Marching Out

Kids and Dwayne have been working at home for all but two days of March, and we have at least another month to go.  Here's how we wrapped up the month.

Kyla brought me more bouquets (and filled the vase she made for me last Christmas!).

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We had a few beautiful days, and the kids noticed some great clouds.

Piper did cool art with a new friend.

Wes built a weapon holder out of scrap wood.

 

This two can get along really well when they are both being extra silly.  Here they are playing "Who wants a tiny piece of cheese?" from one of the many movies about a dog getting lost and traveling thousands of miles back home.  

 

Kyla can eat her weight in jelly and Nutella. (Couldn't we all?)

Sometimes Piper is Very Unhappy about family walks.

We are getting to know our woods even better (I've even been doing 3 mile "runs", gasp!).  Piper, this time happy to be out walking, poses with the resident black bear. 

Dwayne is up to 25 very sexy push ups daily.  Wes, wiry boy that he is, can do push ups and pull ups all day long.  (I can watch him for about half a day.)  The next step, of course, was for Wes to do push ups on top of Daddy's push ups.

Dwayne is a saint.  A strong saint.

Non Voyage*

This morning, we should have caught the o'dark early flight to Lima, via Atlanta.

We would have started our adventure with a night in Lima, Peru, and maybe seen the amazing fountains in the evening.

We wouldn't have much time before heading to the Nazca Lines for three days, but these are some of the local sights the hotel boasts of. I'm kind of interested in the macabre skulls and burials.

We will make it eventually, as the trip has only been postponed for months or a full year. Earlier this week, we officially canceled the African leg (Safari in Kruger National Park, Cape Town, Egypt & Jordan tour), and are waiting for our SE Asia itinerary to cancel on us, so we lose less money. If anyone can predict the next 4 months, you know better than I if we can at least make Australia, NZ, and Fiji and take Dwayne's vacation time in Oceana as already scheduled.

Even though my suitcase is not unpacked, I'm not feeling too morose about it, as it the new normal has eradicated my trip mindset, and now we are living a lifestyle that is diametrically opposed to what we planned for this spring.

Bring on the social distancing!

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*Brilliant title must be fully credited to Georgia Y, teacher, bibliophile, and friend extraordinaire.

If You Give a Pig a Paintbrush....

[Warning: While trying to be slightly entertaining, this post is really to answer the "Hey, Babe, when did we last fix ____?" questions that will arise in about 2025.]

Hopefully you have had the pleasure of reading Laura Numeroff's picture book, but basically all of them are about how one idea leads to another, exhausting, idea.  

We had our own pancake moment as we tried to do lots of tiny things to the house to get ready for another family to live in it while we traveled, and the momentum grew as our plans got canceled and we were forced to stay home exponentially more than we planned. 

It really started when Dwayne thought we should really fix the peeling ceiling in our shower.  Of the 3 showers in the house, the kids prefer ours, and occasionally one of them feels the need to spray the entire shower with water.  For the second time in ten years, I scraped, mudded, textured, primed, and repainted the ceiling.  And that is almost impossible to do without also doing some of the wall.  So I repainted the bathroom, walls, trim, and door.  And no reason to put up the ugly wicker shelf that I got used twenty years ago--the only thing holding it together was dust and cobwebs, so we bought a new cabinet.  And shower head (incapable of spraying the ceiling). And faucet. And non-rusty caddy. A good scrubbing, and the bathroom was done, just as the kids were entering their second full stay-at-home week.  

I already had the paint can out, and decide that I could openly be appalled by the upstairs hallway (read: Wes's and Piper's bedrooms doors).  So we painted those.  If it were easy, I could end this more quickly, but after Piper and I scrubbed and scrapped the front of her door, I looked at the back.  An army of Not Me's had been busily at work, punching holes into it.  There was not enough putty or patience.  So Dwayne and I bought a new door, which of course, was 1/8" too wide and didn't have cutouts for embedded hinges.  I did the heavy lifting and Dwayne did the technical work, and we got the new door on.  I painted all the doors and trim work while Dwayne put on new (oil-rubbed bronze, my favorite) knobs on.  So the hallway was done.

