Because life is so surreal lately I haven’t known what to write about. However, in my Facebook memories, this popped up from 2016:

A major blowout for the Sabertooth Pack this morning. So major that when the score reached 5-0 I told our two best players that they weren’t allowed to take a goal shot unless they’d passed the ball to at least one other teammate first. That led to some great passing and opportunities for the other players to get into the action. Thaddeus really pushed himself beyond his comfort zone and won the sportsmanship medal for the week. Only two more weeks left!

And I thought, this is a story I want to tell again, and it’s long. So here’s a story about soccer, perseverance, risk-taking, courage, illness, inspiration, and victory.

Thaddeus was playing a recreational soccer league. I loved this league because the main focus was having fun, not winning. Teams met on Saturdays only. The first half of the Saturday meeting was practice and learning skills from the staff and the second half was playing a game. Each “season” was 8 weeks long and kids were randomly assigned to teams. The organization was professionally run but the coaches were all volunteers, and since nobody else stepped up, for that season I decided to step in as the coach for Thaddeus’ team. I had played soccer for a few years in elementary and I think middle school (?) but I was far from talented (I have bad knees). I wasn’t even 100% sure of the rules, but the league people (read: college students) served as referees and the rules were modified with a half-height goal, no hands or any contact above the waist allowed even for the goalie, and so on.

Each team chose their own name and I’ll have to interrupt here for a second to take you back to Thaddeus’s very first team where the team chose the best name ever. Some of the kids wanted to be the Sharks, some wanted to be the Power Soccer Balls, some wanted to be the Swordfish. They ended up with the most epic name: Power Swordfish Balls. I am 100% not kidding you. Power Swordfish Balls. I burst into laughter and then looked around and none of the other adults were laughing. I’m like “Am I think only one who finds this hilarious and perhaps a bit inappropriate?” Nope, just me. Oh my god, I seriously crack up even thinking about it. Power Swordfish Balls forever!

This team, however, was the Sabertooth Pack. Thaddeus is very timid and only wanted to play goalkeeper, although I did get him out each game. We had two excellent forwards, one kid who was a massive power kicker, a kid I called “Fancy Feet” because she was all about getting in there and stealing the ball from other players, another excellent midfielder, and Thaddeus. Each team had 6 players and we could field 5 and switch out a rest period for the 6th. The Sabertooth Pack was quite good. My big contribution was crossing up and down the field yelling “Yes! That’s the way to do it! Great Pass!” etc. The kids were just awesome.

Anyway, move to the last game of the season. Sabertooth Pack qualified for the final! We were playing for first place! The problem? Literally half the team was sick. Fancy Feet had the flu, my power kicker was down with strep throat, and one of my forwards had a fever. We had one forward, a midfielder, and a goalkeeper. The ref asked if we wanted to forfeit the game, and my 3 players gave a resounding no. We were going to do our best. If we had to, we’d go down fighting.

The other team had all 6 players and as I mentioned was allowed to field 5 at a time. Here’s where I get a little judgey because it was at the coach’s discretion to decide how to use his players. Personally I would have fielded 3 or 4 at a time to make it more fair because it was a recreational league, not competitive. But the other coach decided to field all 5. Okay, whatever. I huddled my 3 and we strategized. The forward decided to position in the field near their goal and concentrate on dribbling and taking shots. The midfielder would hover in the middle and work on intercepting and passing. Thaddeus was responsible for the back half of the field and would stay at the goal and stop anything coming his way.

Did I mention it was literally 100 degrees? I mean for real, it was 100 degrees. Did I mention that they fielded all 5 players? Throughout the entire game, they fielded all 5 players.

Well, it quickly became clear that their players were relying on someone else to get the job done. They had a ball hog and Thaddeus quickly learned to position himself for any shot while the midfielder concentrated on intercepting that player. Some of their kids were literally just standing there while our team was crossing the field constantly.

We got to halftime and thanks to our teamwork, Sabertooth Pack had pulled ahead 3-2. Our team was exhausted but energized. 3 players against 5 and we were ahead!! I loaded them up with orange slices and Gatorade and sought their input for the second half. I asked them what they thought was going well and one of the kids immediately nailed it–“we’re working as a team,” he said. “They’re just kicking the ball around.”

