Day #18: The Day James Declared it the Dog's Birthday
I was kinda tempted to call this one "Ugly Crying," but let's stay upbeat today, shall we? I almost wrote "this morning" there. What day is it again? Oh, yeah. Today is the day James woke up and decided out of nowhere that he needed to throw the dog a birthday party.
The dog is a rescue, we got her 11 months ago and have no idea when her birthday is, but James decided today she needed a birthday party.
Now, lest you think I am the coolest mom ever and am planning all these great quarantine activities, I fought him on this big time. My morning mostly consisted of me yelling at James about how we couldn't have a dog birthday party right now while I had coffee, did the laundry, and tried to be reassuring to Max. Max has all of a sudden out of nowhere started sleeping through the night, which is staggering, but makes him quite clingy in the morning.
James, not being easily deterred, spent that time creating party games (mostly pin the tail on the doggie,) decorations (including a card and bow on the lamp,) and a paper cake as well as a crown the dog wouldn't wear. I told him we could have a dog birthday party after lunch and he started asking every 17 seconds when lunch is. I'm not entirely sure, looking back on it now, that we ever at any point actually ate lunch. We did have a little dog birthday party, though, with a dance party, and I found a *slightly* expired cake mix box in the cupboard and we made a human cake to go along with the dog cake James constructed out of dog biscuits and peanut butter. I adore this child. He leaches creativity out of every pore. Honestly, he was kind of designed for this constant learning unschooling we have found ourselves in. He loves that he can just kind of work at his projects all day. When he's in school, this creativity all gets funneled into a very exhausting hour after school. It's too bad I am not designed to be an unschooling parent. Some kids are perfectly designed for it. I hear Beatrix Potter was sort of raised that way. They didn't call it that back then.
The ugly crying came in the wee small hours of the morning, before the dog's birthday party was a thing and after I had a middle of the night argument with my husband. Those are never good ideas.
Every single thing makes me feel guilty these days. I feel guilty when I yell at James. I feel guilty when I just want to sit and read a book. I feel guilty when we go places. I feel guilty when we sit on the couch. I had such a wonderful road trip day yesterday and followed all the rules and then came home to the Washington Trails Association telling everyone to please hit the trails closer to home. There's no way to avoid the guilt. I'm a mom. I thought I had guilt down. I was wrong. So to add to my guilt, after I fought with my husband and we were doing that fun work of mending fences (remember, this is the middle of the night,) I just started ugly crying.
There's a lot of grief to this. My dad turned 80 last weekend and not only did we have to cancel the party but I haven't seen him. In a month. I'm grieving the loss of my son's kindergarten year. I don't know if he'll get back to school this year but I know the odds are good he won't. One of the things the kindergarten teacher sent home was the St. Patrick's Day page for his memory book. I don't know if he'll get a kindergarten memory book. I don't know if I'll get the Mother's Day presents they make in kindergarten. He turns 6 April 30. He's so excited to be back in school for his birthday. Right now that's the schedule, but who knows. We didn't have a big party planned but he was supposed to do a ferry outing with his friend and Seattle Independent Bookstore Day for his birthday. I doubt any of those things are going to happen. Everything has been cancelled. My work shifts. I miss my work. Our volunteer shifts at the hospital. It's hard to imagine when we'll be able to go back there. That's a lot of grief. It's little grief, but it's a lot of it. And it all backed up on me and I started sobbing.
Then came the guilt. I'm not sick. I haven't lost anyone I know to this virus. Yet. I hope that trend continues. I'm not a nurse or married to one. I'm not waiting for test results to come back. I'm not pregnant or fighting cancer or in poor health. I know people in all these categories. Compared to them, I have it easy. So who am I to ugly cry in the middle of the night because some things got cancelled?
You can deny yourself the feelings all you want, but that isn't gonna make them go away. And a lot of us are being told how to feel right now. How to react. How to be. That's hard. I'm trying to validate the feelings of the people who live in my house right now, little and big, because the feelings are real.
Again, I have no solution to this. This morning I kept thinking about Easter. James misses church a lot...he's not interested in the video version, he likes the interaction. And the snacks. It's not the same without the snacks. For me, Easter has always been such a big church day, with breakfast at the church and the big service with the organ and the brass and all the flowers. It's too soon to know if the church will be open at Easter but nobody's betting money on it. And for sure the choir isn't practicing.
So I did the only thing I could do and I dried my tears and ordered the stuff for the kids' Easter baskets online. The earliest I have EVER thought about Easter baskets. I'm usually the mom in the store the night before. But this way I had some control. I don't have control over what's been taken away and what will continue to be taken away but Easter will come anyway and in my religion that's a big deal. So I prepared for it. And it made me feel a tiny bit better.
