Day #16: Back to Blogger OR Everything Old is New Again
Lord in heaven, I never thought I would go back to blogger.
If I could remember the URL of my old blogger address from 2002 I would go back and look at it. Nah, probably not.
Today was Day #17 of social distancing from the epicenter of the coronavirus in the U.S. If you're living where I am right now, that requires no explanation, but in case you've been living under a rock or are reading this from some Martian spaceship in 2386, here's a quick backstory on that. (If you are in the here and now, skip the next paragraph.)
The coronavirus, and I'm not a medical expert so I'm gonna screw this up, is a new mutation of a virus that spread to humans from some kind of animal in late 2019...the basic point of that being that it is new to humans so no one has any immunity to it. After causing widespread illness and death in China, spreading to Italy and causing widespread illness and death there as well, it arrived in my county of the U.S. in late February. On February 28, it claimed the life of its first victim in the U.S., who died at the hospital where my kids and I volunteer. 6 days later, my kid's school district became the first in the country to shut its doors to halt the spread of the virus. At that point, I felt like all news of the virus in the U.S. was coming from within 5 miles in any direction of my house. Since then, we've seen widespread closing of schools, libraries, bars and restaurants, and we aren't supposed to go within 6 feet of anyone when we go in public, which we aren't really supposed to do. Hence the term social distancing.
Bottom line, my neighborhood had a 2 week head start on what would eventually shut the country and the world down. So now here I am, a stay at home mom of 2, trying to navigate what life looks like in a pandemic zone in 2020.
Last night, a friend sent me a link to an article I didn't read (hello, 2020!) from an historian who said we should all start writing our experiences down now, to preserve them for the generations coming after us. My response to that was I don't want my great grandkids to read about my life stuck at home with 2 small children during a pandemic because there will be too much profanity in that. But 24 hours later, after I broke down writing my poem a day (aspiring writer here, hence the 2002 Blogger attempt,) I realized I could probably improve my admittedly wobbly mental health in all of this with a bit of writing. So here we go.
Fair warning...I'm not editing this. This is straight from my brain to computer screen, which is almost never a good idea. I expect a lot of it will be sarcastic and I will sound like I'm not taking this seriously...be assured that is purely a coping strategy on my part. So read on if you choose. You have been warned.
Allow me to introduce you to my kids. James will be 6 at the end of April and he is a unique kiddo. No one looks at the world quite like James. He loves baseball and currently has an obsession with mice because of a toy puppet and a couple of books. He is highly creative and sensitive and slightly obsessed with death. He's a weird kid like I was a weird kid and I adore him. He looks kind of like Ralphie from A Christmas Story. It's the glasses.
Max is 19 months. He's got the little round baby face and still not much hair, although more than James did. And dimples. He loves walking independently, as in, not holding anyone's hand, and is completely fascinated by wearing shoes. He likes books and wants to do every single thing his brother does. He thinks the world is a funny place. I like his giggle.
So the rules of this are changing all the time, but here's the gist: we aren't supposed to go anywhere. Most places we would go (the library, our weekly hospital volunteer shift, gymnastics, the swimming pool) are closed anyway, and we definitely aren't supposed to go play at friends' houses. Outside is allowed as long as we can be 6 feet away from people. And we are supposed to wash our hands all the time and not touch our faces with dirty hands.
It sounds ridiculously easy, right? Sit on your couch, watch movies, walk your dog, wave at your neighbors, save the world. Stay in, the virus dies, no one gets it, happy ending. How could we possibly be failing at this?
Oh, so many ways. Here's one for illustration: so on Day #14, Wednesday, our neighbor girl comes out in her backyard to play. Now James and this girl have been playing through the fence for years now, so that seems like such a good way to get some MUCH NEEDED socialization. I literally even had a little tent for him to sit in so he could chat with her and still be that safe distance away. Max and I put on shoes (yay, shoes!) and run around my glorious, park like backyard to keep an eye on them. And then I look over and my kid is LICKING THE FENCE. Hello? Um...this is not good behavior any time, and have I mentioned there's a pandemic?! C'mon, mama, you had one job. Keeping your kindergarten age child from licking the fence.
Today was Day #16, and like everyone else we've become accidental homeschoolers. There's a lot of discussion right now about how much is being sent by the teachers, how much should be sent, I'll probably go more into that at another time, but here's what I always thought about homeschooling: I'd be great at it if I had more patience. The coming up with activities part, not difficult, the showing patience and empathy while my own child tries and struggles and all that...this is not something I have the patience to do. When the school closure started, it was supposed to be for 2 weeks. I thought to myself, okay, it's 2 weeks, we will do what we can of what our teacher has provided us, we will not fight about it, I will not turn school into a battle, it's cool. I knew so much back then.
