Overall, I am doing well, but holy shit, I still frequently feel like I have hit Sensory Overload. Fighting kids, crying kids, whining kids, annoying YouTube videos being played by said whiny kids… I have to work at staying regulated and calm. (And by “calm,” I don’t mean “the way I feel after a day at the spa.” I am just aiming for “something less than homicidal.”)

These are the things that keep me feeling “something less than homicidal”:

• Cleaning and tidying the house. Only in small increments. I am not aiming for a house worthy of a magazine photo spread. But it is very satisfying to clean up small zones. I especially love the way I feel after giving the bathrooms a good scrubbing.
• Decluttering feels even more cathartic than cleaning.
• I like to move it, move it. (Sorry, not sorry.) My feelings get trapped in my body and when I take a walk or stretch, I release some of the emotional overload.
• Dancing is also great with some upbeat music. Music is the fastest way to change my mood.
• Talking to My People on the phone. A good phone call is really cathartic.
• Also texting with My People.
• Words With Friends! My sister suggested this yesterday, and it is a nice distraction.
• Posting a photo with a caption on Instagram.
• Journaling.
• Working on my fantasy novel.
• Blogging!
• Reading fun books.
• But also reading books that are inspiring. I am currently rereading The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.
• Reading to my kids. This is good for the kids and me.
• Listening to podcasts. Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us has been especially helpful.
• Knitting and cross-stitch.
• Making art with the kids.
• Small bursts of meditation. I often do this with the Calm App but today I actually busted out my Tibetan singing bowl for five minutes and that was very therapeutic.
• Staying away from the news!
• Showering! Nathan gets me a big gift basket from Lush every year for Christmas, and I am usually pretty stingy with the products to make them last all year. Not this year! I am using every fancy bath product I have and reveling in the simple joy of a well-made shower gel.
• Getting outside as much as possible. We are on the penultimate day of a big rain system. This is the fourth day of rain? I just discussed with Nathan and we are both getting so hazy on the passage of time. But let’s say it’s the fourth day of rain. ANYWAY I have still managed to take my walk outside every day, even though I had to walk in the rain several times, and I have forced the kids outside as much as possible. Life will be easier when we get some better weather.
• Getting out for little outings like: groceries! The Starbucks drive-through! And the McDonald’s drive through! And that’s it!
• Gardening, even just watering the house plants. We are going to make planters out of milk cartons and egg cartons before this adventure is over.
• Baking with my kids. We made chocolate chip cookies yesterday. We will probably make banana bread tomorrow.
• Reading the prayers from Tosha Silver’s magnificent book Change Me Prayers.
• Just taking a quiet moment to breathe.
• Writing lists of all the things that make me feel grateful.

Just writing this list was a very calming exercise. I was feeling a bit depleted and weary, and it was inspiring to remember all the tools I have to boost my mood. And these days, I will take any inspiration I can get!

Not quite a week ago, I blogged about parenting during the Great Adventure of 2020. I wrote about how I was giving my kids time outs because it felt like the loving thing to do. Their whole world has gone topsy turvy. If I let them crap all over our rules, that might scare them even more. When I wrote that post way back on April 1 (truly, an eternity ago), I believed all the things I wrote.

But things keep changing quickly. My life has changed so much during the past four weeks, it takes my breath away. You know how Facebook Timehop shares memories from a year or decade ago? I think they should start posting memories from February and early March 2020. Holy crap, I went to an amusement park in February 2020? Twice?! I had never even heard of social distancing! Remember that corndog at California Adventure? Jesus, that was a delicious corndog.

My thoughts and beliefs also keep changing quickly during this adventure. I wrote a post about giving all the time outs necessary to enforce boundaries on April 1st; and then one or two days later, as I went to bed, a thought floated to the surface of my consciousness: What if I give more hugs than time outs? The idea seemed ridiculously important, so I grabbed my iPhone and sent myself an email with the subject line “more hugs, less time outs.” I didn’t write myself a message. I knew the subject line was enough.

