The Screen-Free Quarantine – Day 8
I think that was a book written about motherhood by a blogger that I used to love. That was my day today. It sucked. And I cried. And maybe even in that order.
It all started out well, you know, mornings are always great for me. The kids sleep late, I can get lots of work done. But oh, wait. You know those crazy things they call websites? Yeah, they are super finicky, and even if you built the silly things all by yourself, they still can act up (just like kids do) and drive you crazy. So that’s what my website did for me this morning when I was posting my last blog. It took me an hour that I don’t have to fix it.
I know I could have left it for later, but I just can’t stand leaving my website up looking bad.
So, I fixed that and then got to work on my “work.” That didn’t go well. I have one person that I deal with through my work that I just cannot make happy, no matter what I do. Super-human feats would not impress this person. This is really difficult for me because deep down, I am a people pleaser, and that’s pretty much all I want in the world. To make other people happy.
Of course, my kids hate me because I’m “making” them do schoolwork. And chores (can I tell you how much they hate that I added morning chores to their school assignments?) Now this colleague isn’t too thrilled with my work. It makes for a frustrating day, for sure.
So, Mike is working from home, and today he attended court via Zoom call before 9 am. I was still in my jammies, ya’ll. I couldn’t help but walk by him a few times. So, I’ve been in court in my jammies. I don’t even want to know who saw that.
The kids are kids and they had trouble controlling their tempers, their mouths and just about everything else today, and Mike and I found ourselves wondering WHY we won’t just pull out the chromebook and become blue-glow-faced screen zombies. It’s SOOOOOO much easier. At the moment, we couldn’t remember, but we were intelligent enough to remember that we both agreed that removing their screens was a good idea. And we both agreed that we wanted to end this quarantine-social distancing time with kids who were NOT addicted to screens (I suspect many kids and adults alike will have this issue when they come out of their homes after this thing is over). Solidifying our decision is that a loved one of ours just entered their child into an outdoor based screen-detox program. Which sounds great. But the things that family has been through to get to this point is nothing we want our children or ourselves to go through.
But it was tempting today.
I think that’s when I cried. I just couldn’t take the stress anymore. Or the pressure. Or all of the things looming over me. That I can’t get done. Because I’ve got so many more pressing things.
And God bless my husband. He’s feeling the same way, but he knew I was at the end of my rope, and he jumped in and did more than he normally does (which is a lot), trying to take some of the weight off. He encouraged me with kind words, but you know how it is when you’re feeling overwhelmed. You just jump off the edge and you dangle there for a while.
I’m now back up over the edge, but I have to add this precious little “memory” for twenty years from now. I hope my son’s fiancé finds it, or he finds it, and he’s just a little embarrassed at himself. Or maybe I will be at my reaction to his childish prank.
Before dinner, my oldest son asked me a few questions about soap and whether it could hurt you if you drank it. I was busy prepping for the meal, so I answered the questions and forgot about it. Mike came downstairs asking who had replaced his hand soap (a precious commodity these days) with water. Jacob admitted he’d done it, but was tight lipped about what exactly he’d done.
We move on to dinner and Daniel goes to drink his chocolate milk. He runs to the sink and pours it out and I get on to him for wasting milk. The stores are short on milk and I don’t know if I will be able to get more when we run out.
He looks at me while rinsing his mouth out and tells me that his brother put hand soap in it.
Wasted hand soap.
Wasted milk.
I shake my head now, but my reaction at the table when I heard this was not nearly as understated.
The boys were sent to bed without dessert, and without Jenga!
Maybe tomorrow will be a better day. I’m seriously not even sure that we’ll be in “quarantine” tomorrow. Because of all of this work with mothering and homeschooling and my real “job,” I don’t even KNOW what’s going on in the news right now. I suppose someone will let me know when it’s time to go back to normal?
Until then, I’ll get back to work.
