Life Lately

I started writing this section mid-month.

Then President Biden took office and I deleted everything I’d written here.

There’s been a shift—can you feel it?—in the very air we breathe.

It would have been a switch no matter what, but then January 6th happened and we, as a nation, held our collective breath. The inauguration was a balm to our weary souls. And I don’t want to minimize anything here, but please let me fangirl for a moment on my favorite inauguration moments.

• Michelle Obama. We are not worthy.

• Amanda Gorman. We should all be reciting her poem in liturgy every single morning.

• J.Lo slipping “let’s get loud” into America the Beautiful.

• Lady Gaga’s Hunger Games realness.

• Ella Emhoff’s coat is everything I want in a coat.

• Joe Biden’s speech was perfect.

• Swearing in Madam Vice President. Just…yes.

• Give me all the Bernie memes. God bless the internet.

Okay, thank you for indulging me. I’m afraid my “Around the Internet” section is going to be rather a ping-ponging of emotions. But isn’t that what we’ve lived, not just in the past year, but in the past few weeks? We were starved for the beauty, the dignity, and the pageantry of a presidential inauguration. To think it had been stormed by a mob wearing tactical gear and toting weapons, and it was transformed exactly two weeks later through the magic of bunting and flags and capital-F Fashion for all the world to see.

Joe Biden spoke, over and over again, of unity. Donald Trump’s inaugural address, in his own words, spoke of “American carnage.” So stop telling me Trump didn’t stoke the fires of rage in this country. Stop telling me he isn’t responsible for what unfolded at our Capitol on January 6th. Stop telling me the sky is magenta when we look out our windows and see it is a clear, bright blue. As Trevor Noah said, “Miss me with that bullshit.”

Phew. Ping-ponging, I know. I also know this: that I have been waking up this last week with an ease that’s been missing the past four-plus years.

+++++

Take Action

This is a time where I’m regretting including a “take action” section. Oof, less action, more hibernation, please.

Though hibernation, in some sense, is the point right now. We’re entering a new phase of the pandemic where variations have sprung up and we’re still catching up with what, exactly, that means. On the other half of the split-screen, people are getting vaccinated and it will never not make me happy.

I know I’m not alone when I say that I am so freaking over it. I can see and feel the weariness around me. I want to have friends inside my house. I want to leave my kids with a babysitter and go eat in an actual, real-live restaurant. I want to be able to say “yes” when the kids ask for the 483rd time, “Can we go to Great Wolf Lodge/the indoor playground/to visit our cousins?” But we’re also so freaking close. So, take this as your reminder to set the example. Please wear your mask. Please keep your outings short and only to the essentials. And please don’t socialize with people for extended periods of time in indoor spaces.

+++++

Around the Internet

• Ezra Klein called this “an extraordinary first draft of history” and there are really no other words to describe it.

• “In short, January 6 not only could have been much worse—it was much worse than was initially apparent. Sometimes real-time coverage of news events leans toward the sensational and overstates what happened. But because reporters were unprepared for the violence, and because of the fog of war (and tear gas), the horror of this event has emerged slowly. Many people were able to see the stakes on January 6, but it was much harder to see how close a larger catastrophe was to occurring, much less how much harm was actually done.”

• What To Tell Your Child Who Has Found You In The Kitchen With A Glass of Water Suspended Between Counter and Mouth As You Watch Live Footage of the News

• Dave Ramsey has always given me the creeps. This is all exactly zero percent surprising to me.

• Because you know I can’t let it go without talking more about the fashion.

• “When we live in temporary permanence, it doesn’t make sense to buy a rocking chair or a bedside bassinet or deck out a nursery. It doesn’t make sense to spring for the fancy convertible car seat or to give the walls a fresh coat of paint. There’s the always-present possibility we’ll be leaving soon. Why waste the money now when we can use it in the U.S.? But as time marches forward and the calendar flips to another month and then another, we find ourselves wishing for that rocking chair, blaming the baby’s lack of sleep on its absence. It may seem like a silly thing to grieve over, but it highlights the things we’ve had to give up over the last four years.”