The next morning, whenever I heard one of my kids getting snarly or cranky, I came over and asked if they needed a hug. They always did, and wow, the hugs usually do the trick. Voices become less whiny, fights turn into laughing fits. Since making an effort to give more hugs before sending the kids straight to time out at the slightest suggestion of an infraction (Do not pass Go! Do not collect $200!), there have been close to zero time outs in the Novak household.

I still get frustrated with my kids. It’s tough to spend all day, every day, in the same house with them. I’m an introvert who needs some solitude to feel like my best self, and true solitude is just not happening these days. I sequester myself into another room, shut the door and put on headphones to tune out the babble, but there’s always the possibility that a child will come stomping in and interrupt my writing just as I’m getting into the flow.

But as tough as this is for me, the Great Adventure of 2020 is even tougher for my kids. (Quick note: I think of sheltering at home as the adventure because that word is more uplifting to my spirits than “crisis” or “shit storm.” I don’t think of the pandemic as an adventure. It’s a fucking pandemic.)

My kids do not have all the coping mechanisms that I have for processing this adventure. They do not have a therapist; they do not write in their journals (Julian can’t even write!); shit, they do not even know any good swear words and holy shit, sometimes a girl just needs to drop the F-bomb for a moment of psychic release.

My kids do not even fully understand what is going on. Their grasp on time is tenuous at best. They want to know when we will have Pippa’s birthday party (it was supposed to be in late March), but if I tell them, Oh, maybe June, probably July, they will lose their minds. June or probably July? That’s like seven lifetimes away!

My four-year-old does not understand that in ten years, he will have only very hazy memories of this time. He might remember that for a couple of months, he got to play a lot of soccer with his dad on the front lawn. He won’t remember how much it sucked to suddenly lose his pack of preschool pals. But he’s never been 14 or 24 or 34 and just doesn’t have the perspective that age gives.

My seven-year-old does not understand that it’s better to miss the last two months of first grade than the last two months of fifth grade. She gets to go back to her elementary school next year. But the fifth graders? They are losing those final glorious months of being the kings and queens of elementary school. When they go back to school, they’ll be at some new place, at the bottom of the middle school trash heap. But Pippa does not understand that. She loves first grade, and all she knows is that the occasional Google Hangouts with her classmates is an abysmal substitute for the real thing.

So right now, I am trying to remind myself that this experience is tougher for my kids so I can have some compassion when they turn into little Tazmanian devils. They need lots and lots of hugs so that they can feel secure and cozy during this strange moment in history.

Of course, hugs are not some magical wand that turns my kids into to perfect angels. They are children and children are people and people have feelings that need to be felt and expressed. And maybe here’s the point that I have been trying to figure out whilst writing this post (because yes, writing these blog posts helps me figure shit out): when I give my children time outs for being cranky and breaking tiny rules, I am telling them that their feelings are not welcome and should be suppressed; but when I give them hugs instead, I tell them that their feelings are indeed welcome and beautiful.

OH HOLY HELL.

Yep. That’s it. I literally just figured this out mid-post. When my kids misbehave, I need to pay attention to what is happening. If they are expressing tough feelings, then I need to help them with those feelings instead of sending them to their rooms to suffer alone.

When they are jumping on the couch these days, it’s because they have energy to burn. I tell them to stop and turn on music for a dance party. If they do something super taboo, like try to swing from the ceiling fan while juggling fire, then their cute little asses need to go straight to time out.

But most of the time, their misbehavior might be annoying AF, but they are also cries for help. It’s their way of saying, Yikes! Big feelings alert! I don’t know how to cope! If I react to the minor rule violations with an automatic time out, I am missing an opportunity to connect with my kids. I am instead sending the message, Your feelings are bad so go away. That’s not a message I want to send!

And that is why, at bedtime a few nights ago, my intuition told me to favor hugs over timeout. It took me a few days, and a really long blog post to figure out why hugs are so important during this adventure, but hey, I got there in the end.

(And if you got to the end of this post, I’d like to give you a big hug when social distancing is over.)

I love to read, but since The Great 2020 Adventure began, I have been reading a lot less than I usually do. Partly, my brain was struggling to focus long enough to digest an entire paragraph, let alone a proper page or chapter. But also, the books I was reading when this adventure started were not good choices for the current circumstances. They were just too serious and dark. I wanted to finish them, though, so I inched my way to their endings before starting anything new.