Still, these kids were TIRED. Exhausted. I got them all resting. We talked about fielding two of them and rotating one to take a rest throughout the half. All 3 kids insisted on playing the full game. At that point we’d been joined by Fancy Feet’s dad and our power kicker and his mom to cheer us on. We hands-down had the best support crew.

When the halftime break was over, our team took the field. And man, did our kids fight HARD. The opposing team had figured out that maybe they should coordinate their efforts a little bit and started being more aggressive. They tied the score 3-3 and then pulled ahead 3-4. I called a time out to regroup. Our team had been running the entire field all morning. The opposing team finally seemed to have gotten their stuff together. We agreed that the forward would position himself at the goal, and that the midfielder and goalie would simply kick the ball to him to take every shot he could.

Our supporters were literally on their feet for the last few minutes. I was sweating buckets as I crossed the field up and down. They scored a point. We scored a point. They scored a point. We scored a point. The ball was everywhere. Shot after shot after shot. Our kids ran the field up and down and back again.

And then the ref blew the whistle. And…

We lost.

6-5.

And yet?

There was so much cheering. There was cheering from our exhausted players. There was cheering from our parents and grandparents. There was cheering from the opposing team’s parents. There was cheering from the league staff. We had other parents from other teams slapping our kids on their backs. Our power kicker jumped on his teammates despite his strep throat.

We had won second place. We’d done it. 3 players against 5 in 100-degree heat for a full hour, and we lost by a single point.

The winning team was subdued. We thanked them, of course, with sportsmanship, but honestly I have never seen a more depressed 1st place team.

Meanwhile our kids headed over to our medal ceremony. Not gonna lie, I cried handing out our 2nd place awards. Each kid giving each other high fives fingering their medals and wolfing down their free bag of M&Ms. It was amazing.

I feel like there’s a lesson here. Maybe I’m too stressed out or anxious to see it, but there’s definitely a lesson. I’m so glad I got to experience this. I’m so glad that later Thaddeus said “Remember when you were my soccer coach and we got second place?”

Maybe you need a boost. Maybe you need an ill player on the sidelines cheering you on. Maybe you need to run the field up and down, over and over again. Maybe you need those one or two people who will fight with you to the end.

Maybe you need the triumph of a second place victory.

Take that medal and hold it close to your heart. Let’s all get through this together.

Last night I forgot to turn on the heater so when we all woke up, our home was a frosty 60 degrees. It was heating very slowly, so when it was time for school–online distance learning–I wrapped Poppy up in a blanket to keep her warm. Shortly afterwards, she reported that she had gotten in trouble in class for wearing a blanket. It was school policy that kids be fully dressed in school-appropriate outfits to be “ready to learn” and that blankets weren’t allowed. Poppy’s teacher suggested she put on a sweater.

Guys, we need to do better than this. We need to BE better than this. And I want to say at the beginning here that I have a number of wonderful friends who are teachers and a number of friends who are parents and a number who are both and we are all, ALL doing the best we can right now. This is not a rant against teachers.

This is a rant against the mindset that we can re-create school at home. That we can decide what’s best for students and parents without actually asking students and parents. We need to challenge our thinking here. We need to do better.

It seems like every school and maybe even every class is handling distance learning differently. Currently Poppy’s school is 100% online. Her class format requires her to be online, with her camera on, for the entire school day, from 8:10am to 1:10pm, for live instruction. We were told that there would be times that Poppy could step away from the computer and that she wouldn’t be on screen all day but that turned out to be the short breaks she gets for “recess” and “lunch.” Otherwise her entire day is simply a traditional classroom attempted to be re-created at home. But unlike the traditional classroom, she is not allowed to socialize with her classmates during recess and lunch. The chat room is shut down because the teacher cannot monitor the students so there is no free conversation.

In addition to the no blanket policy, students are also not allowed to snack during class time, as that should take place before school and during recess. They do not have to wear their school uniforms–although some other schools do require that–but they are expected to be seated at a desk or table just as they would be at school.