(And just because I love it, I'm sharing my Wall of Christmas Cards.  When I'm in a funk, relive our childful lives and appreciate the evolution of both my kids and my creativity!)

But now Piper's doorway looked so nice but her room looked like this:

Honestly, her room has bothered me for years and so we came to an agreement.  She wanted to get rid of the wardrobes, get a smaller dresser, and paint the room purple.  To make that happen, she had to shed a lot of crap.  If she could do that, we would find a craigslist dresser of her choice, paint the room together, and Dwayne and I would take out the wardrobes--its own Herculean task.  

This is what the living room looked like with all her crap stored there while we painted.

A little glimpse of the "before and during":

 

I will never forget, in spite of my best efforts, of teaching Piper to paint a room.  (She started by putting paint on the roller, using her hand a spatula.)  But she looked so darn cute wearing a set of my paint clothes!

We started Wednesday removing the wardrobe, and by Friday night, the room was put back, carpet shampooed, and touch ups completed.  She loves it, and I really appreciate how much less stuff she kept.  In fact, along with the wardrobe, we were able to deliver her outgrown toys and art supplies and dresses to a single mother with foster kids, in addition to the Ikea wardrobe we no longer needed.  

It still needs a new set of curtains, but we're close to the final touches.  

That project pretty much used up my project energy, but Dwayne still had a little more.  The gaps in our beautiful kitchen floor are a results of not doing the entire upstairs remodel at one time, and needing to use click-in planks instead of glue-down--and of course, of actually using the kitchen.  No other place gets that much foot traffic, and a board in every row was gapping significantly.

Of course, this time it wasn't as easy to just take off the trip closest to the gap and crowbar it into place, as the flooring went under the very intractable pantry.  After some head-scratching, Dwayne thought using friction, a large mallet, and his foot to close the gap one plank at a time over about 20 feet of flooring.  But nothing he tried held well enough. Finally, he turned to his friend, Bing, and found that others had used double-sided sticky tape.  Eureka!  While I was shampooing carpets (because the shampooer was out, and that pig still had that darn pancake), he fixed the floors and knows how to do it in another few years when they spread out again.  

I think we've satisfied that pig for a while.  However, if we come out of this stay-at-home without a cleaner, more organized home (and garage!), I will consider this time wasted.  

Day 20: Three Insights that Have Resounded with Me during "Stay At Home"

And the people stayed home.
     And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply.
     Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently. 
     And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
     And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed to images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed."
                         ~Kitty O'Meara

*            *             *             * 

NPR had a newsletter with a blurb I identified with right away: Anyone else failing miserably at homeschooling their kids? We started out very Dumbledore, but now we’re definitely heading toward Snape — maybe even a little Umbridge.
     Kids learned from Snape, right?  Potions, DADA, and maybe some regular life lessons about unfairness and mean adults.

*           *             *             *             * 

And something a both Profane and Profound:

Wow-- Family Night WORKED!

Instead of doing the standby movie night, or even Uno or cribbage, I wanted play a board game that we'd all enjoy.  Settlers of Catan isn't particularly complicated, but I haven't played it since BC (before children), and Wes doesn't always "get" things before Kyla is bored and ready to go back to her book, though he is the kid who most likes playing games.  I usually don't get to reflect and see all the things that went right, but this night was so perfect, I need to record for posterity.

Things Mama did right to make Settlers a success:

1. Set up the board before dinner in the middle of the island (which is almost meta...'cuz Settlers is an island...our island is our kitchen table...yep, deep).
2. We ate dinner while studying the board and discussing the different resources and chances of earning them.
3. Once we had the basic idea, we started the game by setting up our pieces. By this time, the kids were really excited to put their pieces on the board.
4. Once dinner was over and the game was ready to really play, I announced it was make-your-own sundaes night while we played.  
5. The kids LOVED it!  Dwayne and I kept catching each other's eye, as if to say, "Are these our children?  Why is this going so well?  Three out of 3--this is unprecedented!"  