Lesson learned: I need light, happy fare when living through such serious times.

I regained my bookworm status with Book Seven of the Chronicles of St. Mary’s. I cannot recommend that series highly enough! It’s about a group of time traveling historians and impossible to classify. The back of the book says it’s Sci-Fi but it’s also romance, adventure, and historical fiction plus the writing is hilarious in a “laugh so hard you might pee your pants especially if you’ve ever been pregnant and your children ruined your bladder” sort of way.

Now I am reading The UnHoneymooners by Christina Lauren, a romance that is so entertaining and funny, that I read waaaay past my bedtime last night for the first time since I began sheltering at home. Seriously, I have not been able to read for more than ten minutes before I nod off and wake hours later, the book still clenched in my hands. But last night, I read for an entire hour! I will have to abandon the t.v. by 9 p.m. tonight if I want any chance of honoring my 10 pm bedtime.

When I finish The UnHoneymooners, I am going to pick another novel that is light hearted and hopefully hilarious. And I know exactly what it is! I read inhaled Class Mom earlier this year when I had a sick day, and I picked up the sequel You’ve Been Volunteered at the library the day before Pasadena closed its libraries.

I’ve also been able to enjoy a couple of books in the graphic memoir/novel genre because hello, my brain enjoys the pictures. First up, I had already pre-ordered Lucy Knisley’s new comic memoir last July because I will read anything she writes. It’s a sweet but honest collection of cartoons about new parenthood.

And lastly, I really enjoyed The Queen of the Sea, which is a fantasy story loosely based on the story of young Queen Elizabeth I. I tried to savor this one as slowly as possible.

I also downloaded the audio version of The Diary of Anne Frank AND CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHAT THE HELL I WAS THINKING? For fuck’s sake! What I need is to be diverted and entertained. At the time of the download, I thought I might find her story inspiring but holy shit, I am seriously questioning my judgment. Did I accidentally get high on glue sticks while doing a craft project with the kids?! I think I just need to download another audiobook and leave Anne Frank for happier times.

I have been reading Tosha Silver’s Change Me Prayers, and that book has transformed the way I pray. Tomorrow, after a week of spring break, my kids return to distance learning. The first two weeks of distance learning were challenging. I was feeling tense about the end of spring break and then thought, I should write myself a prayer. Without further adieu, here is my prayer:

Divine Beloved,

Please change me so I can trust the journey of distance learning.

Please change me so I can figure out what the heck I am doing!

Please change me so that I can trust my intuition. I already know what works for my family. I just need to stop worrying about what everyone else thinks and listen to my heart.

Please change me so that I remember my children’s well-being is more important than anything we might accomplish with distance learning.

Please change me so that I stop comparing the way “distance learning” looks for my kids with the way it looks for others. Please help me remember that we are all radiantly and gloriously different and that is wonderful. This is not a competition. We are all doing what we need to do to thrive during these challenging times. Please change me so that I can lovingly follow my children’s lead.

Please help me keep my heart open.

Please change me so that when I get frustrated, I remember to take a break, breathe deeply, and do something to ground myself.

Please change me so I can be more loving and compassionate with myself and my kids. Let me be kind and gentle.

Please change me so I can be more flexible. Sometimes my expectations with what we can accomplish are a bit too, shall we say, grandiose. Other times I plan a schedule and freak out when we stray off course. Please change me so I can embrace the uncertainty of this adventure.

Please change me so that I remember my kids are always learning, especially when they are playing.

Please change me so that I remember this: before math, or reading, or writing, or anything else, I am right now teaching my kids how to live during difficult times. Please change me so I can do this with grace, love and laughter.

Please change me so I can fully surrender to this experience and all the opportunities for personal growth.

I am yours.

You are mine.

Hallelujah!

Amen.

Note to self: let’s print this and read it every morning before I embark upon the adventure of distance learning.

