staying in, week 8

Well, it's been a week. Seeing news reports about further sickness/death projections and weird side-effect illnesses that some kids are getting, seeing people in my town apparently having given up on social distancing (even though we're still on shelter-in-place orders here), not sleeping well, having a kid that has talked for literally hours about the Lego Harry Potter Whomping Willow set that he has saved up for... I've been losing my mind a little bit. But flowers are blooming and the sun is out and I have many blessings to count. So I'm going to stay home and do that!

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Good things

Best book: The Heir Affair, which I was lucky to get an advance e-copy of from Netgalley. Escaping into the life and gossip of (fictional) royals is perfect for right now, and I'm loving it. Good news for you is that it's actually a sequel, and the first book is just as much escapist fun. If you haven't read it yet, you should definitely pick up The Royal We while you wait for this one to officially be published! (Saw it was $2.99 on Kindle recently.)

Most enjoyable podcast episode: I'm sooo behind on all my favorite podcasts with so little solo time, but I got to listen on a walk to "Holly Root (Literary Agent) on the Rise of Rom-Coms & Publishing in the Coronavirua Era" on Sarah's Bookshelves Live and found it such a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at representing authors and getting their books published, along with a view of publishing in the corona era. Also she name-dropped several of my current favorite fun-reading authors as her clients (including the author of Beach Read, which I breezed through recently and loved).

Favorite game: is actually one that I don't even have to play! Even better. I got this Cat Stax spacial logic puzzle type thing for Hendrik a while back and set it aside for a rainy day... which appeared last week not in terms of rain but in terms of cabin fever. And he has loved working through the different challenge cards. It actually was his thankful thing in his prayer requests for several days in a row, ha!

Most well deserved (and delicious) treat: Hendrik and I did a curbside pickup at Target this week (it was a first - very fast and easy and efficient!), and after we had done such a good job with our work and our hike that morning (not to mention that we've done a pretty darn good job of sheltering in place all these weeks), I decided we could have a corona-time first: a trip through the Starbucks drive-thru. I tried the almondmilk honey flat white and I most definitely have a new favorite drink. Gotta figure out how I can recreate this, pronto.

Best therapy: sunshine + running + tulip viewing. Very excellent combination, and I had a couple chances for some really good relaxing run time up and down the lanes of blooming tulips near my house. Definitely clears the brain and restores the spirits. Just as good has been my sunshine + reading outdoors therapy time too.

Bummers

Saddest cancellation: in a week where I was already sad about two big ones that got cancelled ages ago but would have happened this week (our town's tulip festival and also a full-family long-weekend trip to Louisville), we also got official notification that the science camps Hendrik was signed up for this summer have been cancelled. Not a surprise, but it just had me feeling really blue - he's bummed because he was really excited about the themes, and I'm bummed because it was my one glimmer of having some sort of regular schedule/house to myself between now and September....

Parenting lows: totally checking out when supposedly playing some "pretend" stuff with Hendrik. But I just couldn't with the elaborate, entirely non-reality based scenario. My mom described it best: being subjected to this and expected to participate made me feel itchy all over. And then a little bit of mom guilt set in. You all made me feel better about it on Instagram though - I'm clearly not the only one who doesn't enjoy this part of hanging out with my kid... gah, I wish he could play with some other kids right now!

Bittersweet family time: my sister and her husband and baby spent some time (alone) at my parents' cottage, and we were able to see them and one of my brothers by standing 6 feet apart, wearing masks, in my parents' driveway. Which was so nice (the baby is the sweetest and gave us some delightful coos), but also just so hard to not be able to hug anyone or hold the baby or really spend any significant amount of time together. I've said it before: I can do the homebody thing really well - but this social distancing from family part is really hard.


Hope you are all hanging in there and staying home and healthy. And finding good things, even just little glimpses of bright spots, to power on through the really hard and bummer parts of life right now.