be hard for her. It’s been a week, and the social girl that she is, she’s missing her friends, and she likes school. Her sobbing is breaking my heart.
“I wish this was all a bad dream and we could just pop the bubble and wake up.”
I cried, too, when she said this because me, too. It’s only been a week but a week of trauma feels like a lifetime and it will take us longer than a week to recover from what’s happening in our brains. Who do I even talk to about this? None of us have any frame of reference for such a time as this, and I don’t need sugar-sweet “God’s in control” kinds of platitudes. What do I tell my daughter? What do I tell myself? I totally understand why people drink or drug themselves into numbness. At 8 p.m. on Friday, March 20, I am tired of all the feelings I am feeling. I am tired of not knowing what new restriction will be on us in the morning. I’m tired of being stressed out by the thought of going grocery shopping and not knowing if what we need will be there. This is no way to live.
And yet we’re being asked to live this way. For a time. An unknown amount of time. Maybe if they could tell us an end date, we could make it through easier.
Every day is exhausting and yet I feel like I’ve accomplished nothing. Maybe just making it through another day is something. How do we do this when the days offer no hope of change? And how do we parent our children through this time? I have no wisdom or experience for them. All I have is my own feelings and the expression of them. I told our daughter it’s okay to hate everything about what’s happening right now. To be sad, angry, frustrated, whatever. We don’t have to be okay with this.
But we have to accept that there are parts of this we cannot change or control. She was sad because she didn’t have any books she wanted to read. I picked four off of our shelves and she went with book 1 of The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson. I’m hoping to tune in to his Facebook live reading tonight. I don’t like that all of our connection right now is either limited to the people in our house or by some kind of screen or device. But, it is what it is.
I don’t have to like any of it. I don’t like any of it. But I’m trying to make it through.
Day 8: I cried myself to sleep last night. The weight of it all crushed me. I feel like I’m bearing the emotions of all four of us in the house, and I’m not strong enough to carry all of that myself. I don’t have to and no one is asking me to, but I feel responsible for the emotional health of my family. I cried because it’s too much.
Before I went to bed, I watched a movie on Acorn TV, a British streaming service that’s offering a free 30-day trial. They had Still Life, which is based on a book by Louise Penny that I just read. I worked on the puzzle the entire time it was on, making progress. I’m not sure I’m going to make the deadline of being done by dinner tonight.
Around 5 a.m., our daughter came into our room and asked to sleep in our bed. My husband had already left for work, and she seemed in better spirits but was still in need of some snuggle time. She and I both stayed there till after 7 this morning.
Then, breakfast. A smoothie for the girl. Scrambled eggs for the boy. An egg-and-English muffin dish for me. And coffee. Always, coffee.
How will we make today different? Maybe we don’t have to. Maybe routine and monotony shows us things we wouldn’t otherwise see. Some of it is unpleasant. How much we need the little (and big) distractions so we don’t have to face ourselves.
I was going to work on the puzzle and listen to Andrew Peterson read from his book, but the kids were watching YouTube, one of them on the TV and the streaming of the Facebook live video was slow to load. So, I moved to the kitchen to wash dishes. The one YouTuber my son likes to watch is someone I find mostly annoying. I’m practicing social distancing inside my house which is not as easy as you might think. At 9 a.m., the kids went outside. It’s sunny today, if a bit chilly, but at least it’s not raining. Within minutes, one of them had pinched a finger in the folding chair and the other needed help tying shoes.
I put my workout clothes on, just to remind me to move and not give up on the day before it had really begun. I didn’t go right into my workout. I drank water and scrolled Facebook. And placed a book order through a local bookstore that I had a gift certificate for. The reply email I got from the owner of the store almost had me in tears because it was so kind and thoughtful and personal. Words matter so much right now. I need to start using mine better.
Then I did my scheduled workout for the day. I’m not trying to come out of this time period as my fittest self, but sticking to some kind of routine helps me. And working out benefits my brain and mental health. That’s all. With the way I’m eating, it won’t be a fit me that comes out of this anyway. (Ice cream anyone?)
During my workout, I got a message from someone who’s been trying to buy a scrapbook assortment from me for weeks and the timing has never been right. Today, the timing was right. We took proper precautions and never interacted directly. I made $10 from a box of stuff I cleaned out of a closet months ago that was leftover from another time of life when I tried to be crafty.
