I glanced in the rear-view mirror as we pulled up to the stoplight, and had to grab my phone out of its dashboard mount to capture this slice of life.
Driving to School
Category Archives: pandemic
COVID-19 has changed everything
Merry Christmas 2020
Merry Christmas from Aaron, Diana, Connor, and Mei!
It was weird to have Christmas as just the three of us, but we made the best of it. Connor played his new Nintendo Switch Lite, we played a game of Pictionary Air as a family, we texted family and friends, and we ate ham and sweet potatoes and rolls and homemade cranberry sauce and fudge and cookies.
A Very COVID Thanksgiving
I tried something new and prepared the turkey sous vide, which made for THE most flavorful and moist turkey I’ve ever eaten. Outside of the candied sweet potatoes, though, everything else was store-bought: the Meijer cranberry relish, the Stove Top stuffing, the King’s Hawaiian rolls, even the Meijer pumpkin pie.
The rest of the day was pretty chill. The guys played Dave Mirra on Dreamcast while I sewed Connor a new pair of pajama pants, we had Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner, and we called my Mom to wish her a Happy Thanksgiving.
As with so many other things this year, it was different, we dealt with it the best we could, and it actually didn’t turn out so bad.
A Long-Overdue Brain Dump
It happens on the regular: I put off writing about what I need to write about because I have other topics I “should” be posting, like the monthly cataloging of the blooms in my garden, or the annual missive to my son on (or around) his birthday.
Screw that. I keep this blog around for me. It’s no longer the angsty ramblings of a twenty-something who’s trying to keep in touch with all of her friends at once. This is the public journal of a middle-aged working mother. Basically, it’s a lot easier to find references to life events after the fact using an indexed database of words than it is to rifle through a handwritten journal.
The thing is, though, that there haven’t really been very many life events to record this year, with the global pandemic and all. No tropical vacation, no visiting friends and relatives in other cities, no local bands and food trucks downtown, not even any photo walks along the river.
I guess that’s one reason why I haven’t been sitting down and pouring out the contents of my brain lately: there hasn’t been anything that I especially wanted to record for posterity, or to share with others by crossposting to Facebook. I sew stuff, I grow stuff, I work, I pretend to be a badass martial artist, but it all feels like Groundhog Day.
And now autumn is settling in.
The fall foliage is beautiful, and I’m definitely a big fan of hoodie weather… but I’m solar-powered. It must be the string of chilly, overcast days that are getting to me.
Or maybe it’s the sameness of every day working from home and supervising my son’s remote learning. Maybe it’s our geriatric cat pissing on the carpet by my sewing machine, instead of her litter box, making one of my primary hobbies difficult if not impossible for the time being. Maybe it’s that jowly, puffy, saggy, tired, worn-down face staring at me from the bathroom mirror every morning. Maybe it’s my Krav Maga class getting pushed later and later in the evening, so that I leave for class about the time I’d normally be starting my son’s bedtime routine, meaning that a) I feel like I can only go once a week for his sake; and b) when I do go, I’m already tired and not at my best by the time class begins.
Maybe my brain meds need adjusted. Maybe I need more than just brain meds. Maybe I need to get off the brain meds.
Maybe everybody in the world is having a hard time right now, or maybe it’s just me.
Tails of the Office
When I dropped Connor off at camp this morning, he requested that I bring Tails to work with me. Of course, I was concerned that Tails wasn’t masked, but Connor seemed to think that was fine.
We certainly can’t have Tails setting a bad example, though….