• “That it is possible for Joe Biden and his team to release a plan this straightforward is the most damning indictment of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response imaginable.”

• “If we don’t get control of this—if we don’t reestablish an ethic of respect for facts—nothing else will be solved.”

• About a kitchen table and so much more.

+++++

Eating

• This curry is everything I want in a curry. I’ve made it twice in two weeks. It’s fantastic and while you might need to double it to have leftovers, it’s even better the next day. My foodie kid literally licked his plate clean and the other two sauce-averse children even dared to try the chicken. 10/10 highly recommend.

• I made these tacos the other night and Tyson said, “Each bite is a perfect bite of taco.” If that’s not enough of a recommendation, I don’t know what is. (Note: not sure if my head of cauliflower was small or I just prefer a different cauliflower-to-beans ratio, but I only used about half a can of black beans.)

+++++

Fun Things

• After several years of trying to get into a home yoga routine that works for me, I’ve found my groove with the Down Dog app. In the past few weeks, I’ve only missed a handful of days. I previously tried to scroll YouTube to find just what I wanted in terms of class, length, sequence type, etc., which was frustrating 9/10 times. I can choose all of the above with a few simple clicks in the app. I can choose a 15-minute class set to spiritual music with a full flow and focus on my lower back in less than 10 seconds.

• I got the Olive and June manicure set for my birthday and it’s worth every ounce of hype. It’s all packaged up in a fabulous box and it makes me so happy.

• This sweatsuit was my birthday gift to myself and it also makes me so very happy. In fact, I just did 10 minutes of yoga while wearing the sweatsuit after giving myself a manicure earlier today so I’ve basically just hit the trifecta of fun things bliss.

+++++

On a personal note, the kids went back to school. Like, back-back. (Our district is still distance learning except for Pre-K—2nd grade, who went back full-time on the 19th.) And despite recently writing about routines and rhythms, I’ve yet to find mine. I keep telling myself we’re only a week or so in; of course, I don’t know what I’m doing yet. Just like I didn’t know what we were doing with hybrid and I never did find my groove with distance learning…it takes time.

Hear this: I’m thrilled for them to be back. My extroverted, please-fill-my-inexhaustible-socialization-bucket-up Nolan is a different person lately. Caden and Brooklyn are no longer trying to learn through screens for five-plus hours a day. AND ALSO: it’s weird. It’s weird because this has emphatically NOT been our life since March 12th of last year. It’s weird because I have some time and space to breathe each week but my body and brain are still operating in scarcity mode as far as Time Without the Kids is concerned. It’s weird because I don’t know how tightly I can hold on to this new schedule.

It’s weird because we’re on the brink of a new month and to think of everything this last month contained: insurrection, an inauguration, Bernie memes, turning 34, and also now GameStop, I guess? It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that we’re a single month into 2021. Here’s to being on the brink of a new month and all the weirdness it will hold.

2020: A Summary

In January, I planned for February. Planned for three birthdays, two birthday parties, and one big trip, the biggest we’d ever taken as a family. In the middle of all that, I turned 33. I remember feeling exhausted then, ready for something—anything—to change.

At the tail end of January, or maybe it was very early February, I remember listening to The Daily and hearing for the first time about this disease over in China. It was my first introduction to COVID (and to Donald G. McNeil, Jr., who I had no idea would become one of my favorite people of the year). He talked about lockdowns and overloaded hospitals. It sounded awful. Thank goodness we don’t need to worry about that here, I remember thinking, as I pulled into the parking lot of Target, hopping out of my car without a thought to walking into a store with a bunch of people without masks.

In February we celebrated those birthdays. I held back-to-back birthday parties for the first time: family on Saturday, friends on Sunday. It felt both crazy and genius. One enormous clean up of the house, one enormous mess, and then one enormous effort to put it all back together. A couple weeks later, we officially celebrated those birthdays in Disneyworld, making our way through Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom and LEGOland. We arrived with two five-year-olds and a three-year-old and returned with six-year-olds and a four-year-old. One six-year-old became a princess while we were there. The oldest hasn’t stopped talking about LEGOland since.

On February 25th, I talked about “leaning into the ordinary” for Lent. Just. Bless all of my heart.

