Kris's Covid Pandemic Blog

It's one of those weeks where the world is crashing down on both the macro and the micro levels and it's hard to know where to put my focus. On the macro level, ANOTHER black man was killed while in police custody and on video. I don't know why this seems to happen so freaking often. Probably it has always happened, we as white people just know more now because there's more video now. So there are more peaceful protests all over and some less than peaceful ones that are getting all the attention because that is what always happens. It makes my heart hurt and my head ache and it makes me wonder is this really 2020? Are we really still doing this? Are my friends and people I know really still terrified of being pulled over by a cop because this is still a thing? It makes me feel helpless and tired and it makes facebook an even harder place to be because it's just more people not listening to each other. People ask, why looting and it's an understandable question

I had a horrid headache last night so I decided to skip blogging and go straight to TV and laundry folding. There's still laundry to be folded but no more headache so there you go. It's late...I just finally finished recording my section of a choir piece for a virtual choir mashup video that's being put together...so while I have a lot to say most of it is just gonna have to wait to a more convenient hour. Max has been iffy about sleep, particularly last night, so very tired and really just trying to embrace snuggles and today we spent most of the day outside. It turns out that yes, in case anyone is wondering personal lubricant makes an excellent substitute for glycerin in homemade bubble mix (the latter being hard to find, the former being readily available and even my glycerin free lube worked great.) So our new recipe for bubble mix is 6 cups of water, half a cup of Dawn dishwashing detergent, 1 tablespoon of baking powder, and a generous squirt of lube (think of it a

Today was one of those days where I just didn't feel like I had enough time to do all the things, which sucks because on those days I just feel like I am avoiding my children. Because, of course there is time but it's the time without them that there isn't much of and that's hard. I am reading a whole bunch of books, I wanted to get some of them finished, I badly needed to scrub the upstairs floors, I bailed on a genealogy Zoom date with my BFF yesterday and wanted to do that tonight, I want to blog, I want to write, I want to sweep, I want to keep laundry moving...I have no way to win. So I end up avoiding my children to do other things and that sucks. So it poured rain all day, no social distanced get together with dad and he sounded so incredibly sad on the phone. I wish there was something I could do for him. And we ended up having family movie day. Daddy made popcorn and all four of us watched Monsters University. It was lovely. And the floors got washed and so

We had a good old fashioned family adventure today. A lot like what we do in normal times except with fewer antique stores and diners. We road tripped, found some trailheads (not the ones we were looking for...every year we re-learn that the Washington Trails Association website SUCKS,) ate car snacks and a picnic, looked at some views, drove back roads, got lost a couple of times, and generally had a really fun family day. With not much guilt...yes, I know we are supposed to recreate closer to home now that the parks and federal lands are open and everyone is worried about crowds and gateway communities, but honestly we made 2 stops, one of which we would have made anyway at our grocery store and one for takeout food not real far from home and we saw less than a dozen people all of whom we were plenty far away from. We drove this old Forest Service road up a hill with a drop off at one point and OMG my stomach flipped over. I gripped the doors of the car and thought about earthqua

James broke his everyday shoes like 2 weeks into this thing and his mom finally went to Target today to get him new shoes. Max got new shoes from the Easter bunny, somehow James was skipped. Honestly, he's been walking around in 2 sizes 2 small water shoes for weeks now. The kids' shoe section was SUPER picked over...apparently mine is not the only kid who has been growing. I looked for the light up ones I know he likes, I couldn't find them. I had to size up to make sure they weren't garish pink with unicorns...I'm all for gender neutral clothing but not stuff he hates. But even without the sizing up, he's made a leap. Once they pass size 13 in the little kids' shoe sizes (for reference, Max now wears about a size 7 in little kids' shoe sizes,) they go into size 1 in big people sizes. I had to get him size 2s and they look GIGANTIC on him...but they aren't really. I also bought him a couple of new hoodies because our laundry situation this week (w

Back in the early days of this I said that if James was going to spend so much time staring at TV we should do something productive like start a Magic School Bus podcast. We made the initial recording of the first episode on April 5 (isn't it nice of computers to give you a date to pinpoint how far behind you are on things?) and as of today I am pleased to announce that we finally have a podcast! It is still awaiting approval from Apple Podcasts and Spotify but should be accessible right now at seatbeltseveryone.libsyn.com . Right now it has one episode but I should be able to get the next two out tomorrow, they are all recorded and edited, they just need to be encoded and uploaded. I started podcasting in the spring of 2015. To be exact, my first podcast episode of my first show launched May 29, 2015. James was thirteen months old and I had restarted my writing attempts that spring by writing flash fiction, so I launched what was at that time "the flash fiction podcast.&quo

