I found the draft of the blog post that I was writing when the power went out last week. It was about being burned out. It started…
Last week, I was bone-tired. There was too much on plate. I was parenting two kids, educating them, feeding them, taking care of the younger guy’s ongoing medical issues, writing and all the stuff that goes along with the writing process, dealing with a contractor and the insurance company about flooded ground floor, going to the physical therapist to treat “frozen shoulder,” and meeting with semi-hostile school administrators about the coming year.
And then the power went out for three days, and I had to clean out the fridge. The contractor started work on the ground floor, so I had to deal with constant banging and questions. An army of sugar ants conquered the kitchen. And I started a new essay.
I am tired, layered on exhaustion, topped with a big dose of weary.
Just about everyone that I talk to these days, especially if they have kids, is just exhausted. Every little task — going to the supermarket or going to the doctor for a check-up — requires extra thought and preparation. Sunday dinner with the folks has to happen outside and nobody can help schlep the stuff from the kitchen to the back patio.
Everything is just extra.
So, self-care is super important right now. Sometimes I need an afternoon to just play super-dumb games on the iPhone. Sometimes I boost my spirits by making food or playing with books.
And my gang each has their own “things” that make them feel normal. Jonah watches European soccer matches. Steve makes pickles. Ian plays with the code on “Garry’s Mod” and makes music.
What are you doing to feel normal in these very weird times?
Apt. 11d 
Sugar ants…The best way to deal with them is Raid ant gel. https://www.amazon.com/Raid-Ant-Gel-Month-1-06/dp/B006QYTDSO/ref=sr_1_18?dchild=1&keywords=raid+ant+gel&qid=1596996073&sr=8-18
Amazon says it won’t ship this to my address–no idea why. Walmart did, though.
It’s great stuff. You put a bead on the path the ants take to raid your kitchen. You can watch them carry it back to the colony, which takes care of the problem. It’s much better than spraying the place with poison.
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Our family likes diotomaceous earth for sugar ants:
https://www.finegardening.com/article/diatomaceous-earth-as-non-toxic-ant-killer
You don’t want to breathe it (powdered anything is bad to breathe), but it’s otherwise totally non-toxic for non-bugs. And I bet you have a suitable mask at home to wear when applying it.
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Oh wow. Super interesting. I’ll share with Steve, because pest control is under his job header. We also employ a pest control company, because termites are a really big problem in this part of the country. They are coming on Tuesday to nuke the entire area.
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I recommend moving to the pacific northwest for sugar ants :-). Not really, we’ve had ants and pantry bugs (that was awful — there were bugs inside what looked to be sealed packets). But I have been amazed at the lack of bugs, usually.
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Regarding quarantine/pandemic projects. One need for me has been to mark the days. I haven’t had a real schedule in a long time, but the other people in my house did. Now everyone’s days blur together.
So, i lay out the date on our coffee table every day (using calligraphy cards I made with the months, days and year). When I made them in April, I didn’t make July and now I’ve had to make July & August. I haven’t made the rest of the months out of willfulness.
In May, I made a minibouquet from odds and ends of flowers in the yard and took pictures of them.
About two months ago, I started writing a calligraphy quote every day. The other day, when more school closures came out, I found myself becoming actually anxious (I am not an anxious person) and writing three calligraphy quotes actually calmed me down.
I have been indulging in cut flowers. I started when our local Hmong growers, who sell at our tourist farmer’s market were shut down, finding the flower vendors around the city and now its become a real indulgence, every week or every other week. A few weeks ago, spouse called it an addiction, and it might be, but it’s one that isn’t bad for my health at least.
And a potentially maladaptive one has been to write down the coronavirus case numbers in my state every day. It was satisfying when the numbers were steadily decreasing. Now, it’s not, but I feel like I need to bear witness, to the cases and to the deaths.
I fear that these treats/rituals are loosing their impact, though. I’ll find others.
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Also, I read the NY Times article in which the writer found solace in making miniature food. She didn’t like to cook, and started the activity with her little child, but has now found it soothing to do herself.
I might make little food. I’ve followed miniature food on instagram and have miniature food books, so, it would be an interesting pandemic hobby to actually do the craft I’ve admired from afar :-).
