miriam beth

 

 this semester--potentially the longest in my life (remember that last year i ended my year online with a well meaning professor who completely dropped the ball and the year before that i was moving AND getting my diagnosis for hashimotos) is over. my friends, this is a triumph. it did not start well and at one point i was closerthanthis to quitting. 

i finished! and i am living to tell the tale. and the tale is this: i had covid and haven't been able to breathe plus for all of january every single child was home and then halfway through february half of them went back to school in person and in mid april the final children went back to school and suddenly the fact that we are six students, five schools, and three districts became abundantly clear and i pretty much moved into my car and just dropped children off and picked children up and there was nothing to be done about it. perhaps, just perhaps, this year of letting the mother down is over. 

one can only hope. 

in the meantime, the millions of plans i have been concocting as a coping mechanism are in effect....now. starting with a mural being painted on the girls' bedroom wall by my friend cara, and a couple trips to joanns and another to home depot for more paint. i am going to enjoy this summer, i can tell. 

things i learned in physiology: i was older than my teacher. that's a first. it was weird. 

crash course videos from youtube are incredibly helpful. 

the sa node is fascinating. so is the immune system. 

prioritize studying. if nathan is gone with grandma, don't do the dishes or laundry. study instead.  

i can do anything. 

shoutout to rebecca and ryan. this A goes to you because without you i would have literally never, ever, ever been alone. 

(highlight of the semester was when nathan sat on my lap and raised his hand in the zoom and then my teacher called on him saying, "yes, miriam's son." and then nathan requested my teacher juggle AND MY TEACHER JUGGLED and then nathan later described him as "your super awesome teacher who can juggle things.")

 

1. watching. white christmas. my absolutely favorite christmas movie. i turned it on the other day while i was editing photos and the girls came running in/ "why are you watching this without us?" kate asked, dismayed. i honestly had no idea they even cared. all those years i've forced everyone to watch it with me have paid off. in the works: a movie night. with hot chocolate, warm blankets and maybe some baked goods. 

2. laughing. sarah's friend wanted to have her over for a playdate. she asked for my phone number from sarah. sarah gave her my passcode. she literally had no idea what my phone number was, but did she absolutely know how to hack into my phone and look through my photos? got it!

3. listening. the punk rock playlist from amazon music. nathan calls it "rock n roll"! when we drop the elementary kids off at school he waits until they get out of the car, then he enthusiastically asks, "can we listen to rock n roll?"

4. loving. the christmas version of my bookshelves, which i am obsessed with to be begin with, but string a couple garlands on that bad boy and it's somehow even better. 

happy christmas season, friends!

 

 i was raised by an organized woman. and this helped me. i am not organized by nature, but instead by nurture. my mother had a holiday notebook--a holiday system contained in a notebook. i didn't start using it until about four years ago and my friends, my friends. this notebook. this system! it will change your holiday season. 

{cue infomercial music and video clips of white people wearing sweaters getting hopelessly and comically tangled in strands of christmas lights, dropping an impossibly huge stack of christmas cards, somehow clumsily stamping the dog instead of the card, dropping twenty rolls of wrapping paper down three flights of stairs, etc.}

"do you find the month of december overwhelming? do you dread christmas? do you struggle with drawing boundaries, with saying no, with getting everything done? 

it sounds like you needed....sally's holiday notebook!"

okay, okay, i'm not going to sell you a notebook. or even a system. but i will explain a few helpful things that have saved my skin during december. 

item #1: write down EVERYTHING you have to do, EVERYWHERE you have to go on a piece of paper. make a list. every year (i mean, not this year) we go to the nutcracker with grandma rebecca, the children have class parties i need to bring things to and sometimes attend, ryan will have a work event, etc. but then what about the things i want to do? go see lights, decorate cookies, have a movie night where we watch white christmas, etc.

i write everything down. everything. meals for any special dinners i will be preparing, what i'll serve at that magical cookie decorating party i'll be hosting, the scriptures for the nativity on christmas eve.

got your list? great. 