In my neverending want to get somewhere outside, today I thought, hey, we haven't really done a lot of science. Why don't we do some science? I'll take him into the woods, we'll make a 2 ft. in diameter circle on the ground and talk about everything we see in that circle. We will look at bugs! We will talk about leaves! We will talk about rocks and what's big and small, living and dead! It will be awesome and so easy. And all we have to do is be in a place that also has flowers, Max is fascinated by flowers, and he'll walk around and talk about them and be entertained.
We walked, we found our spot, we drew our circle...and then he just wanted to erase the circle on his paper 8 times. And draw the Magic School Bus. And decide the best way to color in the pictures of what he was seeing. He didn't care for a minute what he was looking at and just started whining about when is lunch. Any other day of my life I couldn't get him to stop digging in the dirt. Today? Not happening.
So we did our best, we packed it in, we did the loop walk to get back to where we started, he's constantly whining and then he comes running up to me and whispers, "Mama, I saw a woodpecker!" Because we had talked about how you often hear but don't see them because they are shy. And damn, if he hadn't found a woodpecker. And we stood there on that trail and watched that thing flit around and peck. Max thought it was HYSTERICAL, he has just learned to say "birdie," and James said "Mama, I could watch this all day." Suddenly we were talking about trees and the forest and sunlight and darkness and what the woodpecker was eating and what else we could see. All the science I had wanted to do and he fought me on was just right there in front of us in that moment. And we might still be there if other people hadn't come up the trail, which means we have to figure out how we are gonna space ourselves, because, you know, don't lick the fence, and in the process we scared that bird away. But he hung with us a long time. I was impressed.
I don't have a lesson or a conclusion from this...like I said, straight from my mind to screen. But I'm going to end this the way I ended the ONLY successful journal I've ever kept in my life. I really suck at journaling, which isn't good for a writer to admit, but in 2003 I spent six months in New Zealand and managed to keep a journal while I was there. And every time I wrote in it, I ended with the things I am grateful for. So that's how I will end tonight and then the plan is to come in here tomorrow and talk more about life and pandemics and whatever other junk rolls around in my head.
Today I'm grateful for the health of my family, all the wonderful people we know at the hospital (and the ones we don't,) mom friends you can vent to by text, my awesome dad who I miss so much because we can''t see him right now, my husband, my wonderful kids and their giggles and snuggles, books, particularly Harry Potter, which has been sustaining, Oreos, writing, Netflix, science, the WONDERFUL weather, hiking trails, parks....and woodpeckers.
If I could remember the URL of my old blogger address from 2002 I would go back and look at it. Nah, probably not.
Today was Day #17 of social distancing from the epicenter of the coronavirus in the U.S. If you're living where I am right now, that requires no explanation, but in case you've been living under a rock or are reading this from some Martian spaceship in 2386, here's a quick backstory on that. (If you are in the here and now, skip the next paragraph.)
The coronavirus, and I'm not a medical expert so I'm gonna screw this up, is a new mutation of a virus that spread to humans from some kind of animal in late 2019...the basic point of that being that it is new to humans so no one has any immunity to it. After causing widespread illness and death in China, spreading to Italy and causing widespread illness and death there as well, it arrived in my county of the U.S. in late February. On February 28, it claimed the life of its first victim in the U.S., who died at the hospital where my kids and I volunteer. 6 days later, my kid's school district became the first in the country to shut its doors to halt the spread of the virus. At that point, I felt like all news of the virus in the U.S. was coming from within 5 miles in any direction of my house. Since then, we've seen widespread closing of schools, libraries, bars and restaurants, and we aren't supposed to go within 6 feet of anyone when we go in public, which we aren't really supposed to do. Hence the term social distancing.
Bottom line, my neighborhood had a 2 week head start on what would eventually shut the country and the world down. So now here I am, a stay at home mom of 2, trying to navigate what life looks like in a pandemic zone in 2020.
Last night, a friend sent me a link to an article I didn't read (hello, 2020!) from an historian who said we should all start writing our experiences down now, to preserve them for the generations coming after us. My response to that was I don't want my great grandkids to read about my life stuck at home with 2 small children during a pandemic because there will be too much profanity in that. But 24 hours later, after I broke down writing my poem a day (aspiring writer here, hence the 2002 Blogger attempt,) I realized I could probably improve my admittedly wobbly mental health in all of this with a bit of writing. So here we go.
Fair warning...I'm not editing this. This is straight from my brain to computer screen, which is almost never a good idea. I expect a lot of it will be sarcastic and I will sound like I'm not taking this seriously...be assured that is purely a coping strategy on my part. So read on if you choose. You have been warned.
Allow me to introduce you to my kids. James will be 6 at the end of April and he is a unique kiddo. No one looks at the world quite like James. He loves baseball and currently has an obsession with mice because of a toy puppet and a couple of books. He is highly creative and sensitive and slightly obsessed with death. He's a weird kid like I was a weird kid and I adore him. He looks kind of like Ralphie from A Christmas Story. It's the glasses.