Many moons ago, I read Eat, Pray Love (you’ve probably heard of it), in which author Elizabeth Gilbert travels the world to discover her best self. For years after reading about Gilbert’s experiences in an ashram in India, I thought that I would someday have to go India and meditate in an ashram in order to have a meaningful spiritual experience. I did not see how I could have a spiritual experience anywhere else.

Then I became a mom, and after years of working to become my authentic self, I had an epiphany: motherhood is my ashram.

I don’t need to throw away my life and move to a cave in India to connect with my higher self. I get to work toward being my best self and develop a connection with the divine right here from the chaos of motherhood.

Motherhood does not look anything like an ashram in India. It’s noisy as fuck. Instead of a crowd of devotees silently chanting mantras with eyes closed, there are toddlers throwing tantrums. Sometimes you get to sit and meditate — and then three seconds after you take a deep breath, the seven-year-old who was happily playing Barbies interrupts your meditation with a glitter crisis that must be solved immediately if not sooner.

For me, an ashram in India would be an escape from mom life. There are a lot of amazing things about being a mother, but holy shit, there is a lot of drudgery. Those little butts don’t wipe themselves for many years. And then they refuse to eat, get hangry, and scream because their brother got to smell the new soap first. (Literally how my day started.)

But if given a choice between spending the next ten years in an ashram in India and getting to be my kids’ mom, I would choose my kids. Every. Single. Time. Damnit, I’m obsessed with those little nut balls!

So instead of India, I choose motherhood, and the past few years, I have embraced the insanity of motherhood as my ashram. Sure, it would be great to achieve some spiritual nirvana in a dimly lit cave, but being able to experience mindfulness during the mayhem of motherhood? That is some serious spirituality.

And now? Now I am on The Great 2020 Adventure, and holy crap, sheltering at home with my kids is making regular motherhood look like a picnic at the park. (A picnic with ants and itchy grass, but still a picnic at a park in a public place with interesting people who do not have to practice social distancing while walking past my picnic.)

I used to think of motherhood as my ashram, but lately, I have realized my ashram is even bigger than that one role I play. Life, with all its ups and downs, is my ashram. Every moment of every day is drenched with divinity. Every moment is an opportunity to release my need for control and let God show the way. Every moment is a chance to look around and see all the blessings in my life.

With sheltering-at-home, the ashram has gotten a little more intense. It feels like I am always in Mom Mode, with children who might erupt at any time. Everyone is home all the time, so there are more messes to clean, more dishes to wash, more floors to sweep. (It seriously seems like the floors have multiplied.) Then we have to go back to distance learning on Monday (sigh) and my first grader does not just go on automatic pilot for that. She needs my help.

When I do get away, I can’t go far. Last weekend, I sat outside and wrote by the pool. Julian spent at least fifteen of those minutes standing at the window, shouting to get my attention. Then he started licking the window dramatically. It’s hard to leave Mom Mode and enjoy the Writing Flow when there’s a kid licking the window to get my attention.

I’m not going to lie: I’m trying to keep an upbeat attitude and have fun during The Great 2020 Adventure but it’s tough. I feel drained. When I’m writing, I can feel upbeat and calm; but back in regular life, my brain protests. This is hard! What the fuck! I don’t want this adventure! I am working to override those thoughts. I know from past experience that it can be done. (I basically had to rewire my brain in 2013 after I had postpartum depression.) But it takes patience and a lot of attention. Every time my brain turns to the darkness, I have to consciously introduce a more positive thought pattern. The obstacle is the way! Nothing is automatically bad or good! But holy shit, my brain is often in revolt and it would be so much easier to wave a wand and be done with this experience.

In the meantime, the Great 2020 Adventure is my ashram. I did not choose this ashram, but I can still use it to become a better person. If I can soften my resistance to this adventure; if I can see the beauty of life even as my illusion of control is ripped to shreds; if I can trust in the divine for even a minute every day; then wow, think how easy it will be to surrender to regular life when this is over.

My ashram is right here. I just have to be willing to open my eyes and see that every moment is an opportunity to connect with the divine.

Words are powerful. They are even (dare I say it?) magical. Yes, damnit, I dare say it:

During conversations and on social media, I have been referring to recent events as “the shit storm,” “the freaking pandemic,” and “the social distancing shit show.” Sometimes I added even more colorful language to those descriptions. I needed to swear and complain in order to wrap my brain around this experience.