item #2: put it all on a calendar. the stuff that actually has a date and a time and a place, but also the things that are flexible like mailing cards. schedule out when you are going to order the cards, when you will address and stamp the cards, when you are going to mail the cards. schedule out when you will wrap presents, when you will ship presents, etc.

how full is your calendar? too full?

item #3: CROSS STUFF OFF THE LIST. do you really need to bake fourteen different types of cookies and assemble them into themed platters and drop them off at every house in your neighborhood? DON'T BE SILLY OF COURSE NOT (but if you do bring one my way).

this is where we talk about boundaries:

WHAT CAN YOU DO? i mean real-deal-let's-be-totally-honest-with-ourselves what can you do? was my class load so ridiculously high that i know i just can't decorate the entire exterior of my house with a coordinated musical score? is driving to four different places on christmas day something that will push me over the edge? do i need to do something else? 

can i just say something really quick? when did the holiday become about making everyone else happy? when did the holiday season become a day when all of the grandmas of the world get to dictate how and where and what the holiday celebration looks like? when did daughters and daughters-in-law become the gentle servants to the wishes of the extended family? if the thought of running all over town to please some matriarch (yes, even if she is yours) makes you tired and cranky and exhausted, then (are you ready for this?) SIMPLE DO NOT DO THIS THING. your responsibility ULTIMATELY is yourself and just behind yourself is your immediate (think partner and children) family. THEN you can prioritize the extensions. BOUNDARIES are when you look at something that you know is going to take more good cheer than you currently have and saying, "no thank you." that's all. "no thank you." 

IF you possess the bandwidth you could offer an alternative. "we can't have christmas eve at your house, but we can make it for christmas brunch." or, "instead of driving to three different houses christmas day, we are hosting a holiday open house at our house. everyone is invited."

and guess what? if you can do all the things next year hooray for you! next year you will do all the things. this is about this year and what you will do this year. if you miss a year of something it will not kill you. 

okay, now that we've made our list, checked it twice (haha), crossed things off, and scheduled things onto the calendar, we are ready. we have arrived! we are capable! 

sally (my mother) put this all in a notebook. included in that notebook were spreadsheets where she documented gift lists and how much they cost, where she was going to buy things from, and when. she had all the recipes she was going to need, and even a schedule of when the turkey dinner should be prepared. the master address list for christmas cards? check. the rotation for siblings gifts? got it! (thankfully my sister has taken that responsibility on) and my mother carried that notebook with her everywhere and did not add anything to her life until she had consulted the notebook. 

bless her. it must have been exhausting to be that high functioning. 

luckily for us, we need only be that high functioning if we wish (and i don't). friends, run this holiday season. don't, i beg you, let it run you. you are worth more than all of the yeses this season will ask of you. YOU. ARE. WORTH. MORE. 

now get out there and sleigh! (get it?)

 1. words that are inspiring me right now:

when i first went back to school i didn't want to tell anyone what i wanted to do. i didn't want to say out loud that i wanted to go back to school, and i really didn't want to say that i wanted to be a nurse. i was terrified of what people would think, i was terrified of failing, going for a semester or two and then just stopping. i was terrified that it would be too hard. that anatomy class was my first science class in a million years--and my first applicable to nursing class. i was terrified that id hate it, that i'd made a huge mistake. (little did i know anatomy is the fun stuff and that chemistry was just around the corner. but i didn't have time to wait for the fear to leave, so i just started going. and it's far from over. i've got two prerequisites before i can apply to the programs--programs, by the way, that are overwhelmed with applicants every semester. who knows what's going to happen? we'll just have to wait and see. 

2. music i'm listening to:

3. what i'm baking:

triple vanilla peach pie from an old pie cookbook that has long since been out of print. someone told me once that the best cookbooks are the old cookbooks. maybe they're right because i haven't baked a bad pie from that old book. 

4. this got me fired up:

this article by meg conley on medium.

'If mothers unenroll their children because they cannot supervise full-day remote learning and are concerned about the repercussions, they’re told they’ve violated a sacred social contract. Mothers who form pods to get childcare for their kids while they remote learn are privileged pariahs. Single working mothers who do not have the network or money to form a pod will be reported to the authorities when a neighbor realizes their seven-year-old is home alone every day while her mom earns money for food and rent. Stay-at-home mothers are not allowed to feel anything but grateful to be of service to their kids and their community.

