Abigail turns 15 & Nathan turns 7

Abigail was our first pandemic birthday! Lucky girl. On her birthday, Neil & I biked with her over to Papa Fattoush to pick up takeout, then the three of us sat on the steps of the high school to eat. 



Abigail peered in to the freshman cafeteria and told us that she could still see the last week's menu displayed on the TV monitors. Sad sad sad. 



But we were happy for a chance to celebrate our wonderful oldest girl!! High school is never easy and even less so when you're dealing with a global pandemic, but she has been so gracious and hard-working about it. Her AP European History teacher wrote me a long email a couple of weeks ago about how it's students like Abigail that make teaching worthwhile. We are sure lucky to have her in our family!!

And six days later, it was Nathan's turn for a birthday!! Nathan is such an incredibly social kid that it was really hard on him doing elearning at home and not having the opportunity to see his friends. We are SO thankful that the elementary kids have been in school every day so far during the 2020-2021 school year!! Nathan is our kid who always knows EVERYONE and is just the cheeriest friendliest little guy. (I'm known as "Nathan's mom" at our elementary school despite the fact that we have three older children who have attended there!)

We love you so much, Nathan and Abigail!

Things that were beautiful to me today

Scripture study sprawl, Isaac’s hand reaching for a chord, the first garden sprouts, daily bread 

weird things that are now normal

• wearing a mask and gloves any time we go anywhere
• going on multiple walks/bike rides a day with everyone in the family
• refusing to take anyone with you when you drive to the grocery store because it's "me time"
• children being SO excited to drive to the grocery store because it's the first time they've been in a car in four weeks
• quarantine beards/haircuts
• the term "social distancing"
• this exact conversation with everyone we see:
  person 1: "How are you doing?"
  person 2: "Hanging in there."
  person 1: "Yep, that's all we can do right now."
  person 2: "Stay healthy!"
  person 1: "And sane!"
  (both parties laugh at the impossibility of that last one)
• ending/beginning every email with "hope you and yours are well!"
• driving to a parking lot, backing up your car, and sitting on the tailgate to yell at your friends who are sitting on their tailgates an appropriately safe distance away (also it's the best part of your week)
• texting friends/neighbors: "headed to the store need anything?"
• wiping a can of Clorox wipes off with...more Clorox wipes
• putting on jeans and someone asks "wow why are you so dressed up?"
• baking something every single day, probably multiple things
• time is all relative and one day you might go to bed at 7 pm and the next day 2 am
• conducting church meetings over Zoom
• date nights with friends over Zoom
• meetings with classmates and teachers over Zoom
• piano lessons via FaceTime
• every single time I shower I think hopefully about when my shower gel is gone and I have an excuse to go to Trader Joe's
• no samples at Costco, this is VERY terrible and was the first sign of everything going bonkers
• watching Tiger King, what even has happened to us
• booking grocery pickup a week out
• cancelling all well-child visits for next few months for kids who don't need booster shots (sorry Isaac) when for the last 15 years you've been there bang on their birthday
• getting really excited bc your pulse oximeter FINALLY shipped after a month of waiting
• sending emails to your kid's class about planning some sort of appropriately social distanced graduation from elementary school even though you have rolled your eyes at every other 5th-grade graduation but dang, this year these kids need something to recognize the fact that they are leaving elementary school without the chance to say goodbye
• having a running text thread with your friends about what you're baking that day
• constant check-ins with friends via text--"how was today? Are you doing okay?" 
• getting up one day at 6 am full of fire and energy and lying in bed until 11 the next day in a sort of existential coma
• obsession with Duolingo
• texting your friends who are in healthcare and being SO relieved when they respond because it means they're still alive 
• toilet paper is like the gold standard
• having this conversation with your mom:
     Mom: "Do you think I'll find any Clorox wipes?"
     Me: "Nah, it's 10:30 am. Way too late. You should've gone to the senior hour."
• last ten things you've ordered from amazon:
• giant tub for holding sourdough starter
• another chromebook
• big pack of earbuds (where do those things go and everyone needs them constantly!)
• fire pit
• vitamin C pills & elderberry pills
• personal portable timer bc so help me if somebody asks Alexa ONE MORE TIME "how many seconds are left on my xyz timer" 
• "coronavirus journals"
• belgian pearled sugar
• a truly excessive number of books
• hodgepodge of "maybe this will keep Matthew busy" things--kinetic sand (yep it will keep him busy; he'll throw it everywhere and then everyone will slip and fall), construction paper, markers, that water-doodly mat thingie
• "touchless delivery" as an option on everything
• everyone is hatching butterflies from caterpillars
• everyone is planting a garden
• everyone has a letterboard with the number of days we've been home (fyi today is #45 and my letterboard has gone from "#stayhome house party" "send help"
• you're getting sick of pajamas
• spending years trying to keep your kids off screens and now it's the only way to do school
• the president telling people to drink Lysol