I made a smoothie for my snack and one for my son for lunch. I’ve made three smoothies today; can I add that to my resumé? Now it’s time to think about lunch again. All these meals.
My coffee order came, so I’m well stocked for the next month. I actually signed up for a coffee subscription from a local roaster so I can a) ensure I have enough coffee and b) support local businesses.
After lunch, the kids made cookies. I listened from the other room and gave assistance when it was necessary, which was not often. I studied the puzzle while listening to the alt-rock station playing all 90s hits, and did a little bit of reading. Everything feels hard right now.
The cookies turned out okay. Some are burnt, which is more a testament to our oven than it is anyone’s baking abilities. I washed some dishes while watching Grace and Frankie, preparing for our daughter to also make frosting later. Her dad requested the cookies and frosting, and she is a willing baker.
She worked on the frosting, and I heated the oven for dinner. Phil called as he was leaving work and decided to head to Target to get it out of the way. When he got home from Target with everything except deodorant for our son and toilet paper, he decided to tackle Costco, too. That way our Sunday could be freer to do things together as a family.
He spent $200 at Costco, which in normal times is not unusual. It only makes me nervous because my income won’t be what it normally is. But he has us stocked with meat and snacks and vegetables. He’d also brought home a bunch of assorted leftovers from various stands at market today, mostly because some of the stands aren’t opening next week and needed to offload their goods. So, along with our frozen pizzas tonight, I ate some carrots with tzatziki sauce. My body is not liking all the comfort-junk food I’m feeding it. I will attempt to listen better to it.
We watched the latest episode of LegoMasters, then put the kids to bed and watched Brooklyn-99.
Day 9: I slept well last night. That seems to be an important part of this whole thing right now. We made/ate breakfast and then watched our pastor’s sermon on YouTube so we could later participate in a Zoom meeting for a sermon discussion. After the sermon, I suited up to go for a run because I realized yesterday that it’s not just the running that I miss but the alone time. Running by myself feeds so much more than my body’s physical needs. It’s mental and emotional, too. It was only in the low 30s but I wanted to go early, when the world was least likely to be bustling. (Although bustling is a relative term right now.)
I headed toward the college campus nearby, where there’s a drive-through COVID-19 testing set up. I was curious but also a little bit concerned. Someone else was using the walking path, though, so I felt somewhat confident to keep going. It was surreal to see in person what I’ve only heard about on the news. The other person I passed on the path waved to me, though, and that’s not always something that happens between strangers.
My tracking app stopped working not long after I started, probably because it was in my pocket, so I’m not sure exactly how far I ran today in 25 minutes, but it was close to 2 miles. I’m repeating week 7 of C25K until I can consistently run 2 miles in that time. My calves started to cramp during cool down, but I felt so much better than I had all week. I came home, made a smoothie and took a shower before we logged into our church Zoom meeting.
There were about 10 of us and it was good to see faces and hear voices we’d normally see on Sundays. And even some we haven’t seen in a while! That hour of checking in and discussing what we’d heard was so encouraging, a reminder that we’re all in this together and experiencing at different levels.
Lunch. Phil’s doing a workout. I need to start dinner in the crockpot soon. In the midst of making the crockpot dinner, our daughter got a request from her best friend for Messenger Kids, so we got that worked out. They video called each other and all is right with the world now.
Phil and I talked through grocery lists again so he could go to Aldi and make one more attempt at Target for deodorant. While he was gone, the rest of us decided to do some coloring. A few months ago, I got a color-by-number coloring book, which I surprisingly love. We all picked some pictures to color and we listened to Broadway tunes.
When Phil got home, we put groceries away and cleared the living room so he could take his weekly nap on the couch. The kids are watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I washed some dishes.
I made a comforting crockpot soup for dinner that the kids wouldn’t eat (I knew this going into it) so they figured out their own dinner. We watched a couple of episodes of America’s Test Kitchen and ushered the kids toward laundry and showers. (The latter is something that is falling through the cracks in these days.)
Phil and I ended the night playing Trivial Pursuit via Zoom with two other couples–one in Pittsburgh and one in North Carolina–and that whole experience had me wondering why we’d never done it before. Connecting with friends was a balm to our weary souls.
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