I had to pull myself away from the joy of shopping for underwear online to blog for a bit. Know what isn't built to survive 2 pregnancies and a pandemic? Panties. I hate that word. I've always hated that word. But I'm getting better about saying silly things out loud. Today we went to the beach, both for our sanity and to keep the kids out from being underfoot while the washer repair guy was about. Now, if you're imagining us sunbathing with tropical blue water, do think again. Washington beaches are not sandy, they are generally rocky with slimy seaweed at low tide and lots of lovely driftwood for climbing. And it was windy and overcast, although it didn't rain until after we left. We had a picnic lunch, walked up and down the waterfront, watched the ferries come and go, climbed on the driftwood, and peeked in the lighthouse, which is usually closed on weekdays anyway but currently closed indefinitely. It was quite lovely. Max found the shape of a dog's hea

James literally woke me up this morning asking when lunch was going to be because he knew we were having a social distanced lunch with friends. It's our second one with this particular friend, one of James's besties, and her mom. Socially distanced lunches are so fun and so awkward. They parked their car in front of our fence, brought us food they passed to us, we sat in chairs on the other side of the fence and talked. Poor little girl got to eat lunch in the car but got to see James, and he was so excited he ran around like a freaking maniac ALL DAY. I feel like this whole thing has made me forget how to be a socially functioning human being and it's not like I was that good at it in the first place. I was severely bullied as a child and didn't have a lot of friends. Everyone says that but I can literally remember being yelled at by my mom because she was volunteering at my school and walked past my P.E. class on a day when my one friend was absent so I had no one

Today was the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. I grew up hearing about it but don't actually remember it...I guess it is my version of my great aunt's relationship to the Spanish flu. Except I didn't lose anyone in the eruption. Although, my dad told me today that during the eruption my mom was driving me (1.5) and my sister (3.5) home from our grandmother's funeral. She died May 12. Sometimes I get a little stage fright about what I share on this blog. The world situation is very very big and my world feels like it just keeps getting smaller. But what I realized today...I am not documenting what is happening in THE world. I am documenting what is happening in MY world. My mother's Mt. St. Helens experience was very different from everyone's around her because she lost her mother to cancer six days before it happened. No one experiences the world in the same way. Today was a domestic day. I did bake the cookies I told you I needed to and I

A friend of mine said on the phone tonight that someone in one of her online groups created a logo for that university and whoever that friend is JUST WON THE INTERNET. The assault on expertise and education going on in this country right now is for real mind boggling. OMG. But enough about Facebook. Learned again today that going outside and walking in the woods is sanity saving. But I feel like I already knew that. The lingering dread of Monday is still with me but the smell of flowers...omigoodness the flowers. And I feel like we should also do daily flower walks in our yard. The rhodys are in bloom, how could I ever be a sad person when the rhodys are in bloom? I failed at finally launching James's and my podcast AGAIN today. I so want it to happen. I really do. I want there to be things James and I do besides fight. We did put together most of his little in the mail stem kit on arcades...and then he melted down because he couldn't sleep with it. Mom life. We NEED to ma

It's hard when you feel like you want to hide out in your house from your family. Today wasn't bad it just...wasn't anything, really. I guess lazy days are okay sometimes but it's hard when not being lazy isn't really an option. Sigh. I could have much bigger things to complain about. I chatted with my sister for a bit. The last couple of conversations we've had have left me less than satisfied...like any good sibling she's good at annoying me without realizing she's doing it, but today was better. She's also watching that Mrs. America show and she said something that was so interesting to me. She said she feels like when we were in high school and college (for reference, she started high school in the fall of 1992 and graduated from college in the spring of 1999, I am two years behind her so for me it was 1994-2001...we went to a three year high school) it was really uncool to be a feminist. I said, well, maybe in high school in our little subur