In March, I was preparing for a writing conference in April. I was also considering a part-time job. Something I could do from home, in the few hours a week the kids were at school.

Bless all of my whole entire heart again.

First, the writing conference was postponed until 2021. Which seemed a bit extreme, but okay. Then the week of March 9th got weird. Super weird. It felt like there was a storm brewing but we didn’t know if it would be a sunshower or a category 5 hurricane. 

I happened to be at school on March 12th, the last day the kids were in school: Spring Break started the next day. It was a Thursday, because I was there every week on Thursdays. I’d become friendly with many of the teachers who came in and out of the workroom where I volunteered. A couple of teachers were traveling to Mexico and I remember thinking that leaving the country sounded like a terrible idea. Mostly I had a gut-level feeling in the pit of my stomach, a feeling that would be confirmed by our school districts in the coming weeks: this would be the last day any of us would be in this building for the rest of the school year.

A leprechaun was supposed to visit their classroom after Spring Break. Caden and Brooklyn’s Kindergarten teacher warned them the leprechaun caused mischief: chairs turned over, books pulled off the bookshelf. Caden decided, when they didn’t return to school, that the leprechaun chose to terrorize our house instead. “The leprechaun did it!” he would say whenever something was off: whether that was a misplaced LEGO creation or a sibling who’d left toothpaste smeared across the sink.

Maybe 2020 was the leprechaun’s fault.

In March, even though I’d been doing grocery pick-up for years, I found myself back inside the grocery store, because everyone else discovered grocery pick-up, too. We wiped those groceries down with a bleach solution. The week of spring break held new updates every day, from business closures to Spring Break being extended a week to stay at home orders. I began documenting our days because it all felt surreal. I woke up and then remembered all over again, in a wave of emotion, what this new life was.

Also, on that extended spring break, Brooklyn broke both of her wrists. Because of course.

In April, I became pretty good at schooling the kids. They did a few virtual activities with their teacher each day. I covered our entire dining room table with paper and set out a bin of crayons while they sat and listened to math and reading lessons. I printed out worksheets and they drew pictures and wrote sight words and math problems across the paper. Nolan rolled along with everything and became an honorary member of their Kindergarten class, completing the last three months of the virtual Kindergarten curriculum alongside his brother and sister.

I enforced a silent reading time. We had the afternoons to play. I ordered the entire Anne of Green Gables boxed set and hunkered down to read. I made dalgona coffee.

We entered the period of the stay-at-home order. We explained to the kids that despite playing with their neighborhood friends over Spring Break, we wouldn’t be doing that anymore. It was just the five of us. Here, at home. Even the parks were closed. We had to try the best we could to be with each other.

It was Easter and it snowed. Even though we’d been rid of snow for a solid six weeks by that point. I bought the kids Easter pajamas instead of fancy clothes. I picked up brunch from a local restaurant and ended up sitting in line for over an hour because no one had figured out how to do this efficiently yet.

In April, we watched Tiger King for some reason. And Carole Baskin became a household name.

In May I hit a second wave of grief. I grieved our lost school year. I grieved the loss of t-ball, what would have been Nolan’s very first year. I grieved the loss of their dance recital. I grieved the loss of what is usually one of the absolute craziest months of the year. I grieved that we weren’t getting McDonald’s between dress rehearsals and t-ball games. I grieved the loss of time without kids. I grieved that we were entering another season without an end in sight. 

It was Mother’s Day and despite having absolutely gorgeous weather for days it was frigid that day. I was in a terrible mood all day long. All I wanted to do was explore a nearby park outside and we couldn’t even do that. Everything was awful.

We started biking every single afternoon. The kids kind of hated it but I needed it. I prepared for summer despite feeling like we’d already lived through summer, what with the three months the kids had already spent at home.

At the end of May, a black man was lynched in our city and the world was turned upside down again. The whole world was literally and figuratively on fire. We visited the memorial and it felt like we walked on hallowed ground. George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor; these names became like liturgies.

In June we began “summer school”. Every morning we did an activity to learn about a woman in history (Amelia Earhardt. Bessie Coleman. Jane Goodall.) and had silent reading and iPad time. We went on nature walks and tested what items floated or sunk in water and every morning around 9:00, we began with a bike ride around the neighborhood.

