Didn’t feel like doing Krav Zoom class this evening. Did it anyway. Usually that feels like a good decision in the end, but today’s class was a surprise Fitness Challenge. Now my back hurts, my arms are shaky, and I feel nauseated.
Life During COVID-Time
Funny how I’ve slowly joined the throng of bloggers who don’t really blog anymore. My husband jokes that he knows something’s bothering me when he reads about it on my blog (and I’m pretty sure he’s the only person who reads it if I don’t cross-post to Facebook).
It didn’t used to be like that. Before I had other responsibilities (e.g. parenting), I would blog almost daily. Granted, that was also before everyone had smartphones and was online, so it was pretty much an entirely different world. Back then, I wrote about my life in the kind of excruciating detail you’d share in person over coffee or other adult beverages. Nowadays, I think twice (or even three times) before posting any Personally Identifiable Information, even though my blog is set to have search engines ignore it.
It also doesn’t help that I accidentally nuked all of my (incorrectly-applied) WordPress theme customizations recently, and that I completely forgot how I tweaked my photo editing workflow on desktop for dealing with the Apple-specific HEIC image files that Photoshop won’t open. Oh, and I’ve been using my widescreen monitor as a second display for my work laptop, but plugging that HDMI cable back into my tower is a royal pain in the butt. (Luckily, I have an HDMI switchbox arriving next week that will solve that annoyance.)
I know that a regular brain dump is vital to my mental health. I know this, yet other things keep taking precedence. Hobbies like gardening or sewing used to be the main culprit, but now that I’ve been stuck at home for the past two months*, other responsibilities and tasks are more immediate. Our dishwasher broke at the very beginning of “coronavirus season,” as my son calls it, so a non-trivial amount of time goes toward washing dishes lately (split between myself and Aaron). I spend some time planning my workday and Connor’s remote school day. I spend 15 minutes outside weeding while Connor watches his evening TV. Once Connor goes to bed at night, my brain is pretty much done. I might do some reading, or watch Netflix with Aaron when he’s not working, or watch YouTube by myself if he’s at work, or play Spider Solitaire on my phone — something sufficiently mindless to wind down for the day.
If I were the avid journal-writer I used to be, this would be the perfect opportunity to capture what life is like during this Very Unusual Time. Granted, I do still write a snippet every night before bed in the Exist app, so I at least have a brief snapshot of each day.
…As interesting as THAT might be. eyeroll
We have at least four more weeks of the stay-at-home order here in Ohio. School will be remote for the remainder of the school year (ending May 28 for our district), and I’ll be continuing to work from home for that time. It remains to be seen what kind of daytime options Connor will have this summer, but I’ve signed him up for four weeks of Cub Day Camp and one week of science camp so far. If I need to work from home during the times when we don’t have anywhere for him to go, I think my boss will be amenable to me working from home, now that we have the infrastructure (and company-wide precedent) for that sort of thing.
I do have to say that Springtime is probably one of the best times to be working from home, though. I can watch my favorite part of the year as the greenery pops up and the first blooms open ALL DAY LONG, not just briefly before and after work and on the weekends. (I feel bad for Aaron and Connor, though, who are both dealing with major seasonal allergies. Spring is NOT Aaron’s favorite season, for sure.)
* deep breath *
OK, brain dump successful.
I’m going to make writing in general a priority for the coming weeks. I’ve made it a priority to spend at least 15 minutes outside every day (I’m totally solar-powered), so perhaps making this a secondary priority will add to the mental health boost I so desperately need during this time of extreme weirdness.
Peace Out.
Backup? Who Needs a Backup?
Me, apparently. I should have taken a backup of not just my WordPress database but also my server files before I decided to update my blog’s theme. The upgrade of the backend database to the newest version of PHP caused zero problems… so I threw caution to the wind and hit that Update Theme button I’d been avoiding for years.
Honestly, I’ve had this same blog design for eight years, and haven’t thought about it much until lately. It’s not like I have a free stretch of time to sit down and implement a new blog design — and it’s not like that’s even close to the top of my priority list. I might carve out an hour to find myself a new pre-designed theme, though.
The only real casualty was my Archive page. It’s completely MIA, because I seem to recall doing something non-standard when I implemented it. Some of my formatting is wonky now, and I haven’t checked my RSS feed (although I think my husband may be the only subscriber, anyway), but whatev.
I wanted to redo that archive page, anyway.
COVID-19 Can’t Stop The Easter Bunny
Being a non-religious sort, and not having many local family members to gather together, we rarely do anything special for Easter Sunday. We decorate eggs, and the Easter Bunny shows up and leaves Connor some sort of something, but this socially-distanced Easter wasn’t much different from other years, except that we didn’t go out to lunch with my brother-in-law.
Connor and I decorated some eggs on Saturday. He was proud of his basketball egg, and was aghast when he learned that the decorated eggs get eaten eventually, just like normal hard-boiled eggs. Contemplating getting some non-edible craft eggs for decorating next year.
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When Connor saw this photo on my phone after the fact, I had to admit that I had snuck downstairs after the Easter Bunny came so that I could snap a picture.
[Photo missing]
Connor has been wanting Metroid Prime for a Very Long Time; now that he has it and has gotten used to the first-person thing, his favorite part is the multiplayer Deathmatch.
[Photo missing]
One of Connor’s other favorite video game franchises is Kirby. He’s been drawing likenesses of the round pink title character since he was in preschool. So, he was pretty stoked about this Waddle-Dee character from the Kirby games in a super-soft bunny costume.
Connor seemed genuinely impressed and surprised that I knew enough Japanese to read part of Waddle-Dee’s tag. I got through “a-ni-ma-ru” before I threw in the towel and fired up Google Translate:
Those who can read katakana will note (as I did) that it actually says “wa-do-ru-ji” and not “wa-di-ji” as Google seems to think. Honestly, though, that’s pretty darn close, and I wish we’d had this kind of real-time almost-translation when we visited Tokyo over a decade ago.
As Easters go, this one may end up being more memorable than most, just because of the circumstances surrounding it. Connor certainly enjoyed his presents from the Easter Bunny, and has been enjoying his jellybeans and robin’s eggs and peanut butter eggs (and still has some left!), and that’s really what matters to us.
Daffodils In Bloom
The earliest of the daffodils have been in bloom for about a week. This is one of the later early blooms; I’ll have another wave of bright yellow elsewhere in my garden in a few days.
I laid down this landscape fabric last year, and transplanted the daffodils in the green, prior to blooming. I’m pleased that several of them bloomed this year! I’m sure I’ll see even more color next spring, after more of them are settled in.
It can be a little strange to realize that I’m starting to see the long view when it comes to gardening. Next fall, next spring, expanding and transplanting and letting some borders grass over on purpose.