yeah, that happened. 

birthdays in quarantine

Abigail turned 15, and Nathan turned 7!!

On Abigail's birthday we biked over to her favorite restaurant to pick up takeout, then went over and ate it by the high school in the little front garden outside the freshman cafeteria. The last time Abigail was there, she was hanging out and eating with her friends, so it was pretty bittersweet (especially the part where she cupped her hands around her face and looked through the glass to see that the monitor displaying the day's menu was still on...).




I have a lot of feelings about these two birthdays, mostly because both kids have been talking for months about their birthday plans. Big parties, Kings Island with friends/family (even though yikes Neil and I were planning to be at DisneyLand by ourselves on Abigail's birthday...). But they were both great sports about it and we managed to make things pretty celebratory, I think. And Abigail's started (online) driver's ed!

Other random things...Neil and I are really into long Saturday morning bike rides right now instead of long runs. For some reason it's really nice to bike because we can go so much further and gosh I am SO darn sick of the roads/trails around our house right now--definitely seeing waaaaay too much of them!! Last week we biked up to a reservoir about 11 miles away from our house and went down to the sand and just sat there for awhile listening to the water slap against the shore. It was perfect.




Then we came home and tore apart our deck (which is nice because if I had run 21 miles I would be lying on the floor all day feeling sorry for myself, but with biking I was just kind of tired but could still do stuff).

And like everyone else in the world...lots of baking happening here. This is my new favorite book. So fascinating and that reminds me...I need to go tend to my dough! Here's yesterday's bread, topped with lots of Boursin cheese and smoked salmon. The very very best.

Another week

Welp, here we are--another week down. And as my watch just started beeping at me to remind me, I should be on a plane to San Jose right now, in that alternate COVID-free universe. At least we only have five weeks left of e-Learning!

Things that I am doing to keep myself busy this week (other than the obvious): refinishing our interior (very beautiful solid cherry) doors & keeping up my Duolingo streak. Totally embracing that quarantine cliche of "learn another language!" Except this is really just refreshing a language I already know (French) and a little bit of dabbling in a new-to-me language (Italian), except then I realized you could actually compete and so I started focusing more on French so that I was competitive. A couple weeks ago I took 1st in my league and gosh, it felt like ALL I DID that week was Duolingo. Like we were on a walk and I had an AirPod in and the kids were like "Are you still beating Roderigo?" because apparently I was talking out loud about crushing the guy who kept trying to challenge me for the #1 spot. I spent a couple of evenings in a row just doing Duolingo while watching a movie with the kids/Netflixing with Neil and I won resoundingly, but since then I'm just doing enough to stay in the top 5. ;-) Saving up my energy for taking #1 in the Diamond league, peeps. 

Easter dinner table...this was fun to put together. For journaling purposes, those are my grandmother's silver 50th-anniversary candlesticks (given to her by my mom); the crystal bowl is a wedding gift, I inherited the silver from my dear Aunt Pam after her death, and the platinum-edged china was the thrift store score of a lifetime (last year--found a full 12-setting set with serving platters and bowls and walked out with the whole thing for $60). The china is 80 years old and the silver well over 100. 