But home is not school. And do we really NEED to try to make it so? Poppy told me she would rather sit in bed wrapped in a blanket wearing her pajamas to do school. And I have to ask–why not? The bed is comfortable. Blankets are comfortable. Pajamas are comfortable. Snacks are comfortable. But apparently this makes them not “ready to learn.” According to what expert? Are we really saying that in order to be ready to learn, students must be physically uncomfortable? Is this really necessary?

Decades of research into child development and child learning shows that children are hard-wired to be “ready to learn” every minute of every day. That’s how a child’s brain works. Poppy is equally ready to learn whether she’s wearing her school uniform or bundled up in a blanket. All children are. In fact, research shows that children are MORE ready and able to learn when they are comfortable. Studies like this one show a 16% improvement in academic performance among students in classrooms that were configured with natural lighting, flexible seating, and student choice of environment. There is a huge movement, in the right direction, of reconfiguring classrooms to accommodate flexible seating including couches, bean bags, standing desks, carpets, etc. resulting in increased learning. Yet here at home, which is the ultimate reconfigured classroom, we’re back to chairs and desks and zero comforts like clothing choices (pajamas) and blankets. And the best part of all is that it’s me, the parent, who gets to enforce this. Yay!

These policies also assume that our home is a comfortable environment–like, not 60 degrees–which quite frankly in the middle of this pandemic and massive unemployment is not always a safe assumption to make. It also assumes I have a separate table or desk and space for my children–both of them–to work. Glad I don’t live in a tiny apartment, or a motel room. This puts extra stress and pressure on me, the parent, to try to imitate a traditional classroom environment even though that’s both impossible and already recognized as non-ideal for learning.

We need to do better. It’s NOT that Poppy is not ready to learn. She is ready to learn. She is biologically wired that way. So if she’s not learning, then the fault is NOT that she’s too comfortable or in the wrong environment. The fault is in what’s being taught and the way it’s being taught.

And again, I’m not trying to blame teachers here. They’re basically the lowest on the totem pole (aside from families and students, who are lower) as far as what they’re expected to teach and the method and conditions under which they’re expected to teach it. They’re subject to a line of authority that goes from school administration to district to school board to county to state laws.

And out of all of these decision-makers, not a single one are seeking the input of the biggest stakeholders in education–the students. Everyone has decided that Poppy would learn best if she were sitting at a desk wearing approved clothes with her camera and microphone on. But Poppy is the expert on Poppy, and she assures me that she thinks she would learn better if she could sit in bed in her pajamas wrapped up in a blanket with a big bowl of snacks. And as her parent, it would be the best and easiest for me to make my own decisions about what helps Poppy learn. And since I’m being forced to have this take place in my own home, what better opportunity to customize Poppy’s learning environment to maximize her learning in the ways both she and I know work for her?

And even if it didn’t improve her academic performance, it would make her much happier and more comfortable. She said she would like distance learning more. Why can’t we have that? Because it’s inconvenient to the school or the district? Because the school board has decided what is best for her without checking with the people who know her best, which is me and her? This is an awful, stressful time for everyone, children included. Families are stressed to the maximum and children are not immune to that. It is incredibly stressful to be a kid right now. They are carrying a much heavier burden this year than I ever did as a child.

Why can’t we use this as an opportunity to really reach kids where they’re at? Instead of arbitrary restrictions set down by people who didn’t even ask those of us on the receiving end, why can’t we broaden our thinking? It’s all a bunch of hit-and-miss at this point, and I get that we’re in uncharted waters here. I do. But people are making all of these decisions without even asking the kids and parents what would work best.

I just want some flexibility. I want a little input. I want someone to ask Poppy what her dream distance learning environment would look like and I want someone to make that happen. We just really need to do better here.

Whenever I think or talk about school, I’ve been saying “we’re going to be fine.” I’m thinking, we are an upper middle class family who has everything we need–a safe place to ride out the pandemic, food on the table, a single income that supports our needs, a stay at home mom to supervise learning, devices for each kid to do their schoolwork on, and particularly in doing public school online, Poppy is bright and works hard and she doesn’t have more than the ordinary struggles with her academics. Thaddeus needs some extra assistance in some topics but again, we have the time and resources to provide that extra attention.