They played at home. Together. Mostly outside. They splashed in the pool and ran around the backyard and every day bled into the next.

In July we watched Hamilton. Several times. And the soundtrack has yet to stop playing in our house. Only interrupted by Folklore, which we also listened to on repeat because Taylor Swift made it her mission to try to save 2020.

We went to Duluth for the day. We stayed in basically the same spot the whole day as the kids collected rocks and swam in the water (sans swimsuits because I’ve literally never been to Duluth before where it’s warm enough to actually swim) and threw rocks in the water for hours on end.

I painted Nolan’s room and turned it into the “rainbow room” he requested. It was good to have a project.

Also, they played at home. Together. Mostly outside. They splashed in the pool and ran around the backyard and every day bled into the next.

In August we waited to see what the school year would bring. In those days, if two or more parents gathered, they talked of nothing but school. There was a constant on-edge, anxious feeling in my stomach. Every school option felt terrible. I hit a wall because it was the 684th day of summer. 

Still, they played at home. Together. Mostly outside. They splashed in the pool and ran around the backyard and every day bled into the next.

In September, we prepared to go back to school. Three mornings a week for Nolan, hybrid for Caden and Brooklyn (three days at home, two in school). The start of school was delayed by one week because that’s how things rolled this year. I brought them each to the store individually to pick out school supplies: the first time they’d set foot in a store since before the pandemic. I tried to figure out what it would look like to do things like “be places at specific times” again. I remained in disbelief that they would actually go to school for real. 

But they did. I had 2.75 hours to myself every Friday morning and it was the longest stretch of time I had to myself since March 12th.

In October, we celebrated our 10-year anniversary. And if the traditional 10-year anniversary gift is to eat take-out at home wearing comfy pants, then we nailed it.

Otherwise, we fell into a routine of sorts. Every day was different. On Mondays, Nolan went to preschool and Caden and Brooklyn had a virtual morning meeting. On Tuesdays, Caden and Brooklyn were distance learning. On Wednesdays, Nolan went to preschool and Caden and Brooklyn were distance learning. On Thursdays, Caden and Brooklyn went to school. On Fridays, everyone went to school.

My head spun just to type that. Each day I woke up and my first thought was to remind myself what day it was. I would literally jolt awake and remind myself what awaited us that day.

In October, we bought pumpkins. We jumped in piles of leaves. And we trick-or-treated as Alexander Hamilton, Eliza Hamilton, and Aaron Burr because Hamilton mania had yet to subside around these parts.

In November we voted. We held our breath. We got almost nothing done of substance that first week of November, besides eating carbs and drinking coffee and refreshing social media more times than was healthy. We ended that week by letting Caden and Brooklyn stay up late so they could watch a black woman speak, elected to the second-highest office in the land.

We stumbled to find things we were thankful for. Especially as the kids entered the dreaded phase of distance learning. We (*ahem* I) drew up schedules. We re-arranged schedules for the 48th time this year. We sat in front of screens. Lots of sitting in front of lots of screens. We blessed the teachers from homeroom to music to dance as they did all they could to engage the smallest of students.

In December, we went through the motions. We woke up every day and checked that drawn-up schedule to make it to Google Meets on time. We checked over work. We had all the Christmas presents delivered and seemed to have grocery pick-ups every other day. 

But in December, we also put up Christmas decorations and it felt like hope. We may have gone overboard on the gifts this year but wrapping those up felt like hope, too. We began to administer vaccines and that felt so hopeful our collective hearts might burst. And we looked forward to 2021. Though we knew the calendar flipping over wouldn’t magically change everything, still, we pinned our hopes on that number, that year. Knowing, hoping, feeling in our bones that it would be sooner, rather than later, that we could emerge into a new and better normal.

Life Lately

Did you remember that we had an election earlier this month? Because we had an election earlier THIS actual calendar month. Even though it still feels as though we’re in year 4 of the 2016 election AND also in day 485 of March 2020 AND simultaneously like the 2020 election was several months ago. But, * checks calendar *, nope. We actually had an election a mere four weeks ago.

