Day Three: Tea Parties and Wildflowers

I got two whole hours of work in before the kids rolled down the stairs. My dark, quiet mornings are a lovely time to focus on getting at least the bare minimum of tasks for my job done. I have tea, eat something, answer e-mails. We’re still sorting out what it’s going to mean to work remotely for the long weeks (months?) ahead, but for now I’m just trying to keep the car on the road.

Tromping down the stairs in his birthday suit once the sun was up, William requested pancakes for breakfast. Taiya, in her Jojo Siwa nighty, requested biscuits. So we had pancakes and biscuits for breakfast. Such a balanced diet! Two different kinds of starch! In my defense, both were from scratch, and whole wheat…

To attempt to make Day Three a little more structured, Jeremy and I made a loose schedule. I had a feeling it was a lost cause from the start, but we managed to follow parts of it. The kids have their own flow, and once they get started playing something imaginative and sweet, there is now way I’m going to stop them and say, “Okay, it’s nine o’clock! Time to practice your ‘ea vowel combinations’ now!” I try to fit the schoolwork into the natural lulls in their play. Today they started out building a pillow fort on the futon, William was a puppy, Taiya was Taiya, I was the mom who delivered “puppy pancakes,” and they ran with their imaginations from there.  

Soon after breakfast they insisted that they just had to find out what happened in the next episode of “Glitter Force” (I remembered the name this time). So they had some screentime in the morning, which was not on the schedule. It’s always hard to tear them away from shows once they get started, but I tried something out that actually worked! After their last show, I coaxed them outside to have a dance party on the porch, listening to Kidz Bop—cleaned up versions of pop songs, performed by kids. I’d never listened to Kidz Bop before, but I gotta say, it had a decent beat! We were shakin’ our money makers all over the porch for a while, and it was a really fun way to make the switch from face-sucking screentime to physical movement and actual human interaction. I think I’ll try it again tomorrow.

After the dance party we had a simple lunch of fruit, nuts, and more biscuits. Then a whole posse of

Tea for six. 

stuffed animal friends needed to have a tea party picnic on the porch, so kids and creatures migrated out there for a long stretch of self-entertainment. I was able to start some more seeds, and Jeremy helped set up a seed-storage system with an old spice rack we had lying around for all the leftover seeds. I started two different kinds of head lettuce, cilantro, kale, and black cherry tomatoes. My little seedlings are in need of a grow lamp, but I’m not sure how we’re going to work that out. In the meantime, a little afternoon sun will have to do.

I whipped up some double chocolate peppermint cookies (my chocolate stash already having been depleted) after lunch, but soon after that the sun actually came out and stayed out for a lot of the afternoon, so I dropped everything and got myself into the garden. I weeded my herb bed and started an experiment—I put all the weeds I pulled, mostly purple deadnettle and chickweed, into a 5-gallon bucket of water to soak. In a couple days I will drain the weeds out and use the “tea” to water my seedlings. I am hoping some of the nutrients in the weeds will have steeped into the water. I don’t know how effective this will be, but it seems worth a try.

Runaway puppies!

We did afternoon chores together again, and had another dose of puppy time. It’s hard to worry too much about the stock market when a fluffy puppy is licking your chin. Today when we went up to the farm to do the chores, Taiya and William’s cousins were there working on a 4H project. This was the first time since the “social distancing” became serious that we saw loved ones in person and had to stand at least six feet away from them. I warned the kids we could go talk to them but we could not touch them. Taiya was so sad. She loves hugging her cousin! They are almost exactly the same age and love playing together. The whole thing felt so unnatural. We all agreed we’d have a big old party when the coronavirus thing was over and hug each other like crazy.

After chores, back at the house, Jeremy kicked me out and told me to go do something by myself just for fun. I wandered into the woods and had a slow meander, checking out what wildflowers are blooming, admiring different mosses and lichens, and pulling up some invasive privet. I saw cutleaf toothwort, trout lily, may apple, Russell’s monarda (not blooming), violets, spring beauties, and many others I don’t know the names of. It was exactly the brain-break I needed. It wasn’t a stressful day, but it always feels good to step out of my chaotic human habitat and enter into a more peaceful, wild habitat.

Trout lily leaf (tasty!).

Anyone know what this is?

First wild violets I've spotted of the year. 

Tomorrow is going to be rainy again. I am hoping to convince Taiya to get her schoolwork out of the way first thing (wish me luck with that), and then focus on making things. We have a sewing project we can work on, Taiya has a potholder loom she got for Christmas, William loves cutting up construction paper shapes and gluing them together. Making tangible, useful, and/or beautiful objects seems like a good way to work our way through another house-bound day. But, my plans have a way of being thwarted. We’ll just have to see where the day takes us.