Kris's Covid Pandemic Blog

Feeling kinda unsuccessful at everything this week...in a reading slump, can't seem to keep the house clean, not feeling like an awesome parent, not doing much writing...so let's focus on the good and celebrate some wins instead of talking about all that, okay? Max has started this thing where he comes and crawls into bed with me whatever time he wakes up in the morning because "I come to check on you." He will fall asleep...kinda...and sometimes he will let me sleep. It's endearing but annoying and it doesn't seem really worth it to try to return him to his own bed at that time of the morning because it's not in the end gonna buy me that much sleep. Before the time change it was generally okay with the occasional early morning, since the time change it has been consistently around 6:30 a.m. This morning he did it and I was a teensy bit annoyed because we had a long day yesterday...fun...we went to hang out with Molly while Daddy had to go pick up computer...

This falls under the heading of it started in my brain as a social media post but I didn't want to have that particular fight and it was going to be too long anyway. So it's NaNoWriMo, I need the words, and it is going to live here to be read or not but at least it won't just be in my brain. This conversation started with a picture book I was telling Josh about when we went to school to pick up James today. The book is called Secret of the Dance by Andrea Spalding and Alfred Scow. Scow, who has passed on since the book was published, was a lawyer and a judge and a  Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw, indigenous people who lived in what is today British Columbia on and around what is now called Vancouver island. The book is based on Scow's experience as a child in the 1930s when he witnessed a secret potlach held by his family and community after dancing by indigenous people was banned by the Canadian government. The potlach he witnessed was the last such event his community would have for...

I'm tired. This is NOT going to be a rant about Daylight Savings Time...there are plenty of those out there wihout me adding to the din. I'm just tired. There's no good reason for me to be tired. I think it is more of an emotionally tired than physically tired (although it's both.) Emotions ran very high this weekend all the way around.  James got his first Covid shot yesterday, which I'm happy about but don't really want to talk about. The high school ran a clinic. He did well, feels great, had no lingering side effects, got a sticker and a prize and piece of candy, and will return for his second shot in three weeks. Max's age group remains not yet eligible. I'm working on being a kinder person. I try really hard to keep in check my rather famous temper with my kids and unfortunately sometimes that means my long suffering husband gets the brunt. I am trying not to let that happen and trying to get more rest, physically and emotionally, so that doesn...

 It occurred to me this morning that when James was the age Max is now I used to give him breakfast like a dog. No, really. It's true. He's always been an early riser and I've always sucked at mornings. So he'd wake me up and I'd go sit on the couch while I tried to wake up and put a bowl of dry Cheerios (James has never liked milk on his Cheerios) on the floor for him to snack on. During quarantine and remote school, it was more or less James's job to get breakfast for him and his brother. I'd help as needed.  These days they eat while I try to get us all ready for our day and more often than not it's a Z bar.  Motherhood of a toddler is exhausting this week. Max has gone into full three year old mode. His favorite word is no and he tells me regularly that he doesn't like me. You know what toddlers are? Verbally abusive, that's what. He refuses to poop in the  potty and then runs away when it's time to change his stinky pull up. Today I thou...

The plan to write something (blog post, toddler journal, novel draft, whatever) at least three times a week in October worked for about a week and a half. But these words are officially counting towards NaNoWriMo now. Hold please while I check and see how many words I wrote last year.  Whoa, after going through a password reset (it's an old email, glad it worked!) I wrote over 40,000 words last year. Go, Kris, go! I remember it going quite well. For those who may be new around here, I covered NaNoWriMo at great length in a blog post about a year ago. The upshot is I've been doing this off and on since 2009. Generally the plan is you start a new writing project (your novel, the name of this operation being National Novel Writing Month) on November 1 and try to get a full draft (50,000 words) written in 30 days. There are events (all virtual these days but once upon a time we used to meet up places) and challenges and it's a nonprofit, they have a young writer's program, ...