When the quarantine started and we packed up for the cabin, Cal said he was packing for 10 days. Ha ha I thought, such an optimist! I’m going to pack for 2 weeks! Yeah.

After more than 5 weeks up here, we decided to go down as a family to our actual home Friday to Monday. Because we left at night, things just didn’t seem that different to me. Fewer cars on the road, yes. But that seemed like it.

Our house looked like a bomb went off. Honestly when I left with the kids, I was just throwing stuff into bags and shoving it securely in the car. But returning, yikes. And it was also like returning to a strange yet familiar place. I’d been gone so long (Cal had come down a couple of times for supplies and mail but this was my first trip down) it was like my house belonged to someone else. Also the mess.

Holy crap, what happened to my house?

The first night I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t figure out why the bathroom was in the wrong place. My own bed was comfortable, but in the daytime I realized we’ve taken so many things up to the cabin that there wasn’t much to do at home.

Except fast food. Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize what a fast food addiction I had but after almost 6 weeks of zero, I was like “Can we hit Del Taco one more time? How about the burger place?” Not gonna lie, we ate fast food for basically every meal. Except for breakfast which were donuts.

No regrets.

I mostly stayed inside because of my extreme fear of the coronavirus (see: heart condition), but Monday I decided on a big day out. With my fantastic girlfriends, we decided to do a virtual beer tasting. We have a local microbrewery close to our house run by a really cool couple who actually live in our neighborhood, so I ordered a mixed 6-pack for everyone. Monday I went around delivering–two to Klara and two to Grover who were going to arrange pickup for the others.

I also had placed an order at Michael’s online. Now for some reason, I’m kind of obsessed with art supplies right now. I feel like the more I buy, the more inclined my children will be to use them. That hasn’t panned out for me so far but I have hope. So I donned my facemask drove over to Michael’s for the curbside pickup, then slid on some gloves and bought a few things at PetSmart. My big shopping trip was to Dollar Tree next door because art supplies. For the first time in over a month, I wandered the aisles of a store in person, avoiding other people and just buying stuff. It made me miss Target deep in my heart.

Coming back and seeing everyone’s face masks and social distancing and curbside pickup was so weird for me. There’s just not that up in the mountains so I have essentially been living in a bubble where COVID-19 doesn’t exist. Going home was a real Rip Van Winkle experience. Like I’d been asleep and woke up to find that breathing on each other was fatal and we’re all supposed to make our own masks, which is actually so accidentally environmentally friendly.

That said, I’m looking forward to the time ahead. The girls and I are going to have our beer tasting, split up in groups and solve a virtual escape room, do more painting with our kids, and attempt a drunk Bob Ross experience. Happy trees. There will be happy trees.

I cannot believe it’s been so long since I last blogged. I mean, it’s not like I had anything else to do with my time being on quarantine. Seriously.

Actually earlier I posted an entry that was overshare. So much TMI that I decided to take it down. Sorry. For the 2 of you who read it, my problem appears to have cleared up–hooray!

A big part of why I’ve been gone is because Thaddeus has been using my computer to play Minecraft and Roblox and talk to his friends, which… I suppose I’ll write more about later.

The adorable thing is that both Thaddeus and Poppy are learning a lot of new words from reading (okay, a lot of that from reading the screen on video games) but they have these adorable pronunciations of words they’ve only encountered in print. For example, “Queue,” which they are their friends pronounce “Kwee.” I have tried correcting them but to no avail. I just hope they don’t turn into adults who type “Walla!” instead of “Voila!” because then I will have failed everything that is important in this life.

So we’re at our 5 week mark here in quarantine. And it’s sort of like what they say when your kids are babies and they’re trying to make you feel better, “the days are long but the years are short.” Or in our quarantine case, “the days are long but the weeks are also long.” I have nearly given up on all the fantastic lesson plans I brought up here to keep Thaddeus educated. I mean, he’s probably going to fail 5th grade except that as a homeschooler I get to assign his grades so he’s earning a solid D-.

Poppy, on the other hand, is thriving. Well, she misses her friends, but primarily she does she school work on her own. Twice weekly she has a video chat with one of her teachers and it actually goes quite well. I’m just glad that one of my two children fall into the academically easy category because if I had two of Thaddeus, things would not be pretty.

How are you all doing?