Neil is getting a loooot of use out of our guest room/office. I snapped a pic of him lying down to take a conference call (he usually works at his desk with a couple monitors and multiple laptops out, but Abigail was using one of his laptops to do a CAD drawing in Inventor with Luke sitting next to her, completely fascinated. That girl is SO good with CAD already--this is for her engineering class that is concurrent enrollment with one of the local colleges. She turns 15 on Monday). 

(ps I love love his long legs)

And here is the trifle that I made for Easter dinner--yum! Fresh pound cake, pudding, tons of fruit and cream--you really can't go wrong!

I was doing some grading tonight and it was interesting to read my students' weekly project updates. Usually people are complaining about how they hate doing group work online/remotely, and every semester I'm like "guys I promise this is a valuable skill! Just learn it!" and guess what, this semester everyone is like...wow, the skills that we have been learning this semester about online collaboration are SURE HANDY NOW THAT THE WORLD IS ALL REMOTE. So I was thinking about that a bit just before writing this post, and thinking about how much I absolutely hate technology sometimes (I wish my children had never heard of smartphones, or tablets, or Nintendo, or TV, etc. etc.) but on the other hand--I can't even imagine how hard this pandemic would be without it. And I know that people have obviously experienced these types of situations without technology, but gosh, I am just so grateful that I can work remotely, and Neil can work remotely, and our kids can do eLearning (as much as it also drives me crazy I would be way more upset about NOT having it), and that I can stay connected to my friends through FaceTime, and Zoom, and texting, and that I can listen to podcasts and watch Netflix and read the news so easily! In particular, some connections I am really thankful for this week (in no order): 

• the "cool cats and kittens" text thread that is constantly running with five of my good friends here. This is our group of couples that we get together with for game nights, but boy our text thread with just the wives has basically lit up over the last 6 weeks and kinda become a lifeline for me! So darn grateful for those women and the fact that we can vent/commiserate/rejoice together about this craaaazy time. We have a Zoom game night tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to it (we spent almost 5 hours just talking on the last one!)
• doing virtual workouts with my dear friend Kelsey who moved to Sacramento about 10 days before the world locked down. On our last run together at the end of February, coronavirus was not even on the radar. This week we started a new 8-week workout challenge together and I love checking in with her every day, even if we can't log hours of talking time on the run!
• similarly--doing virtual baking with Kelsey and Stephanie. Before Kelsey moved, the 3 of us got together to do baking nights (croissants, croquembouche, macaroons, eclairs) and this week we are doing a "challah challenge" all week with a Zoom at the end of it. 
• weekly writers' Zoom group faciliated by my brilliant friend who is a professor of creative writing. Truly therapeutic and I'm so grateful for all the effort she is putting into it!!!

and an in-person connection...Abigail and I had SUCH a good time going to pick up groceries this morning, haha! We were so excited to go somewhere that we took the "scenic route" there and another "scenic route" back, and totally enjoyed the half-hour chilling in the Kroger parking lot while we waited for our order.

(ps please do not worry--I am also having my fair share of COVID breakdowns, hence the lack of blogging for a couple days there) 

Lest we forget

Our new normal

Today we went to the state park that's just a few miles from us so that we could get in some really good woods time. I'm assuming that the state parks will close at some point and wanted to get in a morning of hiking while we can; since Neil had Friday & Monday off for Easter weekend it seemed like the perfect time.

When I thought about today, I was thinking that I could share some of the cute little anecdotes from our day, or the fun little memories (Neil made toffee! Everyone played card games while I sat at the piano and played John Denver songs blissfully by myself! I made really good challah and really good frittata for dinner!!) or the scary bits (Abigail narrowly missed being hurt by a falling tree, presumably thanks to the storm we had a few days ago). But what I decided to write about were the things that are normal for us now because of COVID-19 and hopefully will be very very foreign someday in the future when we reread this.

First of all: this is the first time that we have all gone somewhere since March 8--that's 33 days. Since March 13 (today is April 10), the children have only left the house to ride their bikes or to go on a walk. Neil and I have left a handful of times to get groceries. Before we left this morning I spent an extra ten minutes going through my asthma/allergies routine--in the past I would just do a quick couple puffs of albuterol if I was about to go do prolonged exercise (like a marathon). Now it's a somewhat exhausting process involving 3 inhalers, sinus rinses, a rebreathing chamber, and another 2 allergy meds, multiple times a day.