I finally understand that help is not coming. With kids home from school but still burdened with scholastic progress, many working moms will cut back when they were just ready to spring forward. They’re going to lose years of progress when it matters most to their careers. In the decades to come, those women will be missing from the leadership positions they would have occupied if we’d decided they mattered enough to help them. "

man, i have said this again and again. to anyone who will listen, including the very sweet member of my bishopric who looked sort of scared. i suspect he's never had his wife yell at him about gender inequality (poor ryan, on the other hand, has probably memorized my rants at this point). mothers do not matter. we know this now. now let's do something about it. let's begin to value the caretakers in our society instead of standing right on top of them. 

5. what i've got planned:

a yard for my chickens, complete with a fence I'll be making on my own (hopefully I can convince Ryan to help). in that yard? a peach tree. for shade. and peaches. for more pies. 

a fall garden. complete with pumpkins, carrots, garlic, onions, kale, and arugula. 

a couple more trips to the beach and the pool and perhaps even the museum. 

 

i sent my family away for a week. i really did. i said I was going to do it on facebook at the beginning of the summer and everyone was like, sure you are. and also, there were a lot of, let me know when you do and i'll come over! and guess what guys? i actually did it. and no one actually came over because no one on facebook knew because i DELETED my facebook. done. gone. forever. not even sad about it, but definitely, definitely out of the loop. want to know why the phonebook is a thing of the past? because we have facebook. no one will ever find me and i will never find them and the social lives of my children will suffer as a result.

want to know what i did all week? i edited all the photoshoots i never get around to editing because i have five children and they literally never leave my side, or i am taking an online statistics class and it becomes all consuming until i am eating, breathing, and dreaming of statistics and that class has been over for WEEKS now but last night guess what i dreamed about? statistics. and how i needed to be tested for it again. and i couldn't remember anything. 

i also skimmed a bunch of walls and then i sanded those walls and then i painted those walls and then i swept and swept and swept and swept and swept and still there is a fine layer of sanded joint compound all over my floor. buyer beware: if you sand the joint compound it will never leave you ever and you two shall be as one. 

want to see a photo? i guess i'll have to take one. i bought a rug and put it in there, i hung five precious silhouettes of my children that i bought myself as a graduation present (Iiam always buying myself the most thoughtful gifts). i have a new light to install, to replace an old one. can i brag about this for a second, guys? I DID THIS. i updated a portion of our house. i made the walls smooth. i painted. i bought a new light fixture, for heavens sake. does this make me one of those diy bloggers? probably. should i post a tutorial? only if you want to know how to do this the wrong way, probably. this whole thing is so unbelievably imperfect that i'm afraid i've lowered the value of the house. 

to spend some days working without interruption was really good for my mental health. i just want you to know that. i'm also amazed at how much i miss my children. also, i do not miss them yet and could do another week, but this time i wouldn't work. i'd sit. and read. and watch something funny on the television. and i'd eat a little more ice cream (ben & jerrys has a delicious dairy free ice cream that also does not have gluten in it! woohoo!!). next year. i say next year because you can bet all of your big, fancy dollars that i am doing this next year. i'll probably do the girls room. and make more time to read. 

i am writing this on the back patio. this is like my little office. my place. it is where i have turned a cement-and-cinder-block screened “room” into a refuge, a place of peace. it is also where the washing machine and the dryer are. there is only so much a girl can do with what she’s given and moving the plumbing to find a new place (where there isn’t one, really) for laundry isn’t within her capabilities. 

oh well. 

the world is still going crazy. or to hell in a hand basket. or just turning upside down, which i initially wanted to write but that just makes me think of hamilton and how the world turned upside down when the americans defeated the british and what an unbelievable triumph that was this covid-era living with everyone wringing their hands and crying about disease and masks and equality and democrats and republicans and racism and child trafficking and the dangers of pornography? it does not feel like an unbelievable triumph. it feels like we’ve given up and we’ve hired professional mourners to mark the event. 