Remember how I was complaining about what a terrible artist I am? Well guess what? I made art! Thanks to Veronica and the crew for walking me through it with plenty of positive reinforcement (nobody asked you Klara), I feel quite accomplished for having created what will be a beloved Easter decoration for years to come.

Right? RIGHT?

Now both Thaddeus and Poppy want their own personal art and sip lesson from Veronica. Thaddeus suggested a boys and moms only, which within the group I suppose we could cobble up enough boys. Poppy just wants to do it.

And to be fair, almost all of these materials are hers. She got a lovely gift from her BFF of canvases, paints, brushes, and cool stuff, and I pretty much just stole them.

The advantages of being an adult, am I right?

Tomorrow is Easter. So much for buying new Easter outfits and taking Easter pictures. Welcome to COVID-19, baby! We’ll be tuning into our church’s Zoom service. Sweet Dottie, the church woman assigned to checking in with us and making sure we’re still alive, expressed regret that she didn’t send us a hymnal before we left so we could participate in tomorrow’s service.

I mean, I kinda think I can find that online? And we’ve been singing “Christ Our Lord Is Risen Today” for years and years.

But I’m going to have to set an alarm because if we don’t show up on the Zoom tomorrow, I guarantee we’re going to get an instant check-in call from Dottie.

It’s funny because everyone has a story about 9/11. It was such a pivotal moment in American history it’s burned into our consciousness. We vividly remember where we were, what we were doing, how we felt.

So when future generations ask “Where were you during the quarantine?” it’s going to be extremely disappointing for most of us to say “at home.”

At home. For weeks. It’s so anti-climactic.

I’m so excited for Friday–I’m making art! My dear friend who is an artist and is currently in an art therapy program, gently chastised me by pointing out that creativity is different than art and by golly, I can do it! I can’t wait to show everyone the finished product.

You can never have too many therapists in your life.

The battle for screen time for our crack-addicted son is actually going well. Lots of positive reinforcement and catching him playing a screen and constantly saying “no screen time.” I mean, it’s not working as well as I had hoped but we’re making progress.

Poppy is doing quite well on distance learning. I think. Honestly I haven’t paid too much attention to it. Oh and she just told Cal, regarding some math assignments, “Mommy will try to help, but there’s no guarantee she’s going to succeed.”

That girl cuts to the bone, I swear.

Holy crap, we’re getting a lot of snow here. In April! In Southern California! Don’t you wish you were getting our snow too?

No?

Canadians and anyone who lives north of like Missouri, my hat’s off to you getting your children into snow clothes. I mean, am I unusual in this? It takes longer to put on these damned snow clothes–the bib, the socks, the boots, the gloves, the hats or hoods, the optional ski goggles–than it does to actually play outside.

I keep telling Thaddeus–

Me: “When we move to Canada you’re going to have to do this by yourself.”

Thaddeus: “Are we moving to Canada?!”

Me: “No, but if we were, you’d have to do these freakin’ mittens yourself.”

Thaddeus: “I can’t do them myself!”

Me: “Keep whining and we’re moving to Canada.”

Also tonight we’re having frozen pizza for dinner. Never in my life have I looked forward to frozen pizza more than tonight. It’s snowing, it’s cold, and I’m lazy and don’t want to cook. Frozen pizza basically ticks all my boxes here.

Our lovely little church at home has started the churchiest church thing ever. The Diaconate, also known as committee that takes care of the needs of, like, everyone, has divided up the church membership roll and assigned a Deacon to call us once a week. Since we haven’t been to church in a while, we are getting the call.

The Deacon who drew our name is this wonderful elderly lady I’ll call Dottie. Now let me just say, Dottie is one of the churchiest people doing this churchiest church job. She’s just wonderful and friendly and talkative. And the call comes on Wednesday.

So here’s the thing. Since I’ve lost all sense of time and space, Dottie is the closest thing I have to the passage of time. Once a week my phone rings and the caller ID comes up and it’s Dottie and I think “Oh my word, has it actually been a full week since I last talked to Dottie???”

I’m pretty sure I’m going to look back and count the weeks of this quarantine based on how many calls I get from Dottie.

Yep, I reached the end of my rope yesterday. Cal had gone home Friday morning for some badly-needed supplies so I had the kids all day Friday and Saturday and Sunday until the late afternoon. It didn’t help that the kids insisted on sleeping with me.