This month’s chaos was, in a way, reminiscent of March. The kids, as stipulated by the district, are moving to full-time distance learning. So are their dance classes. They had a week off for Thanksgiving to give the teachers time to prepare. I found myself taking deep breaths during the last Friday morning the kids were all in school, which I think was my body’s reaction to the last time my kids went on a week-long break (and didn’t return to their school buildings for six whole months).

Schedule number 43 of the year but also make it Christmas.

Continuing with those deep breaths.

I won’t pretend that everything is fine because it’s not. As I look down the barrel of this week I see a schedule littered with Google Meets to manage. Tyson and I sat down this weekend to map out and overhaul our schedule which will probably happen at least once more before the year ends.

I don’t want to sugarcoat anything or tie this up with a bow. And yet. We decorated for Christmas this weekend and there’s something about those Christmas tree lights in the background. We might (read: will for sure, totally, definitely) have fights with three kids on three Google meets at the same time, or when two have Google Meets and the third doesn’t, or over using our tablets in the bathroom, or over staying on task during a 2:00 pm call when usually when they’re at home 2:00 = TV time. This is true. But the twinkle lights help. They’re the definition of hopeful. A tradition, a constant, in the midst of so much that’s not. And a reminder that 2021 is on the horizon which should be (read: better be, must be, has to be) so much better than the year we’ve all just lived through.

+++++

Take Action

With Christmas coming, I’d love to urge you to shop local this year. Fellow Minnesotans, here is the ultimate guide to Twin Cities businesses. I’ll urge everyone to give up Amazon and replace it with Bookshop.org (heads up: affiliate link!). And wherever you are, I recommend gifting gift cards to local restaurants and buying beer and spirits made by local breweries and distilleries—these beloved businesses need all the help we can give them right now.

Also: Stay home. Please. As much as you possibly can. We’ve been urged by our Governor here in MN to stay home, to not have gatherings, to order take-out to support bars and restaurants who are banned from serving dine-in customers. It’s not quite as expansive as the shutdown we had in the spring, but it’s up there.

A vaccine (or several) seem to be so close; that light at the end of the tunnel feels like it’s just almost within our grasp. If we can buckle down these next few months, in the snow and the cold and the distance learning, there’s a chance life will return to ”normal” sooner rather than later. Stay safe.

+++++

Around the Internet

• “Because schools are not the major cause of the problem, shutting them down won’t do enough on its own to slow the spread of the disease. When — not if — businesses are forced to shutter temporarily in the near future, we can tide them over with money, and we absolutely should. When schools are closed, however, handing students a check will not replace what they’ve lost.”

• I learned to knit right before the pandemic began and didn’t know how much I would need it this year.

• “My husband and I bought our first home when we were twenty-four. I think it’s important to be honest here. This wasn’t some triumph of good sense and hard work. It wasn’t accomplished by making our avocado toast at home instead of ordering it in a coffee shop. We didn’t work five jobs each to do it. When we got married at 21, we had good credit. Neither of us had ever had to charge rent to a credit card and then fallen behind on payments. We’d never been uninsured and then had a medical emergency that left us swamped with medical bills.”

• Scotland is the first nation to make sanitary products free

• For all my pandemic shoppers out there.

• Well this made me lol.

• “Yet some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate.”

+++++

Eating

• Tyson’s company is based in Champaign, IL, a town where there’s astonishingly little to do, besides eat at the equally astonishing amount of really good restaurants. I’ve had actual dreams about this roasted red pepper and gouda soup from a cafe not far from his office. I decided to re-create it by following this recipe and while it was different from the one I remember, it was still SO GOOD. Serve with fresh bread, obviously.

• These fish fingers disappear in my house every time. Serve with a bag of frozen Alexia seasoned waffle fries because #balance.

• Since I won’t be posting another of these round-ups until after the holidays, I feel like it’s my duty to point you to some holiday baking goodness. These cranberry bars, my favorite gingersnap recipe, more gingerbread if you prefer yours in cake form, chocolate sugar cookies to switch things up, and these which you hardly need a recipe for but the kids can practically make on their own and they’re wildly addictive.

