*Disclaimer: These are raw, real, in-the-moment thoughts. Is no flooring for a couple weeks a real problem? No, but this is life at home during this time. The world is going through some horrific things right now, so talk of flooring, curtains, and inconveniences like being down a toilet for a few days could appear shallow and petty. I know these things. Thinking about design and redecorating is fun, though, and I’m enjoying a distraction from the scary, horrible things that are in the news. We’re doing our best to handle it all right now, and we are praying a lot!
It’s been 10 days since my last post, and again, so much has happened during that time. So much but also so little at the same time. Weird is the word I keep wanting to use, but here are some other appropriate words to describe this time: strange, unprecedented, surreal, odd, extraordinary, bizarre, uncharted, unsettling, and ever-changing. I'm still writing down what our days are looking like. They may all start to sound and look the same. We've commented a couple times on how, in some ways, this feels like the movie, Groundhog's Day, with another day at home, another lunch time walk, another family show/movie time--not bad things, just very much the same as the previous days' routines.
Last week on Tuesday, March 24th, we heard that the summer Olympics in Tokyo were postponed until 2021. It rained and hailed. Greg and I took our lunch walk in between storms. The kids and I played a round of Settlers of Catan. I worked on my 2019 blog book and watched Just Like Heaven with Kari.
On Wednesday, March 25th, I played another round of Settlers, took another lunch walk with Greg, and ventured out to grocery shop. That evening, we moved furniture and took everything out of the pantry...because our flooring project was getting started the NEXT DAY! Thus began our living in chaos for several days. The kids drew artwork on the sub-floor with markers, knowing it would be covered up in the coming days. I played COVID-19 barbershop in the garage and cut all the boys' hair. Salons and barbers are closed, so Mom/Wife-Cuts it is! I didn't do too bad. Wouldn't matter much if I botched it, though, as we're stuck at home, not seeing many people, except online. We watched Survivor with the kids that evening and had ice cream. Greg and I watched the season finale of This Is Us--LOVE that show. Outside our little home bubble, things weren't so pleasant. New York City was in crisis, with COVID-19 cases and deaths surging. There were over 200 deaths in one day in the US, making it over 1,000 total. The Senate passed a $2 trillion aid package today.
Woke up groggy on Thursday, March 26th. I didn't sleep much the night before, thinking too much about the news, our day ahead confined to the upstairs, and a whole lot of other unimportant things. I did, however, think of a good way to keep the cats upstairs and out of the way of the flooring guys--our old baby gate! I made lists of all the things we'd need to bring upstairs for the day and all the things I wanted to do before they got there in the morning. I cleaned all the door handles, knobs, and light switches, along with every surface I could think of, and set out fresh towels. While the guys worked downstairs on our floors, we hunkered down upstairs amidst pantry items and furniture crowded everywhere, maintaining social distance and just keeping out of their way. They had to deal with some water damage by our slider and replace some sub-floor before they could start the flooring installation. The original plan, back before coronavirus disrupted everyone's lives, was for Mike Miller's HandyCrew and Contracting group to come in and bust out all the work, quickly and efficiently. When social distancing was mandated and businesses were closing, I was afraid we were going to have to live with only sub-flooring for a long time, but Mike came up with a modified plan with a smaller crew (2 people) and an extended timeline, in order to comply with social distancing rules and keep all of us safe. He and Joe got our sub-floor replaced in one day and all prepped for installation the next day. I found myself thinking it was a good thing we had already ordered flooring and had a plan in place before coronavirus hit. Otherwise, I'd feel guilty spending money during this uncertain time. So looking forward to having floors again!
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| Greg's office. Haha! |
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| all fixed |
I was a grumpy human on Saturday, March 28th. Multiple things went wrong (computer issues), and I was just in a bad mood all day. Greg barbecued chicken for dinner, and we made it through the day.
On Sunday, March 29th, we had church via YouTube live again, and afterwards Greg watched part of an old college championship basketball game from 1997. I found it quite humorous. He's really missing his sports, if he's willing to re-watch a game he saw 20-some years ago. He claimed it was a "great game" and spouted off a bunch of names and stats from the game. It boggles my mind that he has all that information in his head. We went on a walk, moved the washer and dryer to the garage (easier said than done), ripped out the last of the flooring and baseboards in the laundry room, and moved Joel's stuff upstairs and his furniture into the garage. Greg and I played a fun game over Zoom with some friends that night (kids happily watched episodes of Pysch while we played). It was some much-needed laughter and friend time.
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| church |
Monday, March 30th--I learned how to remove a toilet...at 5:30am. I'd been awake since 4am and finally decided to get up at 5:30am and get something done. I started out just cleaning the toilet, but then it was so gross, I decided to just take it out so Mike wouldn't have to deal with our filth. It took me a while, but I did it! YouTube really is a wealth of information.
We were confined to the upstairs again while the guys worked all day on the flooring. I was very unproductive the rest of that day. I spent hours researching and obsessing over curtains. Silly, I know. Interior design decisions stress me out! This flooring project is like the book If You Give A Mouse a Cookie. If you get new flooring, you have to get rugs, and when you get rugs, you have to buy rug pads, and when your rug arrives, you realize it doesn't go with your curtains, so then you have to buy new curtains. After you buy new curtains, you realize you need to paint the wall and find new pillows..See how that works? All very trivial, I know, but things like this keep me up at night until I figure them out.
Mike and Joe got everything done today but the bathroom. The flooring looks so good! We moved Joel and his furniture back downstairs to his room and moved our new rugs in and put most of our furniture back. That night I ordered melatonin. I'll give that a try.
