Emptying My Brain Into a Blog Post

When you put off doing something...like writing a blog post...long enough, it's hard to figure out where to begin.

I have been very much wanting to write but I've been so exhausted by the end of the day most days that even getting up to come downstairs feels like a challenge. Plus my computer got a virus it couldn't shake and I had to back everything up and it had to be basically wiped and rebooted. Good times. Both the desktop and the laptop are 100% operational now, yay, technology.

So I'll start with the present and work backwards. It's Friday night and we are wrapping up a week of spring break. It's been an odd one...the governor's mandate to reopen schools had no flexibility for spring break so instead of starting the hybrid school schedule the week after spring break as planned they had to start it the week before. Which meant that none of the last three weeks has had the same schedule. After a second week of "bridge" days where he went for 2 hours one afternoon and then had remote work the rest of the week we started our "real" hybrid schedule last week. He now goes to school Mondays and Tuesdays and then has asynchronous remote work the rest of the week. 

It was moderately successful. He was excited to go both days and exhausted when I picked him up. I can tell how out of shape I am because walking to and from school to drop him off and pick him up was quite the workout. I'm going to have to figure out how to fit more actual workouts into my life. He's still scared of outside so he wants to wear a parka, gloves, and winter hat to and from school (and every place where he might be outside.) I'm not allowing the parka anymore because it's been too nice and he's only allowed the gloves if he has a clean pair.

We had technical issues with the asynchronous work so it was after noon on Thursday before we even had any work to do. I detest choice boards but need to stay positive because choice boards are my life now. I believe that's what every week is going to be...a choice board of asynchronous work. I'm also going to have to stay on him because he just loves not reading all the directions to a choice and just doing...the easy part.

Spring break has been nice. Exhausting but nice. The weather has been glorious...in the 60s nearly every day, climbing up into the high 70s by today. We hit the epic dog park on Monday, we played with Play Doh from the Easter baskets, we did a library road trip...that one felt so good...and have spent much time in the park. I was going to try to do some academic type stuff with him but we've had enough of that lately. We just played.

Big news of the week was that Daddy got his first Covid vaccine on Monday. That was exciting. As of yesterday, anyone in the state 16 or older who wants one can get a vaccine so appointment scheduling is in survival of the fittest mode, but I'm hoping to get my first appointment soon. My nephew, who is 16, got his first shot today. Things are still dicey and everyone is worried about letting go of precautions too soon..the governor yanked a couple of counties back a reopening phase today, including where my dad lives, and in Michigan where my in-laws are the situation is not at all good. So it feels like the vaccines and Covid are racing right now to see who will win. I hope we can beat this thing. It's been 14 months and we are all just plain over it. I met a new mom friend in a park yesterday to help her with some baby carrier stuff. Her baby is 10 months old and has spent his entire life in quarantine. That's just impossible to believe. 

We had our second pandemic Easter the weekend before school started. My dad took us to a time share on the beach that he and my stepmother used to own. Her brother owns it now and he allowed us to use it for the weekend. There's a possibility the complex may be bought out so my dad wanted to use it once more just in case. It has a lot of nostalgia for him, not as much for me. It is small. There's a bedroom up a spiral staircase, with a little hallway/atrium outside it where there are bunk beds and then downstairs there's a pull out couch. There's a tiny kitchen and a little bathroom and that's it. It has great access to the beach...anywhere you go on the Washington coast the beach itself will be about 1/4 mile walk because the land is such that you can't build right on the beach, but it's a nice little walk and then you can walk up and down the coastline for as long as you like. Josh and I and Max left James with Grandpa for awhile and drove into Ocean Shores. From Ocean Shores you can drive right onto the beach, which is a public highway and you can drive vehicles on it during the tourist off season (closed Memorial Day through Labor Day.)

It was a weird Easter. Church is still closed and that's always a big Easter thing for me. Being on the beach we didn't even watch it. We haven't been participating in online church which makes me feel guilty but online church also doesn't make me feel awesome. James and I both miss church a lot. Grandpa and I talked with James about the true meaning of Easter but of course he was most excited about the Easter bunny, who found us at the beach.

It was a nice trip, I'm glad we did it. I hope we don't have too many more pandemic holidays coming. James's second pandemic birthday is in a couple of weeks. At least Grandpa and Auntie Molly will be able to come this time.

We are making summer vacation plans, have plane tickets booked to see family in Michigan, are hopeful things will be okay by then. It's amazing how normal life is starting to feel now, especially with the weather warming up and being able to see people socially distanced outside. I'm realizing this whole thing is not going to end at a defined place and time, it's just going to be a slow buildup and it's going to take a long long time. 

A lot of summer activities for kids will be open. I've already missed the boat on registering for most of them. I guess we're going to have a quiet summer. I guess that's okay. At this point I'm just hoping we'll be able to see people, have meet ups. If we can do that, we can survive the summer. That's what we said last summer. And it ended up being kind of true.

So that's where we are right now. Still weird. Still living through it. Feeling lucky. Leaning into anything and everything that feels normal. Kinda still feels like I have a preschooler in some ways. His beginning of kindergarten behaviors are back for sure. It's going to take awhile. I'm hoping we all give each other grace. At this point he's spent far more of his life since he started kindergarten out of school than in it.

Media consumption: I read a TON of books in March and have kind of cratered since then. Looking at my reading journal from last year it was backwards...I didn't read a lot in March when the quarantine was new but read a ton in April. I ordered some Beverly Cleary young adult novels from Thriftbooks after she died and I read one. It was good nostalgia. We had to go to Poulsbo last weekend and stopped at a really great bookstore there where I picked up a book called Unsettled Ground all about the Whitman Massacre that I'm reading right now. It's super interesting. The author has really tried to bring in the Native perspective, which isn't done often enough.

A lot of my media consumption these days is focused around the social injustice. There was another police shooting in Minneapolis at the same time as the killer of George Floyd is on trial. It's hard to watch. It is intense like it was last summer and I don't know what to say here except the whole thing makes me so unbelievably sad.

Back to media consumption nostalgia: I got these Growing Pains DVDs from the library and have been watching 15 year old Kirk Cameron. So cheesy. I used to watch reruns of that show after school when I was a kid. I recently listened to The History Chicks 1950s housewife episode so coming soon for me is Pleasantville, The Donna Reed Show, and Mona Lisa Smile.

Today I'm grateful for sunshine, my hammock, that the dog sleeps with James and it's so cute, managing to figure out what was for dinner and cleaning the freezer in the process, weekends, libraries, a whole week of good weather, good parks, sunglasses, picnics, tired children, audiobooks, and still being here. We've survived a lot. We're doing okay.