Zoom actually wasn't the worst part of school today...the worst part was having to write a title, a topic sentence, and four facts about sharks. I feel like this is a lot for a kindergartner, but it's been a *really* long time since I was in kindergarten, so I will reserve judgment on that. And he's capable of doing it. What he's not capable of doing is doing it without mistakes and restarts along the way and such things are very hard on James, who is very hard on himself. I may have texted Daddy HELP 10 minutes after Zoom ended. And Daddy did help. It also doesn't help that, and Mama is just editorializing here, but based on the example his teacher sent it doesn't appear she knows what a topic sentence is. At least, her demo of a topic sentence did not fit MY understanding of what a topic sentence is. We tried a number of different ways of doing this, with daddy, with me, with timeout, with deep breathing. What ended up happening was he wrote at my desk

Somehow I have become the keeper of the family history. It's not a job I asked for but one that has come to me through my mom. It's a combination of being interested in family history, not being a minimalist, and living in a house where we save things. When I was a child, my mom kept a series of about 10 photo albums on a shelf in our rec room, near where they kept Time Life books and things like that. They were numbered...starting with her early adult years and going through her wedding album, early marriage, and I think #10 went through 1986 or so...after I was about eight years old I thought she had stopped keeping albums. I went through them a lot...the albums of her as a young teacher and in her 20s traveling with friends didn't interest me but I loved looking at her wedding album and the ones that followed it...her pregnancy, my sister as a newborn, me as a newborn and then family stuff from the first eight or so years of my life. I looked at them a lot and knew t

Day #70 is 10 weeks, ya'll. That's a summer vacation's worth of time. So at the beginning of this adventure during week maybe 2 that school was closed James and I wrote a couple of letters. He had gotten really into this book series called Polly Diamond and we had bought the first one and gotten the second one from the library (those were the days,) and he had a lot of questions. I didn't know how to answer them, but I said, hey, for one of today's school assignments let's write a letter to the author and one to the illustrator and ask them. He loved this idea. Now, he's little, so it took some doing on my part to get this to actually happen...much like recording a thank you video for the doctors and staff at the hospital was his idea but took some coaching to actually make happen, but believe me, the content was all him. Well, yesterday he got a response. The illustrator of Polly Diamond drew him a little card and wrote him a nice note, in which she sug

Nothing brings on binge eating like two months stuck at home. And if your relationship with food is already somewhat tenuous, it's not a great fit. Something happened yesterday that hasn't been far from my mind since it did and I felt the need to write about it tonight, after seeing yet another Mother's Day picture in which a friend laments her "three chins." Somehow an extra copy of James's "My Mom" sheet that he wrote about me with his class in Zoom on Friday got printed and ended up on my desk. He found it there and asked if I would fill it out and answer the questions about my mom. Sure. Not a problem. How old my mom would be if she were here, things she liked to do, food of hers I liked to eat, all well and good. Then I got to the fill in the blank where it said "She likes to eat ____________." And I didn't know how to answer that. I have no memory of my mom enjoying food or the eating experience. And that makes me really rea

My mother died just under 25 years ago on June 22, 1995. I was 16, she was 48. She died suddenly of cardiac arrest. She had not been sick. My first baby was born just over 6 years ago on April 30, 2014. We had tried for almost exactly 2 years to conceive him and while the doctor never worried about my first trimester spotting I spent weeks afraid I was going to lose him. I did not, but he made a rather abrupt appearance at 33 weeks (my water broke, I spent 24 hours on hospital bed rest, then went into labor,) and spent my first Mother's Day as a NICU mama. I was VERY lucky...he was very stable from the beginning, just small and needed lights for jaundice and a feeding tube so he was hospitalized for a little less than 3 weeks but never in critical or serious condition. I never know quite what to do with Mother's Day. To finally be celebrating it, after 2 decades of doing my very best to avoid it, is very strange. And I still think of all the people in my life and beyond tha

There is lots of talk, some of it jokes, some of it not so much, about this being the apocalypse. Pandemic, insane weather, a record fire season, murder hornets...it does feel very end-of-the-worldish. Very early in this (like a month ago) a friend and I were trying to remember the four horsemen of the apocalypse so we could see if we have them all yet. Pestilence, yep. War, always. Famine, for sure. Death, uh huh. It is reassuring to me that this is not the first time in human history it has felt like the end of the world. Certainly during the middle ages and bubonic plague and many other times, but in recent history I think for many World War I felt like the end of the world, and when it was finally winding down and a deadly flu epidemic was sweeping the globe. It had to feel so absolutely hopeless. I've been re-reading the L.M. Montgomery book Anne of the Island on audio. What launched me into re-reading Anne was reading Liz Rosenberg's 2019 biography of Montgomery calle