But as of yesterday, I have a new name for sheltering-at-home during the Covid-19 pandemic: The Great 2020 Adventure. (Or, if I’m lazy or pithy, “the adventure.”) (And if you are wondering, when has Courtney ever felt ‘pithy‘, I can assure you it has happened at least once or twice.) (It always makes me so happy when I have an excuse to use the word “pithy.)

“Adventure” is one of my magic words. I did not just call my memoir Adventures with Postpartum Depression because that sounded cute. I consciously chose that title because the word “adventure” makes me feel like an empowered bad ass.

When I was first diagnosed with postpartum depression, I thought of it purely as a mental illness – because hey-o, it is a mental illness! That’s why I took Zoloft! And still have a psychiatrist! But when I thought about PPD as a mental illness, and nothing more, I felt like a victim and patient – passive roles that made me feel weak and pathetic.

I started writing my memoir as part of my healing journey; and that made me think about my illness as an adventure; which meant I was not just a pathetic patient… I was a bad ass on an adventure! A warrior! I do not remember the exact day that I came up with the title for my memoir, but I do know that decision was a major turning point in my recovery. I went from “passive recipient of medical care” to “heroine of my adventure” and being a heroine feels about 10,000 times better than being a passive recipient.

So that is what I am consciously doing now. When I referred to the current crisis as a “shit storm,” I felt like a victim of circumstances beyond my control. And yeah, there are certainly an abundance of circumstances currently beyond my control.

But isn’t that always the case?

I don’t control the weather or seasons. I don’t control my kids’ moods. I don’t control the way the stranger in the car behind me drives on the freeway. Every day, I encounter hundreds of little details that are beyond my control.

Except my mindset. Every moment of every day, I get to be the master of my mindset. From here on out, I am done with feeling like a victim lost in a shit storm. I am activating Adventure Mode and abandoning all the swear-y phrases that I have been using to describe the past three weeks of my life.

Welcome to The Great 2020 Adventure.

Last night while I was watching Tiger King with Nathan, we received a text message from our superintendent: Pippa’s school (and all Pasadena public schools) will is closed until the end of the school year. There will be distance learning, but the kids will not be returning to their physical classrooms.

My immediate reaction was complicated. There was disbelief, shock, and quite a few thoughts along the lines of  $%#& and *^@)(. It’s early April! Why can’t we wait a couple of weeks before we hit the doomsday button?

But then, after a few minutes of shock! horror! WTF! I felt something new and light and sweet.

Relief.

We have been living with a lot of uncertainty, and the weeks ahead are still filled with an ass shit ton of uncertainty: how many people will get infected? How many will die? Are any of my loved ones going to get sick? But at least the uncertainty about Pippa’s school year has been eliminated.

After about a half hour of relief (which was still mixed with tiny bits of shock, horror, and WTF), I thought to myself, Fuck it, let’s do this.

Let’s do this with humor.

Let’s do this with joy.

And holy shit, let’s have fun!

So that’s my current attitude about The Great 2020 Adventure. My attitude will probably evolve and mutate a thousand more times, but going forward, I’m going to try to have some fun.

Today, for example, I dressed up to go to the grocery store. I wore my new favorite green cardigan, my new favorite necklace, and lip gloss. (I belatedly remembered that makeup can be germy, so I’ll skip the lip gloss next time.) It might sound trivial, but making a three minute effort with my wardrobe really did lift my spirits.

I don’t have much agency in this adventure. I did not decide to close Pasadena schools and “home school” my kids while my husband carries on with his lawyer shenanigans in the master bedroom. I did not decide to restrict our lives to neighborhood walks and the grocery store, and I sure as hell did not decide to limit our contact with loved ones to Facetime and Google Hangouts. No, I did not choose this adventure.

But I do get to choose my attitude about The Great 2020 Adventure, and as of today, I am choosing to let myself have fun. There will be grief, sorrow, frustration, and a whole other slew of messy feelings, but by god, I am going to have fun.

