staying in, week 7

I think I've said it before, but this corona era has a very twilight zone feel, where time seems slow and fast all at once. In a way I can hardly believe it's May already, but on the other hand it kind of feels like we've been living this way for years, it's dragged on so long. We've got official orders now to extend sheltering in place through May 15, so we're hanging in here for the good of everyone. Even if we're not sure how much longer we can hang on to actually getting any homeschool work done...

Good things

Some of the little things that brought smiles or serenity around here this week. (Oh, and one other good thing for one of you: there's still time to enter my giveaway for a set of customized shampoo + conditioner from Formulate, so check it out and enter here!)

Best book: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (using the beautiful illustrated edition again!), which we've now started in on as a family read-aloud. Hendrik is loving it as much as book 1, and I had forgotten many of the details, so it's fun to revisit.

Best podcast: Brains On, a science podcast for kids. Hendrik is very into it, and I put on an episode every day while he's eating lunch. Nice quiet time for me, and something that's both entertaining and educational for him. A quarantine win-win.

Best show: I'm not particularly into basketball and know only the very basics about Michael Jordan, but no matter the sport, I find it hard not to get drawn into a well-told story of a sports team/player's journey. So this new documentary The Last Dance (currently airing on ESPN, but coming to Netflix) got me totally hooked this week. It's the perfect thing for right now, when watching live sports is a thing of the past, but I don't really know the history of the Bulls, so I don't actually know who's going to win the playoff year they're discussing... bonus that it's actually something Peter was watching, so finally something for us to watch together!

Best recipe: falafel! it was already one of my goals to learn some more go-to vegetarian recipes this year, and now that some of our grocery stores are seeing meat shortages, it's feeling like an even better idea. One thing I did stock up on was chickpeas, so I finally got around to attempting falafel again after not finding success with it in the past. And I have made this recipe twice already. SO good. We served it in pitas with a diced cucumber/tomato salad + tatziki sauce (made with plain yogurt, shredded cucumber, and a bit of lemon juice).

Best dinner relief: we finally did takeout for the first time this week, from local favorite New Holland Brewing and it was a treat to have a break from cooking dinner, to have a random special Monday night event with a pizza picnic in the living room (Hendrik LOVES this), and best of all to have a couple of 6-packs of beer brought right out to the car with our dinner order. We were all out, and you can't get that via Shipt like the rest of our groceries...

Best self-care: foam rolling with fave instructor Hannah Marie on the Peloton app. Just takes 5-10 minutes and feels so good!

Bummers

We had a good week overall, especially thanks to some absolutely amazing weather on a couple of days, but it's hard not to notice some of the bummers that still exist (in addition to feeling the absence missing our usual people and places - a lot):

What I'm missing the most: motivation. Partly on behalf of Hendrik, who it is a big-time struggle to get to work on school stuff now, and partly on behalf of myself, who is feeling a bit blah about doing any kind of projects or even blog posts when I have free time in the evenings. I just don't feel like quite myself when it comes to motivation for usual tasks and projects, and I think it's partly because sometimes it feels like there's just not much point to things when you're not leaving your house or when nobody's going to see your nicely cleaned up living room or whatever.

Most melancholy feels: when Peter reported how at bedtime Hendrik said that he just wished we could go to a store. He just wants something to make our days different. Ah, you and me both, buddy. Also it just makes a parent feel melancholy to have to ask a kid to be this resilient in such a weird/difficult time in the world.

Most stir-crazy feels: I really haven't had too much problem with this, as a homebody from way back, but one day this week it rained from before we got out of bed in the morning through about 4:30pm and I realized just how crucial getting outside for a walk is. Luckily we still fit one in just before dinner when the rain stopped, but Hendrik woke up the next day saying, "we need to go for an extra long scoot today after not getting enough activity yesterday!"


It's going to be kind of a weird week ahead, one in which our town would usually be filled with tourists and festivities for Tulip Time, and one in which we also had planned a long weekend away with my whole family. Both of those things are canceled, of course, but though it's all bittersweet, we're still going to make the most of enjoying all of the tulips around town (those are definitely not canceled!) on our walks, doing our "virtual run" for the canceled Tulip Time 5k and kids' fun run, and FaceTime happy hour-ing with the fam.

Hope you are hanging in there, staying home, and finding some bright spots too.