But you know what? As I reflect on the coming school year, it occurs to me that despite our privileges, my kids are very much not “going to be fine.”

I want to be clear that when thinking about schools, there are really no good options. There are just bad options and the bad options that makes me less likely to get sick and die. So yeah, I’m in favor of the latter. But I completely understand the initial statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics and a widespread feeling that the risk to physical health is or should be less important than the psychological impacts of staying home. That kids should be in school.

But the fact is, I really think putting kids in school is not going to alleviate those psychological impacts. I know I am constantly living in a state of constant, low-level panic. I can feel it physically, in my stomach and in fatigue. I’m basically just nervous and afraid, a bit, down inside, all day, every day. And the kids can feel it.

Oh boy, can they feel it.

Poppy has not slept a night by herself since this quarantine began. She had been having nighttime problems before but now they are completely out of control. And on a Facebook group I belong to of parents of girls right at Poppy’s age, someone posted “does anyone’s daughter have to sleep with them?” and immediately 6 responses popped up–me too, me too, me too. We’re all in bed with our kids. We’re not family sleepers so this has been rough to switch off between me and Cal as to who does Poppy duty. And we’re working on it–found a good book that seems like it will help–but I know that part of it is her own anxiety about COVID that even she can’t verbalize, and another big part is her picking up on our own anxiety.

Our bodies were not meant to take a constant level of anxiety, especially for kids. Our fight/flight/freeze instinct is perpetually activated, with the accompanying cortisol and other panic hormones flooding our systems. Every study agrees this is bad for us. And every study agrees this is particularly bad for kids. And every study agrees that this affects brain development.

Kids in less privileged situations are getting hit so much harder. We all know that. But even kids in the best of situations like ours are still getting hit. There seems to be this magical thinking that if we just send kids back to school, all of their social, emotional, and psychological challenges will disappear. But they won’t. When most of those challenges are a reaction to their parents’/caregivers’ level of constant stress–their jobs, their incomes, their exposure to COVID, their own COVID infection, and on and on–going to school and hanging out 6 feet away from your friends wearing a mask behind plexiglass shields is NOT going to solve these problems.

We need to think better. We need to be more creative. We need to do better.

Honestly I think we are the last people in the country to start school. That is, it starts next week. So. Here are my school woes.

Poppy’s school is entirely online. Yay. However, they have been very stingy with information so we don’t actually know who her teacher is or what their daily schedule will look like. Do they have to be on the screen all day? Who knows? It’s honestly really frustrating at this point. We start school in 5 days and need to know these things. There’s a parent meeting Monday night but that’s also frustrating because at some point we’re going to have to drive down (still at the mountains) to pick up her textbooks and such and it’s kind of annoying to have to just drop everything the day before school starts. Not to mention what kind of school supplies we need. Ugh.

Thaddeus, on the other hand, is doing all kinds of stuff. We started homeschooling him last December and it went poorly. However, now I feel like I have a handle on what we’re doing with him. He’s actually doing some really cool things. Monday he’s taking two online hour-long classes: Intro to Entrepreneurship and Earth Science. Tuesday he’s on 8:00-noon with an enrichment program that follows kids’ interests and works them into math, language arts, science, and social studies lessons. Wednesday he’s back to the two online hour-long classes: Adventures in Creative Writing and Greek Mythology. Thursday he’s back to the 8:00-noon program. Then Fridays he’s doing the most awesome thing ever–there’s a Makerspace near our home-home (not the mountains) and he’s going to be building with real tools starting with woodworking and moving up to things like a 3D printer. The kind of bummer about that is that we will have to drive him down the hill to go to class every Friday. That said, it puts us there for the weekend for playdates.

I’ve also been reading a lot about Gameschooling, which is pretty much like it sounds–schooling through board games. So fun with board games will be mandatory. Mandatory fun. If you do not have fun, you get an F. An F for fun. Let’s not get an F.

So we’ll see how this goes.

Hey guys. What’s up? I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling like it’s July Freakin’ 31st and we are still here.

Like, my last blog was in the beginning of May and I thought “Oh, we’ll be out of here by the end of June, tops! Then the kids will all go back to school in August!”

Oh honey. That’s so cute.