it began with me in a chemistry class and my children all holding laptops and lining up to ask me what i thought their teachers meant when they assigned the particular assignment they were working on and did they do it right and also how do you submit things on google classroom and oh by the way when is lunch? we are starving. i was miley cyrus on a wrecking ball, but i was clothed and not nearly as graceful. i swung about, occasionally crashed into things. sometimes i was laughing. sometimes i was crying. sometimes i took a nap in the afternoon. 

and it has not ended. even though it is five months later and we have finished a school year, endured/enjoyed a summer, and are ramping up for the school year but we are still at school and i am trying to figure out where i put children for school so they are not a distraction but also not too secluded so they pay attention and also stop holding the animals, children. your teacher needs your attention and your future needs you to hang on so you can have one worthy of your abilities. 

there are four loads of laundry, waiting to be folded out here on this little patio, and a little fuzzy faced bunny that we cannot stop hugging and holding. an old IKEA chair, an old IKEA couch. pillows. blankets. a coffee table made of reclaimed wood and a shelf made from a bowling alley floor. plants, plants, plants, plants, and the gentle hum of my dryer, churning out yet another load of laundry for me to fold. 

i am a mother on a mission: make this semester a good one. 

the children want to be in school. they learn better in school. we are a society in the middle of “the world’s most underwhelming pandemic” (tara said that. tara is a clever and a genius. and Tara is correct). but they cannot. so i will keep them home and try to understand how i can best engage them. do i read to them in the afternoons? or take them out to climb a mountain? do i leave them alone to decompress, or bring out board games and play some loud music? and how do i care for myself? how do i make sure i am not glassy eyed and fragile at the end of a day where i have remained available? 

i can run an errand by myself. read a book. escape to the patio. this is literally how i've made it thus far.

i think i am tired. i think i am overwhelmed. i think I am making up for all of this by skimming the walls of my house and putting new throw pillows on the couches. if the world outside is dangerous, i will make this world inside safe. i will make it comfortable. i will be available, even if it kills me. 

but first, i will fold some laundry. 

what choice do i have?

on monday the los angeles unified school district announced that it would be keeping children at home (i feel like we used to call it social distancing but we have since come up with a new, more politically correct, more fun name for this bastardized version of homeschool but i don't know what that term is and frankly, i'm not interested in painting this whole scene a prettier color). we are a few school districts removed from lausd, and we are also in a different county, but it is one of the largest school districts in the state and it is close enough that whatever they do, we do, too, historically.

and even though the lausd is dealing with some union issues right now, and that's part of the reason for the social distance model of learning (so i hear), i sat there monday and i knew that come fall we were most likely going to end up social distancing in the fall.

here are a few things that i know:

the covid numbers are on the rise. we need to be careful.

sending children to school for six hours in masks is a long time. keeping them six feet apart is difficult. school will be hard. and different.

putting 22 children in a classroom (and multiplying that by 16) with teachers and administration and everyone else that comes with school (yard duties, lunch ladies, specialists, janitors, etc.) is a mini-pandemic waiting to happen. if a tiny bit of covid slips in? forget it. we'll all be out. for two weeks? will we be practicing this social distancing model of education then? will teachers get sick leave? will we hire substitutes to teach us over zoom? if my children are attending a school with all of those people do we do our job and avoid any contact with anyone else? what about my parents? what about the stores?

honestly, there are only two ways to do this: at home. because this is dangerous and it's important we keep the contraction levels low. or, it's not that bad. and we are going to go to school. and if we get it, we get it and some of us will get sick and some of us will be fine and some of us will die. but we can't do both. and maybe this is the biggest issue I'm having: WHAT ARE WE DOING. are we canceling concerts and parades and closing bars and gyms and salons and wearing masks and staying at home and avoiding parks and church? or are we sending our children to school and letting them play sports and play in the band?

