787th Friday Blog Roundup
The twins begin online school next week — this is the last day of our emergency shutdown. Meaning, they haven’t been on vacation… and they haven’t been in school… they’ve been in limbo. But that changes on Monday.
I have no clue how this will go.
These past two weeks have been strange. Amorphous. Even though my day had shape, their day didn’t. One evening, I realized that we didn’t own coasters, I wanted coasters, and there was no way to shop in-person for coasters. The ChickieNob went into the recycling bin and pulled out materials for coasters. Coaster-making 101 filled the morning. Other times, I heard them cheating their way through four hours of Wii bowling. One random Wednesday, the Wolvog mused to himself, “I suppose I should study French or do something like that.” I told them they had to read The Magicians with me.
And underneath it all, anxiety of the unknown. Would we ever get back to normal life? Would we ever venture out in public again? What would life look like two weeks from now or two months from now? Just a lot of unanswerable questions rolling around inside our heads.
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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.
Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.
As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.
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And now the blogs…
But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:
- None… sniff…
Okay, now my choices this week.
In Quest of a Binky Moongee writes about how COVID-19 has impacted fertility treatments. Her heart goes out to everyone who has been canceled mid-cycle or had treatments pushed back due to shelter-in-place orders. “But for a lot of people who want a baby, it already feels like time is slipping away even when COVID-19 didn’t exist.” I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I would not have handled the pause well, and my heart goes out to everyone, too.
Life As I Know It, like a few other bloggers, have restarted their blog while navigating the current pandemic. She jumps from thought to thought: from anger at people who aren’t practicing social distancing to fears stemming from news stories. It’s nice to hear old voices again.
Lastly, The Uterus Monologues writes about last Sunday’s Mother’s Day in the UK. She is currently pregnant for the fifth time, holding hope, and she writes, “I have spent more than a year of my life pregnant. Yet I still feel in limbo-land when it comes to that label: ‘mother’.” An event changes that, and she states at the end: “Your loss counts. But most importantly, so does your love.” Go read the whole thing.
The roundup to the Roundup: How will online school work? Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 20 – 27) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week? Read the original open thread post here.
7 comments
This week has been challenging. I am a little jealous over all the “time off” things I see related to working from home or having the kids home for a few weeks. While it’s great to see more of my kids than usual, I am hardly enjoying this time: I am trying to work full-time remotely (when I’m not really set up for doing it) while minding my 8-year-old twin boys and trying to get them to do something educational. (They only have optional activities from their teachers for this week, but starting Monday, they will be doing “distance learning,” though I’m not sure what that will look like.)
My work requires intense concentration a lot of the time, and I find that nearly impossible with the constant background noise and interruptions from my kids. Add in my heightened anxiety about getting sick myself (I’m considered high risk for complications if I catch COVID-19), my husband, mother, or in-laws getting sick (all high risk for various reasons), and my BFF who is a hospital nurse, and yeah. . . it hasn’t been fun.
At the same time, I feel guilty feeling annoyed and overwhelmed by all of this because I know lots of people have it a lot worse. We are all healthy (so far); my husband and I are both still employed and likely to remain so; and we have everything we need. It just sucks.
I feel you, Sharon!
This is the end of our second week of working/ schooling/day caring at home. Phew! It’s tough!
We are thankful both hubby and I have our jobs and can work from home. However, it isn’t easy for two people to work their hours and watch after kids. Either one person’s job suffers or both do.
My girl just scowls at me. My boy doesn’t listen to me. And it’s only intensified because we’re all home all the time.
Just keeping fingers crossed everyone we know stays healthy.
Ah normal life…I wonder what that will look like in 6 months.
My advice for parents worried about distance learning is…don’t worry about it. The school will figure out how to accommodate this deviation from the plan. You don’t have to become a homeschooler. Distance learning provides some structure for kids so that they’re not tearing up the house or the neighborhood while they’re confined. I don’t perceive it as being a replacement for the curriculum. The professionals will work it out – I just need to hold on until they do.
Ask your kids to journal their thoughts during these days. They seem endless and pointless now, but in 20, 30, 100 years, their words will be first-person accounts of living through this.
Like yours are.
Thank you so much for the mention, Mel. It’s very good to be back to blogging. <3
A good list of blogs this week. Thanks – and sorry I don’t have another one to flag right now.
Lori’s advice is great. I hope online school goes well. My nephews are doing that in Australia – getting up at usual time, dressing in school clothes, sittiing at the computer, instructing their mother what time recess is, and to have the freshly-baked muffins ready!
I don’t know what “normal” will look like moving forward, but it will have to be different. I’m with Sharon, I’m jealous of people who are painting their houses one room at a time and posting all the free time stuff, because I am super stressed with this school thing from the teacher’s point of view, and the balance has been hard to come by because I’ve felt “on” all the time (but now have established better parameters, sort of). I feel for those who are parenting and doing school with their own kids and trying to teach online for the first time and sussing that out. It’s just so much, and we all just doing the best we can with what we’ve got. I love Lori’s thought… Journal, journal, journal. Become that primary source of the future.
I loved Infertile Phoenix’s post about her survivor anniversary, and the reminder that we are all survivors.
https://infertilephoenix.blogspot.com/2020/03/my-5th-survivor-anniversary.html?m=1