Tuesday, March 31st was not a flooring day (had to order a couple more boxes to finish), and it was the first day we had our kids do some school work. I signed them all up with free Rosetta Stone Spanish accounts, and I made a checklist for each of them-- 1 hour of reading, 45 minutes of math (30 for Grant), Spanish, music practice (band and piano), and physical activity of some kind. It's not a lot, but it's something while we wait for whatever the teachers come up with for our kids next week.
Mom and Dad M. told us they've been having a snack every day around 2:30pm or 3pm, and that it has become one of the three highlights of their day. They call it "tea and crumpets," no matter what the snack is. We decided we'd have "tea and crumpets," too, and FaceTime them at 3pm to have tea together. My boxes of wedding china were on our dining room table because they had been in a closet we'd had to clean out in order to be ready for flooring. Grant asked if we could use our china for our tea time, so I spent some time unboxing the china and finally making room for it on the upper shelves in our kitchen. I've only used it a handful of times, and that was before we had kids. Four of the place-settings still had stickers on the dishes! I found a wedding card and gift receipt from Meier and Frank in one of the boxes, too. Crazy that it took 20 years and the coronavirus quarantine for me to finally use our china. "Tea and crumpets" (tea and banana bread) was a success! I asked the Wilsons to join us and Mom and Dad for our tea time. Jen whipped up some scones in that hour before, and we all enjoyed a virtual tea party. We ended the day with pepper steaks from White's Meats for dinner. It was a good day.
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| Like our fancy napkins? :-) |
On Wednesday, April 1st, we were free to roam our house again, as the flooring was delayed by another day. I had been awake for 3 1/2 hours in the night again. This is becoming an issue. I did some grocery shopping and tried to maintain distance throughout the stores. Many people wore masks, and there was tape on the floor at the checkouts showing how much space to keep between carts. Many shelves are still empty in the stores, but I got what we needed.
We introduced the kids to the movie Dumb and Dumber that night. It was just as stupid and funny as I remembered (we skipped a couple parts). The kids enjoyed it and laughed a lot. They also enjoyed the poppyseed sliders we had for dinner. They are truly appreciating the food during this quarantine. They keep talking about what good dinners we've been having. I'm going to have to sneak some quick and easy meals in now and then, though, because I'm starting to grow weary of the kitchen and preparing food constantly.
Thursday, April 2nd--Mike and Joe finished the flooring in the bathroom, and we are back to three toilets in the house once again, a very good thing when all six people are home all day long. The continuous flooring in our downstairs looks amazing! Mike and Joe did SUCH a good job. I couldn't be happier with the quality of their work and how much they got done in a short time. Trim will happen later, and that's ok. I'm just so happy to have our new flooring in! I love it. I have new curtains coming and some painting to do. And I haven't started a puzzle yet! Maybe tomorrow.
Teachers in our district went back to work on Monday and have been in online meetings and trainings all week to prepare for distance learning. The Oregon Department of Education says that we will likely not be going to back to school this school year. I've received phone calls from four different teachers (one for each kid) in the last two days, each of them calling to check in on us, made sure we have what we need, and to let us know that they will be figuring out what classes will look like very soon, once they figure it out themselves. Google Classroom will be the platform each teacher will be using starting next Monday. It's all very fluid and changes daily, though. This will be interesting, for sure. I'm not worried about our kids' education (they'll be fine), but I do feel for the teachers who are having to learn a whole new way of teaching for the foreseeable future. We'll figure it out and offer lots of grace along the way.
Greg has almost made it through another week of working from home. We ordered an office chair for him today. The dining room chair he's been using isn't meant for sitting at a desk 8 hours a day, and it looks like he'll be working from home for at least the next month, so a chair upgrade was in order. Supposed to be here by Tuesday. Several of his company's plants around the world have closed, and a couple here in the US are still open but are likely to shut down soon. Greg's still got a job, and we're thankful for that. So many friends are having to make really difficult decisions with their businesses and so many are busier in their jobs than they've ever been, trying to figure it all out. Others are out of work right now. I admit it's easy for me to worry about the economic implications of this pandemic and what it will mean for our income down the road, but God is still God, and he will provide for us, as he always has. I just have to keep trusting, resting in his promises, and remembering his faithfulness when worry starts to creep in.
Today the world hit 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases. Officials are expecting things to get worse by mid-April. We'll see what tomorrow brings.
I read an article about helping kids process their feelings during this confusing, crazy time by making a list of the losses this coronavirus pandemic has caused and a list of the gifts it has brought. I loved the idea, and we did it with our kids after dinner one night last week. I put it on the wall, and we're adding to it as we think of things. We have a lot of sad losses we've been grieving, mostly of fun things we're missing, but the gifts list is longer, and we're trying to focus more on the positives and the blessings.
Some of the "gifts" are funny:
"getting to go to the bathroom whenever I want"
"canals in Venice are clearer"
"we will probably all survive"
We'll keep adding to our list!
1 comment:
Thanks, Andrea! It was great to see your family activities. Ours pretty much consist of Grandpa in his lift chair, walking to bathroom with walker, I go in to pull up his pants. (His lack of balance won't permit that.) I try to come up with a "different" meal. It's salt-free moose, chicken or salmon. I have put together four puzzles.
Marissa's family plans to come tomorrow to make snowmen for us on our front yard, That will be fun to watch. I got to wave at Sondra as she drove by yesterday. What an exciting life.!!!
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