DEAR GOVERNMENT, PLEASE PICK ONE AND THEN LET US KNOW.

to be fair, i know that governor Newsom has tried to pick one and has, indeed, let us know. so i guess i'm just doing what a citizen does best: placing all the blame on the government.

tuesday it was a mental breakdown like a slow leak that just ended with me curled up on my bed for thirty minutes before i got up and made dinner. here's the thing: even though our teachers are really, really wonderful, and even though they are doing such an excellent job at making sure the children have what they need and are learning, it is still a big job for a parent. and guess who that parent is? it's me. the mom. why? because for whatever reason when there needs to be a sacrifice of personage made for the sake of the home we turn to the woman.

it is something that is taken for granted that men get to be both men and fathers and it is not for women. it is something that is taken for granted that once a woman becomes a mother she is a mother. and if she does the work to be a woman, too, we are all surprised. do you know what people say when they find out i do stuff other than raise children and bake cookies? "wow, good for you." no one says that to Ryan.

and when the government sends the children home, guess who else they sent home, too? women. women are leaving jobs. they are cutting down hours. they are doing this because suddenly their children are home, suddenly their educations need to be managed. suddenly they have no childcare and whatever childcare they can find is so expensive that their jobs--which they are not paid equally for to begin with--do not warrant the sacrifice.

when  went back to school do you know what people asked me?

"how does ryan feel about this?"

i'm sorry? how does RYAN feel about ME going back to school?

"i mean, it's got to be hard for him."

 if my children are going to be staying home in the fall i am going to be staying home, too. no more school. why? because i cannot go to school and homeschool four children while entertaining a fifth at the same time. college is already built for single people who don't have children. now i am not only a married woman with five children, but they are all at home. and they need things. i sat on a mom call monday morning for an hour with nathan on my lap, sarah at my elbow, and at least one visit each from seth, ava, and kate. i did sarah's hair and kate's hair and brushed a doll's hair and ran and got a bowl of cereal really fast. ryan worked in ava's room, because that's where he's set up work. he never conducts business in this manner. he gets to live with the expectation that when he's working he gets to do this alone, and focused. if he were to do something in the middle of the day that had to do with parenting everyone would stand around, impressed, and say, "good for you!" whereas i sit on that stupid zoom meeting braiding hair and people are like, "what are you going to do? covid times are strange times."

you know what's strange? being told you're valued and then finding out you're not really valued at all. and you know what else is strange? not being that surprised.

look, i don't want my kids to go back to school full-time. i don't know if that's the answer. i want them to be safe. but I do know that I am not a teacher. and now i am being asked to teach. and i do know that I have things that I'm supposed to be doing, important things, and those things can't be done if I am being asked to teach and comfort and prepare and encourage and coach.

i'm taking the semester off. and that's was part of tuesday's break down. grief. fear. sadness.

look, it's not okay that this is happening, but it's not the end. so i will keep going. we all will. the semester will be spent together, zooming in and out of virtual classrooms, workbooks, reading out loud, fun games. and then i'll get back to school. and ryan, bless him, will be just fine with that.

the first phase is to finish an associate degree.

mothers day is this sunday.

every year i see so much pain.

i want to be a mother.

i have no mother.

no one did anything for me.

i am exhausted and depleted and what i really want is to be alone but i felt bad telling people that and so we all spent the entire day together and now i am exhausted and depleted and what's worse, i am resentful.

my friends.

motherhood is an ideal. it is a calling. it is the career that never quits. it is hard work. it is full of joy. it is full of bitterness. it is raw. it will bring you to your knees. it is one big, fat guilt trip. it is something we have but we did not want. it is everything we ever wanted but we didn't get. our mothers are our best friends. they are our bitter enemies. they tried their best. they are gone from us. they are someone we never knew. they are someone we knew too well. we took care of them. they took care of us. it is real love, real sacrifice, real hard.

here is my best mothers day advice, and, now that i think of it, my best mother advice:

figure out what you need. and ask for it. and if the people you are asking can't hear you, ask someone else. but also, ask yourself for what you need and then, provide it for yourself.

do you know what i used to do on mothers day?

simmer. and hope. and simmer some more. and then feel a little wretched.