We returned our 8-seater Pacifica on Monday (wrote about that a few posts ago), so today two of the kids shared a seatbelt. I would never do this in normal life, but the roads were almost completely empty and we went well under the speed limit. But this did mean that we opted to go to a closer state park only a few minutes away rather than one of our favorites that's about 80 minutes away.

We chose to hike on a trail that is normally only for mountain bikers (currently closed to bikers) in hopes that it would be mostly deserted. In the two hours that we were hiking, we passed three other people. Each time, both parties veered far off the trail to ensure the maintenance of the 6-foot social distancing space.

We did not bring all kinds of fun snacks and goodies, which is de rigeur for us when we hike (Neil almost always has a pocketful of hard candies, which he calls "power candy" and uses to entice kids whose legs are lagging). Half of us were participating in the Good Friday worldwide day of fasting for relief from the pandemic, and the rest of the kids knew that when it's Fast Sunday, we don't do treats until the end of the fast.

We did not go to the playground and visit the "hill slide," which we always do. Nobody asked if we could go. We did not use the bathrooms, we did not use the drinking fountains. The children asked if we could hike to the top of the sledding hill and roll down, so on our way out after the hike we drove over to the hill. It's absolutely enormous. There were four people scattered across it; I told the children that we couldn't stop. Nobody argued.

As we drove home, we passed Costco. We have never passed Costco on the way home from a hike without stopping to pick up a few goodies and grab everyone a snack. We drove past without a peep from any of the kids.

We had an absolutely lovely morning in the woods. It was a true delight to be out together, hiking and talking and wandering. And this is our new normal. I'm surprised in many ways by how quickly we've adapted and the things that I miss and the things that I don't miss at all. I love the newfound freedom in our schedules--we have so much more TIME because we're not spending it traveling to other places! And it's wonderful to see the kids creating deepened relationships with each other. But gosh, I miss things as simple as making a quick run to the grocery store without having to don a mask and gloves, without calculating whether it's an item that likely sold out within the first hour of opening, without trying to remember what are the current hours to accomodate the immunocompromised and the elderly or the early closing times to conduct full santization of the stores. (And Target. I really miss Target.) I am SO grateful for FaceTime and Zoom and texting, because I don't know what I would do without those constant connections to friends and family. 

Things to remember

Yesterday we basically had the storm of the spring apocalypse, I finally managed to snag a grocery pickup slot (and scheduled one today for next week...we have to book a week out right now!!), and we had the much-awaited “yes day” for the kids where they got to do all the things they never get to do (which given the current limits/social distancing basically meant unlimited ice cream and Nintendo). 

Yesterday we had beautiful weather, so we spent most of the day outside--painting, planting, and building. We got so much done but we were EXHAUSTED at the end of the day (we also did a 4-mile walk with the kids to start the day--so many flowers to check out!!). Abigail made tacos for dinner and then we all piled on the couch to watch The Mask of Zorro (Matthew fell asleep 10 minutes in and then immediately woke up when we tried to slide him into bed). I use Neil's Sawzall to attack all of the volunteer trees/branches to be pruned and it was intensely satisfying.

A few pics from the day...

Working on chicken stuff...Neil spends a lot of time out here with his AirPods on conference calls. I'm in the process of painting everything dark blue and white to match our house, but I ran out of paint so I'm on hold until it's safe to go to the hardware store again...

Another ran-out-of-paint shot but it's soooooo nice to have the sunroom open again!

Abigail sent me this cute pic of the boys today on their morning exploration of the tunnels under the roundabouts

And try as we might, there was no keeping clothes on this dude yesterday--he had WAY too much fun with the hose and I think I picked up three separate little soaked outfits from the back yard yesterday! 