I mean, the bed is a king, unlike the queen we have at home, and can I just complain for a minute here as to why the king is so much bigger than the queen? Sure, traditionally the king is bigger and stronger but who’s birthin’ those babies in medieval times? And I’m not talking about the grossly overpriced Medieval Times, Dinner and Tournament (it’s a miss, people).

Anyway so the kids were with me in bed and I’m pretty sure that Great Danes take up less room (Great Danes–get it? Kings? Hamlet? Anyone?). So I didn’t get much sleep Friday or Saturday night. And Sunday, I just couldn’t take it anymore. Luckily my dear friend Klara happened to text me and I’m all being all bitter over text and she’s like “Um, do you want me to call you?” and I’m all like “Yes a phone call would be great except I am fully in charge of these children and even though they are 11 and 8 years old I can’t leave them because their brains were turning to mush on screens!!!!!! And I’m admitting that I’m depressed and lazy!!!” Klara informs me that we’re all depressed and lazy and perhaps a video chat tonight would be helpful?

Also I’m tired of cooking.

Seriously, our Small Mountain Community (SMC) does not have any restaurants and there is no fast food anywhere close, and while I probably ate more fast food than I should have, it turns out that when you really don’t want to cook, it sounds awfully good. I mean, I’m so hungry I could eat at Arby’s! Get it? The Simpsons? Anyone?

I suppose I should be lucky we have food. I mean, did you read The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder? I’ve been thinking a lot about Ms. Wilder and that part where they move into town and all they have is like wheat seeds or whatever it’s called so they grind it in their miniature coffee grinder and then presumably make some kind of bread (obviously not gluten-free) and that’s how they survive the aforementioned Long Winter.

At least we have pasta.

And our flour is pre-ground.

But I would really love food I don’t have to cook. And by cook I’m including “heat up.” Because I feel like if I put any kind of effort into it, even if it’s taking the bag out of the freezer and spreading it on a cookie sheet into the oven, that’s cooking. And I’m done with it.

Luckily, luckily, I have the mom’s chat to look forward to. Just like in my pre-quarantine life, my friends are what get me through. So we get online and while Klara is telling some hilarious story about video conferencing, Ariel is over there drawing phalluses on the shared whiteboard, and we find Cards Against Humanity online (you too can play in group chat!). It takes us a while to figure it out but then Veronica pops on and hooray!

Except Veronica has some kind of weird internet connection that never quite works. She freezes up all the times, and it’s always with the most unflattering expression on her face. Sorry Veronica, but it’s true. I don’t know why her internet is so bad since she lives literally down the street from Grover and Grover never has a single problem.

Get it together Veronica. You do not live in a rural area.

Anyway so Veronica has this bad connection and has to keep positioning her phone to get the right signal, but instead of placing herself in front of the phone camera like normal people, she just points the camera around so we generally see an ear sometimes but mostly a tuft of hair.

It’s a nice tuft of hair, but whey can’t you position yourself in front of the camera like normal people?

Veronica is an artist–a good one. So she’s going to walk us through one of those sip and paint nights. Remotely. I explain that I’m a crafter and not an artist and these two things are very different, and then tell about that time when I had to take “Art for Elementary School Teachers” my second semester in college (like that was about 15 majors before I finally decided on one to graduate) and then how I was so bad at elementary school art that I had to make a self-portrait out of yarn and mine looked just like Jesus. And I mean Jesus Christ, not Jesús the hot guy taking sculpture in the classroom next door. And also how my clay pinch pot was so bad the teacher was pretty sure mine was the one that exploded in the kiln and took out everyone else’s projects. And how I tried so hard in that class I even went in to open studio/office hours to try to do some art and in the end my lovely, compassionate teacher gave me an A because “I tried so hard.”

Who gets a sympathy “A” in elementary school art? Me, that’s who.

Ariel, meanwhile, was pushing hard for a heart design, which she felt represented the pinnacle of her talent. Then she pulled out the one and only sip and paint picture she’d ever done and wonderfully encouraging Veronica says, “That looks good!” Because I think being positive and affirming is a requirement for someone teaching art, but let’s be honest, Veronica isn’t all that convincing. And by Veronica I mean Veronica’s tuft of hair. I decide to say nothing because it looks suspiciously like my own last piece of art. And Klara says, “Is that a… a… sunset? I maybe would have blended it a little.”