Spoiler alert: I might finally have an excuse to buy the confetti cannon I have always secretly coveted.

Every day is weird and so far beyond my comfort zone, I’m not even certain I have a comfort zone anymore. Remember that place? I have gotten so used to Corona Land, it will be weird when I get to pack school lunches again and can get all the things on my shopping list easily (instead of writing “meat” and sacrificing a roll of toilet paper to the grocery gods).

But I’m in good company. Pretty much everyone I know is living with this constant uncertainty. We are all making up this shit as we go.

Here in Pasadena, we are the middle of Week 3 without school. It’s actually spring break for my kids, and I am loving the break from distance learning.

So far, we have managed to maintain bedtime. (Excuse me while I go knock on every piece of wood in the house!) The kids go to bed at 7:30. Nathan sings the usual lullabies; I tell a version of the Cloud Story that I started telling the kids last summer. I give them kisses and close their door. Then the kids make a lot of strange noises — I’m convinced someone has somehow managed to hide a wrecking ball under their bed — and after about ten minutes of the usual resistance, they succumb to the land of nod.

For us, bedtime must be maintained, but other aspects of parenting are not so clear. The kids know there is a Corona virus (Pippa heard about it at school from teachers and classmates). They know school is cancelled and that they are also not going back for at least another month (probably longer…) They know they can’t see their friends and that we don’t know when the hell we can have Pippa’s birthday party. That’s a lot of reality for a seven year old and four and a half year old.

As much as I am struggling with the uncertainty, they are struggling even more. I have to lower my expectations for my kids because holy shit, there’s a pandemic. They miss their grandparents, their schools, their friends and their teachers. So many comforts and routines have been yanked away with zero warning. Of course they are going to have Crazy Scary Feelings and find new ways to misbehave.

They are fighting a little more than usual, crying more easily, and testing the rules. So here’s my dilemma: I know I have to lower my expectations, but does that mean I let the kids misbehave without consequence?

Part of me thinks I should let misdeeds slide — hello! pandemic! — but then I think: if all the boundaries evaporate, and the kids can draw on the furniture (Julian!) and run with scissors (Pippa! WTF?!), and we descend into ANARCHY, isn’t that even scarier for the kids? If we let the kids destroy the house and eat dessert for every meal, then we are sending the message, Everything is fucked so why bother?

That’s why, even though my kids need extra love, I am still enforcing the rules. Both kids have been sent to time out since we started sheltering at home, and I’m sure they’ll be going back sometime soon. But yesterday, we promised them ice cream sandwiches for a snack if they behaved nicely. Their behavior all day was … suboptimal. But Nathan and I had a whispered conference and decided they both did their best. They both got the ice cream sandwiches, and then we snuggled and watched Frozen II. Sometimes they need time outs to feel safe; but sometimes, the kids need ice cream sandwiches and Olaf.

Mainly, I am trusting my intuition during this parenting adventure. When I sense that Pippa is testing boundaries to see if the boundaries still exist, I send her to time out. But other times, when I sense my kids are misbehaving because HOLY FUCK WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK IS HAPPENING, I take a deep breath and offer hugs and snuggles.

Parenting is going to seem so easy when this insanity is over.

I keep staring at my laptop screen thinking, I should write something! C’mon! Blogging is good for my mental health and God knows my mental health desperately needs all the help it can get.

And my brain goes: ______________________

Or: a very quiet thrum of white noise.

Or: Gnurple Blug fantatally fuck.

Yep. Yeah. Wow.

I feel bad for my therapist.

I had therapy today. We tried to do it online but the website that we were using for a “secure confidential therapy session” did not allow for sound. I could hear my therapist’s voice, but she could not hear mine; and then she played with the settings and she could hear my voice, but I could not hear her voice anymore. And since sound is critical for therapy (unless both parties are fluent in American Sign Language) we switched to Facetime.

Quick tangent: holy shit, I should try learning a little sign language while we are sheltering at home! There must be something on Youtube, right? I bet my kids would like to do that with me…

Back to this really articulate blog post: we switched to Facetime, I vented about this strange new reality, and by the end of my session, I felt much better. (The bar is low, folks, but still, I’ll take anything!) But as we were finishing my session, my therapist mentioned that she thinks this Strangeness is traumatic for everyone.

