Is there any way to be normal? what even IS normal?
<p class="">During the past few months, every time I’ve felt like writing something, some horrible thing happens in the country and I just can’t bring myself to write about my normal life. Nor do I wish to insert my opinions or ideas into subjects I h
During the past few months, every time I’ve felt like writing something, some horrible thing happens in the country and I just can’t bring myself to write about my normal life. Nor do I wish to insert my opinions or ideas into subjects I have no personal experience with or expertise in, but some things just can’t go unaddressed. So instead I’ve simply been quiet.
But I don’t want to forget this time, either. So I’m going to borrow an update-style format that my online friend Sarah used recently (she works for NASA and is an amazing quilter, in addition to being a mom. check her out!). She included categories of wellness, so that’s what I’m going to do.
It seems like in uncertain times, embracing a format or a routine or a schedule (hold it loosely, people! we may need to pivot at any moment! but go ahead and try something) can be calming if not actually helpful. It’s a place to start when your life is at the center of an Earth-sized tangled ball of yarn.
Physical
I’ve blabbed on about lupus in the past, but I’ve mostly been pretty good on that front. Some occasional finger/wrist soreness, I did do one brief course of steroids a few months ago, but it’s mostly smooth sailing.
One teensy issue has arisen because of a POSITIVE development in my physical wellness: A few months ago I began doing some at-home weights-based exercise similar to what Noah’s been doing since his workplace gym has been closed. I feel good! I feel stronger for sure!
But I also discovered that I have to be extremely aware and selective about any type of abs-based exercise because the rheumatism flared up. That’s an old-timey way of saying that the disc I ridiculously herniated several years ago is a sensitive region requiring very very very delicate, slow-paced, physical-therapy style exercises. I even had to take two weeks off per Noah’s sage advice (it’s a three-day per week situation), and started back today with very light weights, and all is steady so far.
I have put on a quaranTEN pounds, but whatever man. I don’t weigh regularly and I do my best to not hate/punish myself for consciously choosing to find some comfort in calorically questionable foods. No bingeing, but no restrictions either. NOW IS NOT THE TIME.
Mental/Emotional
Mostly I’ve been pretty good mentally and emotionally, with a few days here and there in which Sad Erin or Irritated Erin has briefly taken the reigns. Lately, I have been more sensitive to media-based emotional issues. I do not do scary things, so no matter how good Noah insists the storyline is, I will never watch The Haunting of Hill House.
I did, however, unwisely watch American Murder on Netflix (it was really well-made, for sure) but that led me to the following conversation:
Me: I don’t ever want to be apart from you, but I definitely prefer divorce to murder.
Noah: Sounds good.
Me: Just don’t murder me, man.
Noah: No problem.
I just finished reading, this very day, The Bright Hour, by the late Nina Riggs. It was beautiful and sad and inspiring but definitely hit a bit too close to home for me to fend off irrational worries, especially at this precarious time. And I mean LITERALLY close to home: she lived in Greensboro, N.C. She was 37 years old when diagnosed with what would become terminal cancer. She was a mother of sons. She was a writer/poet (did you know I’m an award-winning poet? True story). She had an issue with her back in the very same location that I have an issue with my back but guess how hers turned out.
Ugh.
Still, I highly recommend the book.
As an antidote to depressing media, I’ve watched The Repair Shop on Netflix, as well as the latest season of Call the Midwife.
Social
I’m not going anywhere or doing anything. Except we let Oliver participate in a shortened soccer season with precautions taken, so I’ve been to three outdoor games where everyone wears masks.
We see my parents a couple of times a week, my brother and his wife and daughters once every couple of weeks or so, and we trade baked goods with our best friends Nick and Megyn several times a week (which is easy because they live in the same neighborhood, but of course we wear masks). Their proximity also made it super easy for me to drop off this on their front porch among the Amazon packages while they were at work:
Also, I’ve taken Harry to the park twice at a new, lovely park about ten minutes away. And he caught a cold immediately after not being sick once in six months. So whaddya know, folks? Distancing works.
Financial
We’re fine, thank goodness. Noah works from home three days a week. He’s not in a position that could be furloughed. The timing of our screen porch installation last fall couldn’t have been better; I’m very grateful we could get a home equity loan to do that.
Vocational
I successfully completed my summer-semester statistics class (and learned a lot!) that’s a prerequisite for entering a nursing program when Harry starts kindergarten. I wisely chose not to take a class this fall since the kids would both be doing online school. I plan to probably take microbiology this spring. I also read Critical Care, written by an English-professor-turned-oncology-nurse, and that reinforced the not-craziness of my career pivot. I have my heart set on being a labor and delivery nurse.