The night was a smashing success, and math next day for Wes was figuring out the possibility of each role of the dice and graphing it.  Spoilers:  There is a 1 in 6 chance two dice will roll a 7; there is a 1 in 36 chance a  2 or 12 will be rolled.

I will float on this success for days....

*          *          *          *          *

The Settlers of Catan

Multiplayer Board Game

Catan, previously known as The Settlers of Catan or simply Settlers, is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber, and first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlag as Die Siedler von Catan. Players take on the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop holdings while trading and acquiring resources. Players gain points as their settlements grow; the first to reach a set number of points, typically 10, wins. 

Padilla Bay afternoon

There was a brief period between "school/work buildings closed" and "stay at home" decrees.  A friend invited us to meet up at Padilla Bay, where the Skagit River flows into the Puget Sound, outside of Mount Vernon.  It was the nicest day of the year so far, and I'm always up for an adventure.  We brought Piper's BFF, an audio book, and money for take out.

The trail goes along a wonderful trail, which we quickly seemed to forgo in favor of...stinky mud?  Apparently.  

Children I didn't give birth to seem much more inclined to cleanliness and rationality. At least at first, before the corruption begins.

 

It was too early for the tulip festival (and it was canceled anyway), but we were able to drive past daffodil fields on our way home.  My kids stayed in the car, exhausted, and more important, shoeless, but I enjoyed the gorgeous scenery!

 

Last adventure for a while...

Did I Say Round the World? Oops, my bad.

Well, that ship has sailed…without us, if I can make a weak witticism.  Of course, it’s far more complicated than that, since our adventure wasn’t a Costco-purchased, 120 day, all-inclusive cruise; the itinerary is a patchwork of different multi- and single-day tours, international and domestic flights, destination hotels and overnight accommodations that took our travel agent months and months to sew together.  It will take as long to unravel.  It is easy to amputate the first leg of the trip when airports are closed, but harder to cancel for a refund for months in the cloudy future.  We will be in Australia and New Zealand in June; both of those countries, within a few days, went from general travel restrictions to mandatory 14-day quarantines for those entering the country to, today, closing borders to non-citizens.   But no one has the crystal ball to know what next month looks like, so summer seems really beyond our understanding. 

But in the meantime, we'll be hunkering down at home, trying not to be part of the problem...and apparently watching something called Beast Masters on Netflix.  

A Line I Don't Get to Use Often Enough

Veronica Speedwell came out with her fifth novel!  And, boy, am I now a fan of lions.  (Is it getting hot in here, or is Stoker taking off his cloak again?)

To be fair, Veronica is not a real person and Deanna must write the adventures down instead (as she has done in previous books, but I put down my kindle and texted this to my fellow bibliophile/Stoker fan.

 

My life is so dull and staid that it is unlikely I will ever be able to calmly recite such a line in regular life.  Disappointing indeed!

This Year's First Bouquet!

I came home from a walk and Kyla had left a vase of flowers in the kitchen for me!

Wes anthropomorphizes a few well used objects--Frederick the Balance Ball is practically an adopted child, as kinetic Wes is best when he keeps moving, and I like him best in one place.  Frederick is our compromise. Big Joe is the other honorary household member--a big black beanbag chair that occasionally needs sustenance of tiny Styrofoam balls.  Big Joe's job is to catch Wes every time he flops down or needs something besides Mama to wrestle with.  So it's not surprising that Big Joe sometimes has a few holes that need to be sewn up.  That has often been a big kid job, which in our house, means one of the girls, but Wes doesn't get to think that the other gender is the one that needs to make repairs.  So Piper taught him to do basic sewing.  Sometimes, she is an amazing big sister!  Hopefully he will be ready to do it all on his own next time.  Or else stop breaking, tearing, ripping things.  Yep, he should learn how to sew.