Because it’s July Freakin’ 31st and thing have only gotten worse.

I’ll be honest. The reason why I stepped away from this blog is because I had a total nervous breakdown curled up in the fetal position in bed. But also I gave in to convenience and let Thaddeus use my computer for Minecraft, so I had no computer to use and then I didn’t get my computer back until I literally bought a new one this week. It’s kind of a long story.

So here we are, still quarantined in the cabin. Still hiding from all of society thanks to my extremely high-risk status. The kids have not seen their friends in person in 4 months 16 days, or 19 weeks and 5 days, or 138 days. They saw their grandparents (my folks) after they carefully quarantined themselves and then rented the cabin two doors down for 4 days. That’s been it. Lucky me, I saw my friends in person twice!

I mean, what is happening here?

I’ve basically given up on parenting. Who’s with me? Nobody? Yeah. My kids are on their screens for more hours than there are in the day. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it’s true. I’ve abandoned all pretense of being a good parent who sets boundaries and fosters a joyful environment. Mommy fail. And I can’t even muster up enough energy to care.

And then there’s school. Lord have mercy, it’s school.

Poppy loves her public school. She felt her teacher last year was too easy and did not give enough tests. She loves her friends and loves learning. She freakin’ HATES Zoom. But no matter, she is 100% online until our county meets a certain threshold. And honestly I’m conflicted. Health-wise, all online is obviously, scientifically the safest way to go. And safety should come first. But let’s be honest–it pretty much sucks. Basically every option here sucks. Big time. Sucks sucks sucks. Still, I think the option that actually keeps me alive is probably the best. So online it is.

Poppy hates Zoom. Did I mention she hates Zoom? I don’t know why. She Zooms with her friends just fine. But when it comes to taking an online class from Outschool or doing karate or doing an actual school thing or even participating in Girl Scout meetings, she hates it. How is this going to work for actual school? I honestly don’t know. I think she doesn’t like crowded Zoom meetings. Who does? But she’s going to have to learn this way. I can’t wait. This will be a blast.

Meanwhile, due to some bad timing, state laws, and other stuff, we are homeschooling Thaddeus and declaring ourselves a private school with the state. We were with a charter, but for complicated reasons, we are no longer with a charter. We decided to name ourself the Wexler Preparatory Academy. If we homeschool Thaddeus through high school, his diploma will declare him a graduate of Wexler Preparatory Academy. Because why not? Wexler is the last name of my favorite character, Turtle Wexler, in one of our favorite books, The Westing Game. I absolutely LOVE The Westing Game, although there are some Asian stereotypes that need to be addressed. Cal loved The Westing Game so much, as a kid he carried around his copy until the cover fell off. Hey here’s an idea during quarantine–read The Westing Game!

I was considering an acronym for our private school. I liked “Family Unified Bidirectional Academic Resources Academy” but the FUBAR-A seemed a little obvious. Even though it’s pretty accurate.

I mean, that’s kind of it right now. Stay tuned for more exciting episodes of “Oh Shit, I’m Homeschooling!”

Oh my gosh, the girls and I did the funnest activity on Zoom–a digital escape room! We had originally thought that we might split up into two groups each with their own Zoom chats, and race each other solving the room, but then Pollyanna was brain fried from work (at the hospital, we cut her slack) and Klara was just being lazy (whatEVER) and nobody was in for a real competition so we just worked through it together.

There are a couple of different types of online escape rooms. The one we did was text-based where we followed a text story, then got a picture and had to solve the puzzle and type in it. It felt very 1990s. Like Oregon Trail but with better graphics and no dysentery. There are others which are like the video game type and I think we might try that next.

The room we did can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/y753u54a

Some of the puzzles were legit hard. It helped tremendously that Kimpossible is a math professor, since my contribution to the number questions were like “Yeah, well if you add 2342334 and 1 you get…5? And if we switch that number with–oh YES, Kimpossible! That’s EXACTLY what I was going to say!”

After we solved the text one and most people went to bed, Ariel, Veronica, and I went through a video game one Ariel had found. And let me just tell you, even though she was an art major in college, Veronica flew through all of the math/number puzzles like nothing.

Clearly the number problems are challenging for me.

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.