That’s when I realized, Holy shit, ALL of my therapist’s clients (patients?) are in crisis. ALL OF US.

Usually, in a given week or month, some of us are in crisis, some of us are “great! spiffy! making tremendous progress!” and then a bunch of us are somewhere in between. But right now, we are all – including my therapist – living through an unprecedented shit storm.

When I am dealing with some Big Issue, my therapist can usually recommend a few great resources. Over the past few years, she has hooked me up with the Calm App, Fr. Richard Rohr, Pema Chodron, and Miribai Starr – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She always knows a book or podcast that can help me process whatever life throws my way.

But this? Sheltering at home during a pandemic for weeks on end with no guaranteed end date? No one has written a memoir about this yet! There will certainly be dozens if not hundreds of Covid-19 memoirs written in the years to come, but right now, we are living the memoir. We are figuring this shit out minute by minute.

No wonder my brain has gone into “Gnurple Blug” mode! Every single minute of every single day is bursting with a sense of “well what the fuck now and are we really sure this is not some elaborate prank? Because it’s easier to think that Ashton Kutcher has punked us all than to digest the concept of a pandemic that has effectively hit the PAUSE button on life as we know it.”

Whew. Once again, having written a blog post, I actually feel a little better.

My poor brain, however is still very much in Gnurple Blug Fantatally Fuck land. Oh well!

Overall, the Novak family is doing very well during the 2020 Epic Shelter-At-Home Craziness. I feel lucky and blessed to have two healthy children who like to play together. We live in a three bedroom house with a lovely front lawn (used today for an obstacle course and soccer) and when the weather warms up, we can swim in our pool. We have a lemon tree and space for a container garden, and our flat quiet neighborhood is ideal for nature walks and scooter rides. Yes, the Novak family is blessed.

But this is still tough!

Fortunately this week is spring break in Pasadena, and the “break” is giving me a chance to give “distance learning” my best side eye. I hate distance learning. It’s a total and absolute fuck. My kids do not have the disposition for being home schooled, and I don’t have the inclination to do it either. There’s a reason they both go to school! If I let them play, make art, and watch t.v., then we are all okay. But then I start to worry that all of Pippa’s classmates are doing more “distance learning” and she will fall behind, and what sort of mother would neglect her daughter’s phonics?!

F-U-C-K, this is hard!

Mostly, like 98% of the time, I am actually handling the shelter-at-home constraints pretty well. I have surrendered to the experience. I am letting the kids play and snuggle with me (we always do this, just way more than usual), and I am looking at the bright side of things. At least I don’t have to pack school lunches and I have plenty of time to do laundry. At least we are not rushing to get to school on time. At least we have each other. At least, at least, at least …

It’s still hard.

It’s hard to be stuck at home all the time with two kids who miss their friends. It’s hard to spend all this time in Mom Mode and not have enough time for Writer Mode. It’s hard to not know when this will fucking end.

I am trying to find the right mixture of “we got this!” and “holy shit, this is hard.” I don’t know that there is actually a right mixture. Instead, it’s more that I have to get comfortable with making space for both ideas in my heart.

Because yes, I’ve got this. I’m actually thriving while I shelter-at-home with my kids. I am blogging, I recorded my first podcast episode in a year and a half, and I’m making decent progress on the first draft of my fantasy novel. I am taking damn good care of myself and my kids, thank you very much, and there are like a hundred ideas on my Pinterest Quarantine board that we are yet to touch. We can do this!

But wow oh wow, this is hard. It’s not natural! I think of my cave women ancestors, venturing forth into the world, bravely and boldly with each other. Humans are not meant to hide in their caves alone for weeks and weeks on end. Yet that is what we are doing. I know it is for the greater good but that does not mean it is easy or natural.

I can do this, but damn, it’s tough. Are there any pandemic merit badges? Because I feel like I have earned at least a dozen at this point and by the time this is over, and we are free to go to birthday parties and museums and restaurants, I will have earned enough merit badge to wallpaper my entire house.