Babies w/o Breakfast

The biggest = the saddest.

We're moving to a different online instructional platform at work, and my morning meeting ran late (there are so many morning meetings!!) and according to Big A's phone pic, some of the kids got hungry and anxious for breakfast. 😂

It's gloriously cooler with gray-stormy-gloomy weather outside. I canceled all school-adjacent activities for the 12-year-old, and can hear them cackling with their older sibling over ridiculous videos in the rumpus room now.

Out of the meeting, but deep into the woods of my email and editing...

Making Normal

At and Nu made me tea from the mint they'd harvested and dried last week.

Also, I should confess that I start a "tradition" nearly every other second. Here, the kids had  indulged--reluctantly--my proposition that we do yoga together, so I got them new yoga mats to sweeten the request (they immediately had a 'mat fight' and a 'telescope session' while I tried to save the tea from ending up in our laps; it wasn't zen :).

In the meantime, other incipient 'traditions' from earlier on in this pandemic--bake-alongs, hours-long cousins-zoom-chats, checking in on CF, EM, CC,  KB, JG, and students who cropped up in my head on a weekly (at least) basis have fallen off.

This week's realization is that I'm trying to remake normal or carry on like things are normal when they're patently not. I suspect I'll be back to upholding practices to make things feel less turbulent soon, but in the meantime, let me acknowledge my sad, madcap need to manage a worldwide pandemic.

In Between

                    I'm constantly veering between these two modes of engagement and information gathering. I know which one is useful and helpful, but I just can't help myself sometimes. 

Mostly here

I took an accidental selfie while trying to get a picture of Big A and the puppies the other day, and first, my skin can't really be that clear--what?! But also, my half face is a solid metaphor for my current fragmentation--how it feels a bit empty despite checking off most of my family, household, and self-care goals every day (I continue to lag on the professional front).

Eating my second nectarine in the hammock today was blissful, yes--but also, I could hear myself thinking--hey, look! I'm eating nectarines in a hammock! I'm having such a great time! My somewhat desperate enjoyment of summer, the urgency to do all of the summer things is partly Pure Michigan (ha); but surely, me trying to convince myself things are fine is related to our strange, sad, pandemic times?

Food (related) notes

These are the first of At's tomatoes and he has high hopes about serving them with breadcrumbs and mozzarella whenever they he happens to be ready.

I watched a few eps of the new Masterpiece/PBS orientalist fantasy Beecham House--somehow simultaneously overblown and underdone. William Dalrymple is a historical consultant on the show and it's directed by Gurindher Chadha, but despite those two it's really, really bad. I got so irritated almost immediately that the hindi dialogue gets mentioned but not translated e.g., "X speaks in Hindi"--What did he say?! How could it not matter?! Anyway, it inspired "Anglo-Indian" elements at dinner prep time--the peach chutney, ghee toast, and curry-poached cod came together from whatever we needed to use up before our Imperfect Foods box arrives tomorrow and the steamed veg was tongue-in-cheek homage to stereotypical Brit cuisine/me running out of time and imagination.

At dinner, it got us talking about trips to England (especially last year's "Cosmopolitan England" Spring term trip) and all the good meals we've eaten there (some straight out of Sainsbury's). I miss travel.

Another Day

When Scout climbs up on my hammock the way he is with Big A here, it can set me rocking for a long time.

I spent most of the day outside and people visited me from time to time as I finished the book I was reading (This Tender Land--I liked the Odyssey framing, but some parts were fairly twee and the ending was overstuffed and hurried).

We got some tiny tomatoes from my veggie plot!  And that was all the actual excitement the day held.

Who's petting whom?

At sent this selfie to family chat claiming Scout was asking for pets, but the picture shows it was Scout who was doing all the petting on his favorite boy.

Right?