Plans for the rest of today:

• do a weights workout (Neil and I went on a bike ride this morning but I still need to get in some ST; after running a half on Saturday my feet are still absolutely trashed and I don't feel like running right now)
• pick up groceries (hip hip hurray, this is like the highlight of the week bc it's SO hard to nab a grocery pickup slot!)
• probably will just eat Tillamook ice cream & Red Baron pizzas for dinner because GROCERIES I went a little crazy ordering things (since I had to book it so far out I kept adding things every day!) and Neil informed me that we do NOT have enough freezer space for all the ice cream and popsicles I ordered 
• maybe watch a movie outside tonight on the projector screen?
• Zoom meeting with writing group friends
• read in the sunroom--I'm rereading so many favorite books these days and it is the best

Chicks!

A week ago we picked up 9 new chicks, much to the children's delight. We've made it through the first week with all 9 still alive. (Silkies, black sex-link, Isa Browns, and Leghorns.)

The big chickens are happily pecking around the yard and following behind the tiller as Neil works on the garden. I'm thankful for good weather that has been encouraging everyone to spend as much time as possible outside. 

Today

...was hard.

We are supposed to be on a Florida beach right now.

Instead we drove to Neil’s office and turned in our company lease (we don’t need 2 cars right now).

I stared out the window at the acres and acres of empty parking lots at the plant and felt numb.

On the way home I listened to Neil’s end of his work call. Today he still has a job. Most of the engineers at his company do not. There’s a mandatory 20% salary deferment for the managing engineers who were not laid off. I’m not worried about money now but I am worried about how long he will still have a job if this keeps going.

The kids had piano over FaceTime.

I laid on my bed during their lessons and just sobbed. I’m deep in a depressive episode and while I can recognize it and I know it’s my brain and not reality, I’m still convinced that my family would be doing so much better through this if they had a different wife and mother to rely on.

When I’m really stressed I tear at my feet. Right now they are so bloodied that I can’t walk without intense pain, let alone run.

I had a package of Ritz crackers today for dinner and then fell asleep at 6 pm.

I had so many things to do for work today and I could only handle answering two emails at a time. Then I had to walk away. It took me all day to get through my inbox.

I feel intense guilt right now for not having this fun spring break plan for my kids. I feel anger that I DID plan something fun and we had to cancel. I feel resentment that most of the complications with the kids being home has fallen on me, and I feel guilt for every single minute that Neil spends with us rather than in his office. I feel fear when my breathing is so labored that I am using my rescue inhaler every four hours, and when I can’t make it through a full sentence without stopping to draw a deep breath. And mostly I want to feel nothing, and that’s what is scariest of all.

Connections

Today I am so grateful for yesterday’s chance to connect with people outside of our family!! Nathan’s teacher came by and brought him a little gift and he was so incredibly excited to see her. Abigail bikes over to a friend’s house and they spent a couple hours biking around talking (Abigail: “It was so good to see someone who doesn’t share my genes”) and we wound up the day with a virtual

game night with our regular game night peeps and then talking until midnight when people started falling asleep. 😂 We were all so tired but it was so good to see/hear our friends that nobody wanted to say goodnight! 

Schools closing

Last night we got the news that all schools in our state would be closed through the end of the school year and that school would continue through e-learning only. It was really a pretty good day up to that point--we spent hours working in the garden, and it was a beautiful day, and we went on a walk and did lots of chalk drawings, ate dinner outside, dropped food off for the missionaries, donated blood, finished up the last day of e-Learning before spring break, and I even mopped all the floors! Talk about productive!!! And then in the waning hours of the day, we got the news about the schools & heard that Neil's company would be making drastic layoffs the following day. (More about that another time.) I spent the rest of the night watching "Tiger King" and leveling up on Duolingo, as one does (corona coping mechanisms are something else, I tell you what).

I was expecting this--I really was. But what I was not expecting was how visceral my sorrow and anxiety would be at the news. I thought I was prepared--I mean, really, there was NO way the kids would go back to school this year. And yet when it actually became 100% reality, I was filled with so much grief and worry. Sadness for my children who never got the chance to say goodbye to beloved teachers (especially Isaac who will be in middle school next year & Matthew who is so sad every day that he doesn't get to go to preschool & is too young to understand why his world has suddenly changed overnight), who haven't seen friends in a month and don't know when they will see them again, and so, so, so much worry about how this will affect my children long-term.