• Okay and let’s also include some party food, which you can bet I will make even if we’re only a party of five this year: the only (and easiest) meatball recipe you need, these stuffed mushrooms could basically be my last meal, bacon-wrapped dates and please include the goat cheese, and do yourself a favor and bake up some brie (top with jam, always).

+++++

Fun Things

• This tea is everything. I’m not usually a fan of adding cream to tea but I add a little sugar and the smallest splash of heavy cream and it feels absolutely decadent. Honestly, I like to just hold it in a heavy mug to warm my hands and breathe in the vanilla scent which is divine. At under $6 it’s the best little luxury right now.

• This is a pretty big Fun Thing, but: our 10-year wedding anniversary was in early October. While we thought we’d be celebrating with a trip, that’s been put on hold for obvious reasons. Instead, I discovered that the traditional 10-year anniversary gift = diamonds. While I didn’t actually want new diamonds, I did get my wedding ring re-set. I’ve never had a wedding band, only an engagement ring (raise your hand if you were also a poor college student baby when you got engaged), so I had my original diamond re-set as a solitaire and the smaller diamonds that surrounded it in my original setting used in the wedding band, both in hammered yellow gold. I LOVE it so much. (MN friends: check out Sarah Commers Jewelry. She was so easy to work with and brought my vision to life!)

+++++

Leaving you with those twinkle lights I mentioned earlier. I was skeptical, but they really do make all the difference right now.

Joy, Unexpectedly

Unexpected joy, the prompt said.

Yeah, right. I thought.

I didn’t want to do the blog hop prompt this month because joy—even (especially?) of the unexpected variety—seemed too hard to find right now. Who has time for that? The days are a cycle of wake up (in the darkness), feed the kids breakfast, drink coffee, make sure everyone changes their clothes and brushes their teeth. Some days we’re distance learning and three mornings we’re driving to preschool and two days we’re driving to elementary school and I’m saying “Just click the box with the link right here like you did yesterday” and “Did you remember to hit the ‘submit’ button?” and I’m adding Play Doh to our Target pick up because the preschoolers go through it like crazy. I’m making lunches and adding carrot sticks which is more a hopeful idea than something they’ll regularly eat and trying to work during quiet time and then survive the afternoon when we can’t really go anywhere. I make dinner and we take baths and read books and tuck blankets and go to bed and get up to do it all over again.

There’s a pandemic and an election and have you seen what the president has done now and for the love of God, vote and women are taking on the bulk of the pandemic burden and it’s heavy and people are out of work and out of money and out of time and patience and energy.

I don’t have time to find joy. Even unexpectedly.

Until, that is, an October surprise.

Not the political kind. But a white-stuff-falling-from-the-sky kind.

And I found it.

Joy.

Unexpectedly.

Unexpected joy is a snowstorm in October that would normally drive you crazy but this year feels like a free activity I didn’t need to exert any mental energy to plan or prepare or execute in any way.

Unexpected joy is taking stock of all the kid’s winter gear in September so when an unexpected October snowstorm hits you’re prepared and basically deserve an award.

Unexpected joy is hot cocoa with marshmallows and Frozen because that’s what you do during the first significant snowfall. It’s the continuation of a tradition that you thought would have died a couple of years ago but, magically, hasn’t.

Unexpected joy is a morning cup of coffee where you take a sip to discover it’s been brewed just right.

Unexpected joy is finding them in a giggling pile on the floor and you have no idea why.

Unexpected joy is Halloween candy before Halloween.

Unexpected joy is a new hobby in a year you didn’t even know you were going to need it. And when’s the last time you even picked up a hobby, anyway?

Unexpected joy is two six-year-olds who pick up books to read just for fun at all times of the day. It’s waking up to realize they can read fluently even though you swear, you would swear on a stack of Bibles, that they were sounding out “The C-A-T on the M-A-T” only yesterday.

Unexpected joy is realizing that despite everything, all of it, all the things going on, joy snuck up on you. Because it’s unexpected, dummy. And so you’re forced to write about it, after all.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in this series "Unexpected Joy".