until i took the day off. i didn't go to any family events, i didn't go to church unless i wanted to (it took a little while for me to want to go to church on mothers day and we can unpack that another time). i took off. i packed what was far too many books into a bag, packed a giant container of water and a chocolate bar that I had bought precisely for this day, and a blanket, and then i took off. i went to a trailhead and walked for a little while. then i spread out my blanket, read my books, wrote in my journal, ate my chocolate bar, and took a nap. it was exactly what i wanted.

one year i got a pedicure. one year i ate a piece of cake. this year i bought myself a new water bottle. and this year i don't know that i necessarily want to take the day off. this year i think i want to stick around with my family.

listen, i am my keeper. first and foremost. because i cannot be anyone else's keeper until i have kept myself. and i am the best person to be my keeper. i know myself better than anyone else. i know when i need a break. i know that i want that new water bottle. i am the best qualified person to provide myself with these things.

the same goes for you.

my friends, my fellow mothers, PROVIDE FOR YOURSELF.

listen to what you need. is it five minutes? is it that chocolate cake from the telson's bakery? is it a brunch with family?

if we spent mothers day giving mothers grace (and by "we" I don't mean the husbands and the children) we would come out a lot more peaceful.

mothers day is when we should mourn with our mothers who mourn. there are mothers who have lost babies, who have wanted babies and never received them, who have babies who will not talk to them. we should celebrate each other. we have scooped poop out of bathtubs. we have stayed up all night bouncing and feeding and rocking babies who would not be comforted. we have been yelled at by teenagers, we have seen anger and disgust in their eyes when they look at us and it has broken our hearts. we have had to watch our children try new and scary and potentially painful things without saving them, holding our breath instead, praying instead. our children have married well, have succeeded in their chosen careers, have gone to college. they've been published, they've traveled, they've given birth to children of their own.

mothers, we are doing it! and it is surviving. it is loving. it is mourning. it is THRIVING.

this mothers day give yourself the love you need. take that burden off of the people around you. if it's a hug go get yourself a hug from the person you crave it from most and if that person isn't around, get it from the second best person.

my mother spent a lot of time in bed at the end of her life. so i spent a lot of time in her bed. i'd curl up on my dad's side and there would usually be a baby between us and we would talk. i'd love to curl up in that bed again and talk to my mother. but i can't. but do you know what i can do? i can climb in to that bed and talk to my dad and my stepmom. and i have. when i have needed it i have gone over and curled up in that bed and talked.
mothers, i love you. and i mean that. i see the heartbreak and the hard work and the love and the joy and the tears and the bitterness and the begging and hoping for things that never seem to happen, and i love you.

now go get yourself some peace. not only is this something you can do, it is something that you were uniquely designed to give yourself.

there are scratches on my arm from the roof. it's because i was standing-- very precariously, on the arms of the chair in order to be closer to the roofline because i was trying to get the cat down. not because i thought the cat was in danger--i didn't. it's because he'd been standing at the certain spot for quite some time crying for someone to come get him and ava and kate were desperate for someone to rescue him.

"he'll figure out a way to come down," i said, ignoring their pleas (this is before i stood on the chair). "he figured out how to get up there and he can figure out how to get down."

kate tried standing on the trampoline with her arms outstretched. the cat leaned out, sniffing toward her hands. he did not jump. he cried instead and kate looked as though her heart was going to break. that's when i went and got the chair and stood on it. and ned (the cat) came trotting over to the edge of the roof, right within reach except when i went to scoop him up he jumped back, just out of reach. i stopped reaching as far. ned came closer. i reached out quickly to grab him. he slipped out of my fingers. i cursed his silky soft fur and his stupid lithe body. this is when i scratched myself. i stepped off the chair. the cat, i announced, could figure it out on his own.

kate and ava remained steadfast, staring up at the skinny black cat who paced. they called him. they offered encouragement. they begged ryan to help. he refused. at last ned jumped to a tree and then climbed down. the girls held him tightly and kissed him until he did his low back-of-the-throat growl he does when he doesn't like how hard we're trying to domesticate him. they let him go. he ran right back up the tree and jumped to the roof.

ned.

am i ned? when i am troubled am i actually just crying about my current circumstances without realizing how small they actually are, without realizing that a solution is just two feet away in the form of a tree--the very tree i used to most likely get myself stuck on the roof in the first place? when i find myself "trapped" should i really just be calming down and handling things?

probably.

turns out I'm ned. that's fine, i guess.