Environmental
Now more than ever I’m grateful for our third-acre yard and garden. Noah’s gotten very into gardening too during this pandemic, which is fantastic because I no longer feel I must cajole him into projects AND it’s nice to have a shared passion.
I built a small raised bed to transplant our strawberries into; I waged a war (and lost, owing to a badly timed lack of antifungal agents) on the organisms plaguing our peach trees (but I’m gaining ground!); I made our poolside yard feel much more tropical by planting canna and elephant ears along with the hostas; we’ve gotten our first figs; we harvested some apples; tons of blueberries; added a bunch of native/local cultivars to the garden; and Noah has made the compost heap his new mission.
And I became Oliver’s teacher’s weed supplier. (She needed milkweed to feed the monarch caterpillars she’s raising at home on behalf of her virtual class.)
A few days ago a contractor with the power company came out for a free home power usage assessment that we set up months ago. He was super nice (and masked!) and gave us a lot of good information, a few LED bulbs we lacked, and that prompted us to buy an attic ladder tent to insulate our attic access, which should definitely make the house more efficient.
My Kids: Ethan, Oliver, and Harry
Ethan: I wonder who the first interstellar child will be? How do you find the square root of a number? Want to hear about my latest D&D session? Aww, poor olive oil—it’s still extra virgin!
These are snippets of actual conversations with Ethan (and by conversations I mean verbal barrages he hurls at us when he emerges from doing school or watching videos in his room). Ethan is 12, he weighs roughly half of what I do but his feet are the same size as mine. So now he actually could wear my slippers if he wanted to. (Click that link and you’ll see how long I’ve been blogging, sporadic or not.) Ethan speaks in math equations, science facts, and memes. He worked as my lab partner on a statistics assignment and insisted on drawing up a graph that turned out to be key to getting the answer correct—and I (we) was the only one to turn one in.
I am learning to be a mom to an almost-13-year-old, which is weird because I clearly remember being 13, in detail. I’m catching myself making suggestions about hygiene and complaining about messes a lot, which I’d prefer to address in the appropriate conversational setting instead of in a random, nagging fashion. I’m learning to embrace this new frontier. His newfound love of The Office and Parks and Rec gives us an excellent rosetta stone with which to decode each other.
Oliver, at age 7-almost-8, is still a bundle of energy but now he reads and is far more independent. He’s allowed to play outside with his best friend Zoe and Eliyah, a cousin-through-marriage who lives down the street. So he frequently does, and this has further propelled him into the I-don’t-need-you-so-much stage.
Although last night he had a bad dream, crawled into bed between us, and we snuggled and dozed until 8:45, long after Noah started working and Ethan started his classes. (Oliver’s classes are online in the afternoon, per our choice.)
Oliver’s also in that super nosy phase where he pokes around in our drawers and documents. Yesterday he and I sat on the floor next to my side of the bed and combed through the memorabilia I have in a basket under my nightstand. He had apparently looked all through several notebooks and poems on scraps of paper, and he also showed me that he learned the moon landing was in 1969 because he saw it on a stamp on the envelope that same Sarah mentioned above sent me a quilted postcard in.
He asked me to read one of my poems aloud. Then he showed me another of my poems and said he could read it. So he read it aloud—a poem I don’t even remember writing, but I did, years before he was born—in his sweet, clear voice, paused at the end, then said, “That makes no sense.”
Harry has rounded 2 1/2 years old. He potty trained himself in one day. He takes on a hilarious tough-guy voice when he’s pretending to be Hulk or Spider-man or a Superhero (unspecified) and if he stomps and howls (eyes closed, keening toward the sky), he’s being the Big Bad Wolf.
He likes to swing on the two-person swing because he can pretend he’s driving a car really fast. Sometimes he’s chasing bad guys. Sometimes he closes his eyes and sails through the air, just savoring the feeling of flying without being able to verbalize it. Though he will sometimes shout “push me high! High as the moon!”
Lately, he’s gone through periods of clinginess, asking for “mommy mo” (which is his code for breastfeeding; Oliver called it “mo,” and it stuck even years later). We’ve cut back to nursing first thing in the morning and for just a few minutes before bed, but that battle to bring back the frequency directly correlates with new developmental milestones. He’ll crawl into my lap and nuzzle his head on my arm and squeak “I a baby!”
Harry has also entered the Costume Phase. Spider-man. Captain America. It’s all excellent and adorable. It also further solidifies his exiting the baby/toddler phase.
During this pandemic, Noah has gotten on the Kon-Mari train, and he actually coaxed me into revisiting all the baby clothes and paraphernalia, which I ignored back when I was on the Kon-Mari train a few years ago. We’ve gotten rid of just about all of it, passing along still useful items or donating them, keeping just a few special clothes that I plan to one day make into a quilt that I can wrap myself in and cry while writhing about dramatically.
So that’s how I’m doing. How about you?