Starting Summer....sort of.

We are about 9 1/2 weeks into the Covid 19 quarantine.  What a crazy season of history we live in.  Sometimes I am standing in the trees, looking up and looking around and thinking to myself, "how did I get here?  how do I get out?  I can't breathe.....I can't think.....I can't see.....I can't do it any more"  and then just a bit later I can stand on the outside of the forest and look at the whole picture and think to myself, "well, this kind of makes sense.....I see purpose here.....I see all the petty, shallow bullshit here.....I am learning lessons here"......And then there are the moments when we watch a video of one of the kids' teachers and I start to cry and I find I cannot stop crying for, like, the whole day.  

Unprecedented times.  That's what they say.  

Last night I went to bed feeling guilty for all of the yelling and snapping and growling I did during the day.  I cried a lot yesterday.  I sat in my bed and wondered what was going on.....I'm not a sad person.  I'm not even an overly crabby person unless I am pushed too far, stressed too long, and in need of some respite.  Well.  There we have it.  9 1/2 weeks of quarantine have piled up on me.  I'm not actually crazy.  I'm just trying to cope.  

There is this concept of learned helplessness.  It means that after too much adversity, and helpless feelings, a person kind of just gives up and yields to it.  It is a very dangerous place to go and I refuse to go there.  I will fight against such things with all of the power of God's Spirit alive in me, and with all of the tools I possess to be well in my mind, body, spirit and soul.  So.  

I made the start of a new plan.  We finished school work last week.  Apparently it is the start of summer break.  Go figure....The start of my new plan is some baby steps to gain some control over my home and my family and my daily life.  I have the freedom to scrap the ideas that don't work and continue the ones that are good.  In case any of you are struggling in week 9.5 of quarantine, feel free to poach my ideas and share some of your own, if you will!  

1.  We are making lists of what we hope to do in the day.  Me, Precious and Josiah.  We try to include things like:  play with play dough, build a fort, hug mom, take a bath.....as well as change sheets on the bed, empty the dishwasher, go for a walk, etc.  If we don't get to everything on the list we either scrap it or move it to the next day.  It gives us a sense of direction in the day.  Precious discovered about 7 days into the list-making that it could be done with a dry erase marker on the french doors between the dining and living rooms.....the lists could get longer now.

2. New thing:  scheduled times for meals and snacks where mom will go to the kitchen and prepare food and clean it up.  This one is because I felt like I was always in the kitchen feeding someone or doing dishes or prepping the next meal and it was madness.  We are trying to have set times of 8am, 12 noon, snack at 3, dinner around 6 and bedtime snack at 9.  I will help and be there to fix food at those times and in between those times, there is an ice cream bucket on the counter with some snacks and drinks that the kids can grab throughout the day without needing to find me or ask for help.  So far today it went pretty well.  

3.  Head phones.  The shows the kids watch and the games they play on tablets are so freaking annoying and grate on my every last nerve.  If they are on the tablets around me they have to use head phones.  period.  

4.  Precious' puppy needs to be in the crate for a few hours every day.  I cannot spend all of my days cleaning up his poop, taking away things he shouldn't chew on and generally telling him "No!" all day long.  

5.  They all need to understand that from about 7pm on, I'm not going to be very pleasant or patient or fun.  Not until things change and everyone can be elsewhere, doing other things not here all the time.  

So that's where things are here for now.  I don't know if or when things will get better or how much I will need to work on my plan but I feel like doing something positive is better than being hostile and angry and a social media bully about things that make me unhappy.  

Today I had Orioles on my feeders in the back yard.  I walked the dog and appreciated all the blooming trees and fresh air.  I noticed people mowing their grass and parents playing with their kids and I saw a boy with a fishing pole and a backpack, on his bike, heading out to a pond to fish......and that's a pretty good picture of the start of summer, I think.