Note to Selfie

Greetings, salutations, whatever.

Things have been a struggle lately. I’m not going to lie. First it was trying to get used to the idea of everything being back to “normal” so very, very suddenly. So many people, so much talking. I don’t know about y’all, but that has been hard. And what about the 180 degree about-face? We went from creeping around behind masks and wiping down our groceries to back out in the world, bare-faced. It has felt too fast. Shouldn’t there have been a much more gradual reentry into the world? Did we even want or need to go back to normal?

One new thing that we have been embracing (when not stuck at home) is the new taiyaki ice cream place. So, so good!

I felt strange sending my kids to camp for part of the summer. Last year, we had all summer together, whether we liked it or not. It was a strange, wonderful, awful, scary, special time. I felt as if I was going to miss them and miss that time this year, despite the fact that I’ve never had regular summers off with them. But then I ended up with a whole lot of extra time thanks to COVID. It’s been the gift that keeps on giving. We’ve been holed up at home for over a week now, with another to go. And work? Work has been a right and proper asshole about it. Rather than allow me to telecommute (**cough** like I did all last summer successfully **cough**), I’ve been forced to take leave to stay home with my minor children who are too young to be vaccinated, much less be home alone. God forbid we learn something from this whole experience, like how to be humane and compassionate to working parents/moms. But that’s ok. Because of the whole quarantine thing, we had to cancel that road trip we were going to take with my mother, anyway, so I had that leave I was expecting to use for vacation to use as sit-around-with-your-kids-stuck-at-home time.

We briefly made it back to Jiu jitsu a whole two times before having to go back into hiding.

Sorry. I’m angry. I’m frustrated. How could we learn nothing? People are so disappointing. What’s that old saying about the only thing you can count on other people for is letting you down?

I’m trying to bootstrap my mood and make the best of all this. We’ve been taking walks to parks, doing scavenger hunts, and such. We’ve been doing science kits. We’ve been swimming. We’ve watched movies. Stella hasn’t realized yet that we’re not going to Memphis and Huntsville with my mom, but she’ll figure it out soon. I want to have some fun things she can remember about this whole thing rather than the trip she lost. I need to come up with some cool shit to do next week. We won’t have the time for theme weeks like we did last year, but we can do theme days. It’s just my creativity tank is pretty damn empty.