NOBODY ASKED YOU, KLARA.

Anyway after a great deal of discussion between Klara, Ariel, myself, and Veronica’s tuft of hair, we arrived on a theme which seems both cute and eminently doable.

Kimpossible, Grover, Pollyanna (My new name for Scrubs) you need to get yourself some art supplies! Unlike me who has to think ahead for all this crap and get it all up the mountain somehow, Veronica can drop it off at your house. Friday night. Don’t be late.

And blend your sunsets.

Nobody asked you, Klara.

I am going to sew. I am going to sew things. I am going to sew ALL THE THINGS! The thing is, I haven’t sewn on a machine in a good 18 years, but it’s like riding a bike, right? You just jump right back onto it and bam, it all comes back, right?

Right???

I didn’t even own my own sewing machine until a couple of years ago when a friend got a new one and generously passed hers on to me. But two decades ago I did do a fair amount of sewing so I’m feeling grossly overconfident that I can do it again.

And teach Poppy too!

Now the CDC has conveniently given me something to sew. Masks! But first I’m going to sew hammocks for our rats to sleep in. These are very easy because our chonky rat, Pippin (also known as Sir Chonks-A-Lot) simply chews through them in a matter of minutes. Therefore, you can’t screw them up! Because even if you do, it’s going to be chewed up anyway! The other two rats don’t do this, but Pip does. Little bugger.

How did we get to the point where we wear masks everywhere? Does anyone else find this really weird?

Also I watching Tiger King. Do not recommend. The people are crazy, yes, and the story is just bizarre, but at the end of the day, even normal people should not have wild animals as pets. Bottom line, tigers, lions, monkeys, bears, etc. are not pets and you should treat them as the non-domesticated animals that they are. Backyard zoos should be outlawed, as should big cat ownership.

I also have come to realize that several people do not like Shaun the Sheep. Since there are no actual spoken words, you could, of course, turn the sound all the way down and listen to your favorite mix tape in the background while enjoying the antics of Shaun, Bitzer, and the Farmer. But hey, your loss.

First some great news! We just found that Shaun the Sheep has a whole new series out!!! So okay, if you’re not an Aardman fan, you need to become one instantly. Shaun the Sheep is the best character EVER. Last year they released a new movie which we recently found–Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon, which is a must-watch. There was an older Shaun the Sheep series which you also need to watch, and now there’s a new one!

The best thing about Shaun the Sheep is that it’s completely hilarious for adults too. In fact, there are quite a few nods to a more sophisticated knowledge that adults have, although no references to “adult” (inappropriate) jokes. Drop everything and watch Shaun the Sheep.

Next, Thaddeus broke last night. He’s tired of the cabin. When can we go home? I hate it here, etc. And I get it. I really do. Cabin fever is real. I just really think that here is the best place to be. Especially for me. I really don’t want to leave. And I also think home would be much worse because we’re constantly reminded of things we can’t do.

But another thing too is that he had had a full day of screens in his face and it absolutely affects his behavior. It’s so hard because the more screen time he has, the worse he is. But the catch is that he is like completely incapable of doing anything by himself. Same with Poppy.

I’m a Gen Xer. We’re the generation who were neglected and unsupervised for a minimum of 5 hours after school. We found shit to do and just did it. We rode our bikes wherever without helmets. We read a ton of books, and rode our bikes to the library to check out more. We made our own food and ate a full bowl of Frosted Flakes without milk and drank a Squeezit to wash it down. We stretched out the phone cord and talked to our friends. We made mix tapes and spent hours getting our bangs as high as possible.

Someone get the Aqua Net!

Thaddeus and Poppy’s generation are just used to being entertained. I know I’ve created this monster for sure. But it’s like, if they’re not on a screen, they want me to participate in whatever they’re doing. I mean, my mother was a stay at home mom and yet I don’t remember ever seeing her after school and I can’t think of a single time she sat down and played a board game with me, unless it was a family game after dinner. And yet, I’m on my 234,593,007,689th game of Uno (Lord, deliver me from Uno). Why can’t they play together? Why me?

Just play together! There’s two of you for a reason!

So when I want to do something or just get a break, the kids get back on the screens. I’m going to have to take the screens away and hide them but this is exhausting.

That said, new Shaun the Sheep!!!