Max is 19 months. He's got the little round baby face and still not much hair, although more than James did. And dimples. He loves walking independently, as in, not holding anyone's hand, and is completely fascinated by wearing shoes. He likes books and wants to do every single thing his brother does. He thinks the world is a funny place. I like his giggle.
So the rules of this are changing all the time, but here's the gist: we aren't supposed to go anywhere. Most places we would go (the library, our weekly hospital volunteer shift, gymnastics, the swimming pool) are closed anyway, and we definitely aren't supposed to go play at friends' houses. Outside is allowed as long as we can be 6 feet away from people. And we are supposed to wash our hands all the time and not touch our faces with dirty hands.
It sounds ridiculously easy, right? Sit on your couch, watch movies, walk your dog, wave at your neighbors, save the world. Stay in, the virus dies, no one gets it, happy ending. How could we possibly be failing at this?
Oh, so many ways. Here's one for illustration: so on Day #14, Wednesday, our neighbor girl comes out in her backyard to play. Now James and this girl have been playing through the fence for years now, so that seems like such a good way to get some MUCH NEEDED socialization. I literally even had a little tent for him to sit in so he could chat with her and still be that safe distance away. Max and I put on shoes (yay, shoes!) and run around my glorious, park like backyard to keep an eye on them. And then I look over and my kid is LICKING THE FENCE. Hello? Um...this is not good behavior any time, and have I mentioned there's a pandemic?! C'mon, mama, you had one job. Keeping your kindergarten age child from licking the fence.
Today was Day #16, and like everyone else we've become accidental homeschoolers. There's a lot of discussion right now about how much is being sent by the teachers, how much should be sent, I'll probably go more into that at another time, but here's what I always thought about homeschooling: I'd be great at it if I had more patience. The coming up with activities part, not difficult, the showing patience and empathy while my own child tries and struggles and all that...this is not something I have the patience to do. When the school closure started, it was supposed to be for 2 weeks. I thought to myself, okay, it's 2 weeks, we will do what we can of what our teacher has provided us, we will not fight about it, I will not turn school into a battle, it's cool. I knew so much back then.
In my neverending want to get somewhere outside, today I thought, hey, we haven't really done a lot of science. Why don't we do some science? I'll take him into the woods, we'll make a 2 ft. in diameter circle on the ground and talk about everything we see in that circle. We will look at bugs! We will talk about leaves! We will talk about rocks and what's big and small, living and dead! It will be awesome and so easy. And all we have to do is be in a place that also has flowers, Max is fascinated by flowers, and he'll walk around and talk about them and be entertained.
We walked, we found our spot, we drew our circle...and then he just wanted to erase the circle on his paper 8 times. And draw the Magic School Bus. And decide the best way to color in the pictures of what he was seeing. He didn't care for a minute what he was looking at and just started whining about when is lunch. Any other day of my life I couldn't get him to stop digging in the dirt. Today? Not happening.
So we did our best, we packed it in, we did the loop walk to get back to where we started, he's constantly whining and then he comes running up to me and whispers, "Mama, I saw a woodpecker!" Because we had talked about how you often hear but don't see them because they are shy. And damn, if he hadn't found a woodpecker. And we stood there on that trail and watched that thing flit around and peck. Max thought it was HYSTERICAL, he has just learned to say "birdie," and James said "Mama, I could watch this all day." Suddenly we were talking about trees and the forest and sunlight and darkness and what the woodpecker was eating and what else we could see. All the science I had wanted to do and he fought me on was just right there in front of us in that moment. And we might still be there if other people hadn't come up the trail, which means we have to figure out how we are gonna space ourselves, because, you know, don't lick the fence, and in the process we scared that bird away. But he hung with us a long time. I was impressed.
I don't have a lesson or a conclusion from this...like I said, straight from my mind to screen. But I'm going to end this the way I ended the ONLY successful journal I've ever kept in my life. I really suck at journaling, which isn't good for a writer to admit, but in 2003 I spent six months in New Zealand and managed to keep a journal while I was there. And every time I wrote in it, I ended with the things I am grateful for. So that's how I will end tonight and then the plan is to come in here tomorrow and talk more about life and pandemics and whatever other junk rolls around in my head.
Today I'm grateful for the health of my family, all the wonderful people we know at the hospital (and the ones we don't,) mom friends you can vent to by text, my awesome dad who I miss so much because we can''t see him right now, my husband, my wonderful kids and their giggles and snuggles, books, particularly Harry Potter, which has been sustaining, Oreos, writing, Netflix, science, the WONDERFUL weather, hiking trails, parks....and woodpeckers.
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