Day Eighteen: News for the Worms

Goji Bear is off to her new home.

I left the compound today! I had a couple errands to run: delivering a puppy to Dagen, the new owner of Strawberry the golden fluff ball (whose name is now Goji Bear), picking up a chicken order from Spence of Across The Creek Farm, printing a few things at the office, and adopting some of the office worm bin worms. This meant I had to shower and put real clothes on. What a thrill!

I didn't venture out until the afternoon, so our morning was more of the usual routine. Taiya and William, faces all sleepy from the night before, watching a show and eating some breakfast (watermelon slices, waffles), me trying to do some work, me trying to not play all morning with Daisy... I fed the sourdough, rinsed my sprouts, did some dishes, etc.

A lot of my friends, and a lot of writers of columns in various news outlets, seem to be feeling similarly: we're home all the time now, why do we feel like we're getting nothing done?! I feel it too. My house is a mess, I'm getting much less work done than I thought I would be, Taiya is behind on school work, the list of projects Jeremy and I made sits accusingly on the counter, no check marks checked. What are we doing all day? Where does the time go?

This is a good indicator of how working from home goes. 

Part of it, with kids, is getting interrupted as soon as the work starts flowing. Part of it is that our expectations are way too high. Part of it is having no experience in homeschooling. Part of it is having this feeling of impending doom, but not really knowing what the doom will look like or how doomy it will be when it comes. So I'm trying not to be too hard on myself, and just keep making incremental progress. To quote Anna in Frozen 2, I'm going to try to keep doing "the next right thing," and hope it adds up to something.

My trip out and about was a nice change of pace. My audiobook was in the last few exciting chapters. The puppy only threw up in the last five minutes. Dagen and I met at the office, and my coworker Robyn was there with her daughter, so we had a little puppy time while standing at least six feet apart from each other. Dagen was giddy about his new adopted family member, and Robyn's daughter assured him that if he ever needed a pet sitter, she would be happy to help.

I got my paperwork taken care of, filled a container with worms from our worm bin, and grabbed a stack of newspapers, then left to meet Spence for my order of chicken. We don't raise our own meat birds anymore, but we can't bring ourselves to buy grocery store chicken so we buy from Spence, who we've been friends with a long time.

When I got home, the kids and I got the worm bin started. I had found an old cooler with a drain on one end that I hope will make a good worm hotel. I assigned the kids to the task of tearing up the newspapers for worm bedding. Daisy helped too. I went inside for a minute and came back out to see newspapers spread all over the ground. William explained he had spread them all out for Daisy to play with! I explained, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice, that they would then become litter and we couldn't leave them all out like that. I started stacking them up again, piling up paper after paper in my arms. That's when I was struck by the headlines. Mixed together in the pile were articles about normal pre-pandemic events like sports games and election news, then stories with increasing alarm about the stock market plummeting and COVID-19 spreading. One armful of this past month's papers showed how much has changed in such a short amount of time.

We roasted chicken thighs for dinner with a sprinkle of salt, a drizzle of olive oil, and a bit of powdered sage on top. I reheated some leftover rice and roasted cabbage, and we ate on the porch. Jeremy and I felt like we were crossing a finish line after a long and varied race. A decathlon? What's more than a decathlon... whatever it is, that's what working from home while homeschooling while homesteading feels like some days. I am alcohol intolerant, but if I weren't I would have deeply enjoyed the feeling of my stress knots unraveling while drinking a cold beer. Since I don't have that available as a coping mechanism (which is probably healthier in the long run anyway), I had a cup of peppermint tea and talked with Jeremy and played with Daisy while the kids watched their evening show. And we got ready to do it all over again tomorrow.