The Middle

It’s MEA week. I don’t remember what the acronym stands for (Minnesota Educators A...something?) but that’s not important. It’s our version of fall break. I can tell you what it means for me practically: Nolan didn’t have school at all this week and Caden and Brooklyn didn’t have school on Thursday and Friday. They went to school on Wednesday instead because usually, they’re in-person on Thursdays and Fridays, so there was a schedule change so both the Hybrid A and B students had one day of in-person school this week and if this is all starting to sound complicated that’s because it is.

Tyson took off Wednesday morning and the entire day Thursday because I may have threatened him with “We’re in month eight of the pandemic and now that I’m used to having the smallest amount of time and space from our children you will pry it from my cold, dead, hands.” 

Okay, threatened is dramatic. What we really did was have a regular, civil conversation and he immediately took the time off on his work calendar. Still.

I’m in the middle of a large writing project. I’m maybe 1/3rd of the way done if I’m being generous with myself. I’m taking a writing class and had a conversation with the instructor this week and she said, “The middle is tough.” and while maybe that should seem obvious it struck me so hard I had to write it down in my notebook and then underline it and draw a big box around it. 

Clearly, I needed to hear that.

Wednesday morning, I went through a bunch of emails, sent an email for a committee I’m the chair of at church, responded to things in a couple of Facebook groups, and ordered new snow pants for Caden and Brooklyn. Then I canceled that order because I remembered the kids all need new water bottles (Do anyone else’s children go through water bottles like they’re, well, water?) and I could only order my $26.97 worth of water bottles with an order of $35 or more, so I canceled the original snow pants order and then added them to my water bottle order instead and welcome to my life.

The point is: the middle is tough.

I thought I would spend my time writing on Wednesday morning but I didn’t. At least I told myself I didn’t. I told myself I didn’t do any writing because the story in my head is the list I just wrote out to you above and the only writing that “counts” is the writing that goes toward this larger project. But then as I sat staring at my computer screen I remembered some things that didn’t get included in that first draft of the story in my head:

• I told you I sent an email to a committee (in and of itself an act of writing) but what I didn’t say was that I also drafted a letter for them to review which will be sent out to the entire congregation 

• I told you I responded to things in a couple of Facebook groups, both of which are writing groups, and one of which has my brain churning with a new writing assignment due in a couple of weeks.

• I didn’t mention at all that I made revisions to an essay and submitted it to another publication. It’s already been rejected three times so maybe the fourth time’s a charm. I don’t know why that didn’t make the list in my head at all.

• The snow pants/water bottle debacle can stand as is. The middle is the middle and sometimes things are just that complicated and it truly didn’t involve any writing at all, besides typing “kids water bottle” into a search bar. 

So I actually did quite a bit of writing this morning. If only I remembered more often that revising and submitting and emailing and church letters count. That even if they don’t contribute to the word count of the thing my brain says is the one that “matters”, my fingers are still tapping away at something.

It reminded me of an article I read a few years ago where the author talked about what she was writing when she wasn’t writing. Things like the grocery list or the email to the PTA or the card she mails off to a friend. Of course, I can’t find that article now. And searching “what I write when I’m not writing” gives me about a billion hits on things I can do to become a better writer, and how to tell if you’re a “good” or a “bad” writer and help for if you’re having a hard time writing, and I want to scream, I am, I AM writing, so apparently I’ve overcome the story in my head from Wednesday about how I didn’t write anything at all.

Especially because I am, in fact, typing these words out right here right now.

Which is admittedly a rarity these days. Too often I’m doing the type of “writing that isn’t writing” or writing something that’s on a deadline because I have to and other times I think about writing but then squander more time looking for kids water bottles or long-sleeved pajamas or new nail polish because we all need something fun since we’re still living in the middle of a pandemic. Yet another Middle That is Tough. Any sense of novelty has long ago worn off and yet we can’t quite see the light at the end of the tunnel, though we’re told, maybe, there are pinpricks. 

Instead, we’ll do this dance: me around these words, society around this disease. I’ll do some writing even when I’m not and we’ll do some living even when this is not, could not, would never be what we would have chosen. Of course we will.