I'm worried about the impacts on both their education and their psyches. It's semi-reassuring to me to know that children all over the globe are in the same situation (but then I start worrying about maybe everyone but me is really stepping it up and my kids will be so far behind--argh), but what is of most concern to me is how will this shape their personalities and their abilities to respond to trauma--because that's what this is. It is traumatic. And it terrifies me that I am inadequate to help them through this when I myself am feeling so much turmoil and fear.

Some days I am okay with all of this, but today I'm not. And I'm giving myself grace to not be okay, and to just sit with that fear, and acknowledge it as valid.

writing exercise 4/1

Last night I did a Zoom meeting led by a friend who is a professor of creative writing. We went through a few exercises, then listened to this poem called “It’s a Lot.”  

Then we all took some time to list all of the things that are “a lot” right now, and then picked one and wrote about it for five minutes. So here is my five-minute completely unedited freewrite, which will serve as my post for today!! 

The Garden

Out of all the things I could be worrying about right now, why the garden? Is it because it is something I always do every spring? Is it because it's something where the longer I wait, the less productive it will be? That need to not only capitalize on that burst of spring energy, but also time passes too quickly and then it's too late for lettuce and spinach and radishes, and it's time for tomatoes and green beans and weeds and summer heat, and I stop watering and I'm longing for fall, and for the death of the garden and a cessation to all the labor of summer, the weeding and the harvesting and the canning and the cooking, and the quietude of winter?

Or is it because I am terrified of what is happening in our world, and I feel a need to ensure that I can feed my family from our own soil, that I can give my children security in green shoots and the reassurance that life goes on, that life will always go on, that we can always coax more from the earth as we pull out the winter-shriveled plants to make room for the new seeds.

Or is it a return to the woman I was ten years ago--the woman who was confident and assured of her place in the world; the woman was flush with the righteousness of youth and unwavering belief, the woman who had small children with small problems and the most pressing question of the day was whether the tomatoes should become bubbling sauce or frozen whole...

Pandemic

So obviously this is a time when I should be blogging! I'm giving myself six minutes right now and whatever I can type, that's where we are at, but MY GOAL IS TO BLOG EVERY WEEKDAY OF QUARANTINE. There, I said it. Hold me to it.

We are on the third week of no school, so obviously I am way overdue here. The children's last day of school was March 13; we had two teacher prep days on March 16 and 17 and then started eLearning on March 18. It was one of the hardest days of my life--that was also (we didn't know at the time) Neil's last day in his office and it was just crazy overwhelming starting all of the elearning stuff while he was gone. The next day was his first day of full-time working at home and it was a lot easier (both to have him home to help when needed and because we sort of had a handle on the eLearning tech by the second day).

We're in a pretty good rhythm now, just in time for tomorrow to be our last day of school for 11 days, since spring break starts on Friday!! Here was our original plan for the next few weeks:

Saturday April 4: I run our local half-marathon, for which I've been training all winter
Saturday night/early Sunday morning: we leave for Santa Rosa Beach, FL
Sunday April 5 - Saturday April 11: we spend a blissful sun-drenched week in Florida with three awesome families and our kids have the time of their lives playing on the beach while we soak up the warmth and sunshine and make amazing memories with our friends
Monday April 13: kids are back to school
Wednesday April 15: my mom comes down to visit for a few days & hang with our kids
Friday April 17: Neil & I fly to San Jose, CA
Saturday: we drive down Highway 1, chilling on beaches and hiking in state parks--we spend Saturday night in a gorgeous B&B in Monterey that's a block from the beach
Sunday: more driving until we get to our hotel in Anaheim--this is a huge bucket list trip and we have been talking about driving Highway 1 for the last 17 years!! Keep pinching ourselves that it's actually happening
Monday: we spend the day at Disneyland
Tuesday: I fly home & Neil spends the rest of the week at his manufacturing conference in Anaheim

And guess what!!! Now we are spending all that time IN OUR HOUSE, along with the rest of the world, because COVID-19 is the worst and it is taking the globe by storm. Did I cry when I was cancelling all those trips? You bet I shed buckets.

Up next: how we spend our days! Woo-hoo!