(but is it?)

i was laid out on the couch under a blanket feeling general overwhelmed and generally uninspired and generally unqualified and generally irritable and generally bored when ryan texted: "i can see that morale is low." he suggested he watch the kids and i get out for a little while. to which i replied, "there is nowhere to go."

this is true, of course. it's a quarantine.

but nothing is impossible. so i drove through the starbucks drive thru, parked my car in the parking lot for a nearby trail and read a book with the windows down enough that was i getting fresh air but i also wasn't freezing.

it felt good.

next time i will take a friend and they can sit in the back seat of the minivan because #socialdistancing and then i will feel even better because you guys, i'm a friendly soul and i do miss friends.

this led me to brainstorm ideas so that instead of waiting until i am depleted and laid out and generally being a drain on everyone else, i just go and do the things that bring me joy.

i made a list of things that bring me joy. then i made a list of things that bring me joy and i can do those things while quarantined (that list was shorter).

i would urge you to do the same.

items on my list:

-get outside
-learn something
-read a book
-write something
-talk to a friend
-the patio
-my ugliest sweater (pictured)
-garp the bunny (pictured)
-laughing
-boardgames with the children

i was supposed to run a race today. a 10k. my first, ever. i've been training all year.

when they canceled the race they announced that they would not be refunding us the money, that they'd already spent it, but that they'd be happy to make arrangements for us to pick up our medals and our t-shirts (which, come to think of it, they have not done). what am i going to do with a medal for a race that i didn't actually run? i barely know what to do with the medal i earned from the race i did run.

sidenote: it was a color run. a 5k. the medal is a rainbow AND a unicorn. the medal is highly coveted by several of my children. to avoid conflict i have hidden it in the back of my underwear drawer. sarah has advised me to wear it daily. my plan: run enough races to have enough medals to distribute among the children so no one fights.

in two weeks ava and i were going to pack our really cool rolling carryons and get on a plane to new york with my parents. we were going to be there for five days. my dad gave ava a guidebook for christmas and she read it thoroughly and marked it up with post it notes. on sunday nights she'd bring it over for dinner and make plans with my dad. new york is more shut down than we are down here, and that's supposed to be pretty shut down. postponed.

two weeks after that there was going to be a massive womens conference for all the women in the area- agoura hills to san luis obispo. president jean bingham was going to come and speak and then we were all going to break into classes. I was supposed to be teaching one of those classes! my aunts and cousins were going to come. postponed.

at the end of may was going to be chainfest. jimmy eat world, saves the day, taking back Sunday, anberlin (and more!) all playing together. it was going to be an afternoon of excellent rock n roll, all of it from my cd collection as a teenager. i was going to wear flannel and doc martins and low rise jeans. there was going to copious amounts of second hand smoke and spilled beer and singing words that i've known by heart for half my life. postponed.

and what of 8th grade graduation? 5th grade culmination? my graduation for my associate degree? Sarah's massive kindergarten party? ava's third year of girls camp? gone. gone. gone. gone. gone.

the world has shut down. we are all settling down in our houses. the things that propelled us through the grind are disappearing, some never to materialize again. what new thing do we have to propel us? the fact that one day we may walk through a mall again? (to be honest, no thank you) we may gather in groups of ten or more (more compelling). how long can we be a nation of homebound, homeschooling, unemployed humans?

we were all in the car the other day and the kids were talking about going back to school (we've been told may 5th by our school, we've also been told not for the rest of this school year by several other sources. we'll see who wins). kate said, 'that's not for a whole month."