Today I'm grateful for my understanding husband, James's creativity, emotional release, online shopping, Easter, books, dance parties, cake, sunshine, snuggles, and getting through one more day. And health. I'm so grateful for health.
The dog is a rescue, we got her 11 months ago and have no idea when her birthday is, but James decided today she needed a birthday party.
Now, lest you think I am the coolest mom ever and am planning all these great quarantine activities, I fought him on this big time. My morning mostly consisted of me yelling at James about how we couldn't have a dog birthday party right now while I had coffee, did the laundry, and tried to be reassuring to Max. Max has all of a sudden out of nowhere started sleeping through the night, which is staggering, but makes him quite clingy in the morning.
James, not being easily deterred, spent that time creating party games (mostly pin the tail on the doggie,) decorations (including a card and bow on the lamp,) and a paper cake as well as a crown the dog wouldn't wear. I told him we could have a dog birthday party after lunch and he started asking every 17 seconds when lunch is. I'm not entirely sure, looking back on it now, that we ever at any point actually ate lunch. We did have a little dog birthday party, though, with a dance party, and I found a *slightly* expired cake mix box in the cupboard and we made a human cake to go along with the dog cake James constructed out of dog biscuits and peanut butter. I adore this child. He leaches creativity out of every pore. Honestly, he was kind of designed for this constant learning unschooling we have found ourselves in. He loves that he can just kind of work at his projects all day. When he's in school, this creativity all gets funneled into a very exhausting hour after school. It's too bad I am not designed to be an unschooling parent. Some kids are perfectly designed for it. I hear Beatrix Potter was sort of raised that way. They didn't call it that back then.
The ugly crying came in the wee small hours of the morning, before the dog's birthday party was a thing and after I had a middle of the night argument with my husband. Those are never good ideas.
Every single thing makes me feel guilty these days. I feel guilty when I yell at James. I feel guilty when I just want to sit and read a book. I feel guilty when we go places. I feel guilty when we sit on the couch. I had such a wonderful road trip day yesterday and followed all the rules and then came home to the Washington Trails Association telling everyone to please hit the trails closer to home. There's no way to avoid the guilt. I'm a mom. I thought I had guilt down. I was wrong. So to add to my guilt, after I fought with my husband and we were doing that fun work of mending fences (remember, this is the middle of the night,) I just started ugly crying.
There's a lot of grief to this. My dad turned 80 last weekend and not only did we have to cancel the party but I haven't seen him. In a month. I'm grieving the loss of my son's kindergarten year. I don't know if he'll get back to school this year but I know the odds are good he won't. One of the things the kindergarten teacher sent home was the St. Patrick's Day page for his memory book. I don't know if he'll get a kindergarten memory book. I don't know if I'll get the Mother's Day presents they make in kindergarten. He turns 6 April 30. He's so excited to be back in school for his birthday. Right now that's the schedule, but who knows. We didn't have a big party planned but he was supposed to do a ferry outing with his friend and Seattle Independent Bookstore Day for his birthday. I doubt any of those things are going to happen. Everything has been cancelled. My work shifts. I miss my work. Our volunteer shifts at the hospital. It's hard to imagine when we'll be able to go back there. That's a lot of grief. It's little grief, but it's a lot of it. And it all backed up on me and I started sobbing.
Then came the guilt. I'm not sick. I haven't lost anyone I know to this virus. Yet. I hope that trend continues. I'm not a nurse or married to one. I'm not waiting for test results to come back. I'm not pregnant or fighting cancer or in poor health. I know people in all these categories. Compared to them, I have it easy. So who am I to ugly cry in the middle of the night because some things got cancelled?
You can deny yourself the feelings all you want, but that isn't gonna make them go away. And a lot of us are being told how to feel right now. How to react. How to be. That's hard. I'm trying to validate the feelings of the people who live in my house right now, little and big, because the feelings are real.
Again, I have no solution to this. This morning I kept thinking about Easter. James misses church a lot...he's not interested in the video version, he likes the interaction. And the snacks. It's not the same without the snacks. For me, Easter has always been such a big church day, with breakfast at the church and the big service with the organ and the brass and all the flowers. It's too soon to know if the church will be open at Easter but nobody's betting money on it. And for sure the choir isn't practicing.
So I did the only thing I could do and I dried my tears and ordered the stuff for the kids' Easter baskets online. The earliest I have EVER thought about Easter baskets. I'm usually the mom in the store the night before. But this way I had some control. I don't have control over what's been taken away and what will continue to be taken away but Easter will come anyway and in my religion that's a big deal. So I prepared for it. And it made me feel a tiny bit better.
Today I'm grateful for my understanding husband, James's creativity, emotional release, online shopping, Easter, books, dance parties, cake, sunshine, snuggles, and getting through one more day. And health. I'm so grateful for health.
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