and i thought, "A WHOLE MONTH? can we really live like this for a whole month more??" and then i realized that of course we can (and we will for longer, no doubt). because we have no choice. there is nowhere for us to go, no other option. and then i made a list of the good things about staying home: we're going to spend more time together, which has been really fun. we're going to read more books and play more music and hike more trails and jump on the trampoline and paint more art until our hair has grown to our knees and they finally open the doors allow us to come out and live amongst each other again (first shop: our hairdresser brenda). we'll probably all be immunocompromised at that point and immediately get sick because we don't know what other people's germs look like anymore, but that's fine.

here's my conclusion: i have nothing to look forward to anymore except being able to leave this house and go see the people i love. that is enough. but i am still mourning the loss of all of those lost events.

when this is over am i going to celebrate by throwing a massive potluck? well, to be honest, probably not. am i going to hope that the people i love celebrate by throwing a massive potluck? absolutely. i will bring my best cheeseboard and perhaps a chocolate cake laced with espresso and then i will hug all of my friends and talk their ears off and laugh really hard.

and then we'll do the traveling and the teaching and the camping and the ceremonies and hear the live music. i cannot wait.

today i did not want to homeschool the four (five, if you count Nathan and he most certainly does) faces that were not-so-brightly shining in front of me this morning. not-so-brightly shining because they did not want to be homeschooled by me, either. AND THAT'S OKAY.

'but we have too!' i thought, looking over the schedules and the lists and the ideas and the links and calendars and the emails i have collected, 'look at all this stuff!'

but guess what, internet. we did not have to.

so we painted instead, which turned out to be an enormous ego boost for me because everyone thought i did remarkably well. this is not a humble brag. internet, i literally painted the entire page peach as a backdrop and all of my children stood around and told me how well i was doing. this is one of the reasons to have children: they are excellent hype-people.

and then we went to chik-fil-a and everyone said chik-fil-a the way kanye west says it in that song where he basically yelps chic-fil-a and we laughed harder than was necessary because we are all starved for real humor around here due to the quarantine. in the chik-fil-a line we greet everyone way too enthusiastically. i say we because i roll all the windows down so we can all shout our orders at once. it's relaxing and fun and social.

(sidenote: this show was shared with me by a friend and it shows great promise but also maybe that's because i was watching blacklist with ryan and someone had just died a gruesome death because she was a drug mule and the plastic pouch she had unrealistically sewn under her skin like a pregnant stomach had burst and she overdosed on 11-million dollars worth of lsd. i almost dragged the kids out of bed to watch so I could be like, 'see? drugs are bad.' but i refrained. wow. i must be an amazing mother. all this to say: give taskmasters a chance if you're looking for a chuckle.)

also on the list of things to do today:

-remind my children to shut the door because it's cold outside another five thousand times (another sidenote: if someone said to my children, 'shut the door on your way out or your mother will die.' i would literally die thirty seconds later because that is literally how quickly they forget this particular request. why is that.)
-dole out another three hundred snacks per child
-miss my friends but do not pick up the phone to facetime them because....i haven't figured out why not yet. i just know that i just don't do it. i'm all, 'where's erin why haven't i seen her in a million years what is she doing right now--i could facetime her...nevermind.' i think it's because literally every time i facetime i catch a glimpse of myself in that tiny corner camera and I have a moment where i'm like, 'THAT'S WHAT I LOOK LIKE??? HOW DO I HAVE FRIENDS?'
-wash the dog. seriously, miriam. wash the dog! she's six pounds. it'll be over in ten minutes. JUST DO IT.

well, it happened.

it always does. and usually about this age, too, but with the covid19 and our stay at home initiative, the transfer has been more rapid.

nathan is team ryan so thoroughly he's probably got a tattoo that i don't know about yet.

it never takes them too long after they turn three to recognize that dad is infinitely more fun than mom. he doesn't fold laundry, or dishes, or make disgusting dinners full of (gag) vegetables, he tinkers in the garage, and if he's pulling weeds you can help, and if he's fixing the car you can stand nearby and hold the monkey wrench. he will play with you for hours, he will swing you high into the air, he will become a monster and scare you and chase you and fight you until you scare yourself and then he will become your strong dad, with the big arms and the warm chest and the best hugs.

i'd 'et tu, brutus?' but i've been expecting this to happen.