What I haven’t been able to do very effectively is read, though I’m trying to put that in to my rotation. And, I have never been a binge watcher of television.
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Laura said, “Just about everyone that I talk to these days, especially if they have kids, is just exhausted.”
I wouldn’t say that I’m exhausted now, but a) I’ve been able to put our youngest in therapy 6-9 hours a week for over two months b) I’m counting down to school reopening in a week and a half (?) c) we have monthly cleaning help now d) our youngest’s academics are significantly better than when summer started and e) our budget has loosened up a bit, so we can get more carry-out.
But sure, March-May of remote schooling was a non-stop blur of homeschool/frantic grocery shopping/cooking/dishes/heavy cleaning/teaching teens to do heavy cleaning, with no ability to safely outsource. I think/hope that the fall will be better, even if things go remote again. I won’t have senior “stuff” to deal with, the big kids are now up to speed on housecleaning, and hopefully we won’t have more weird shortages. The only thing that gives me pause is that school wants to do a “full” curriculum rather than this spring’s streamlined version, so if we go remote again, there may be a lot more school work for us than previously.
“What are you doing to feel normal in these very weird times?”
My husband just made two mask racks, one for his KN95s, one for the 10th grader’s. The idea (cribbed from the inventor of the N95) is that each rack has 7 pegs, one for each day of the week. You wear one mask a day, rotating through the set once a week, with the hope being that by the time a week has gone by, the mask has aired out and all the bugs are dead, so you can keep comfortably reusing masks.
My college freshman has her gamer guild. The 10th grader has been doing tennis, programming and gardening and it’s about time to get him his fall plants and seeds. The 2nd grader has been collecting electronic critters in various games and enjoying outings to the “beach” (the volleyball court near the river) and different playgrounds. The kids and I have also dug out our salt-and-ice ice cream maker and made mango ice cream a week ago and citrus green tea ice cream this week. It’s really good stuff. There’s some talk of making Earl Grey ice cream. I’m thinking about lavender or rose, too.
I like my iced lattes, which make a surprisingly good lunch substitute this time of year. It’s also been surprisingly satisfying to work this summer as the 2nd grader’s personal librarian. Solo errands can be fun. I think the highlight of the past week was a two hour stretch that I spent all by myself doing a curbside library drop-off/pickup, dropping off glass at the recycling center, getting a drive-thru iced latte and then going to the grocery store. That was probably the longest stretch that I have been alone outside the house in 5 months. I also periodically walk some stuff over to my buddy’s house and chat on her porch, which is 99% of my in-person social life right now.
I’m mostly waiting for the weather to cool down. If the outdoors gets better, it will be more bearable, whether or not school opens/stays open.
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You’ve had a really tough 2020. 😦
We just got back from a weekend in the Catskills, so I am feeling pretty relaxed right now. But it’s about to get hairy soon. E has to be brought to college in TEN days, and within 3 weeks I have to prepare FIVE different classes for online delivery (one is not really a class, just thesis supervision). I would like to be more prepared than I was in March.
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yeah, this year has been very tough. I think it has had some good moments too, but I think we’ll need to be about five years in the future to determine that.
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And you will be an empty nester soon. Wow. So jealous!
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I can’t even with the empty nest thing. But I will be 1. digitally hovering over E and 2. expecting him back within a month because I think once it gets colder and we’re all indoors more, infection rates will zoom up again. Btw, my sister claims that the infection rate in NY is currently about .7%. That was in response to me posting this to our group chat: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/889kbz/coronavirus-outbreaks-increasingly-tied-to-family-gatherings
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Wendy said, “E has to be brought to college in TEN days, and within 3 weeks I have to prepare FIVE different classes for online delivery (one is not really a class, just thesis supervision).”
Ooooh!
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Wendy said,
“I can’t even with the empty nest thing. But I will be 1. digitally hovering over E and 2. expecting him back within a month because I think once it gets colder and we’re all indoors more, infection rates will zoom up again.”
How does one digitally hover? (Asking for a friend.)
I’m wondering how many parents are going to scale back on the now normal thing of squeezing a small apartment’s worth of stuff into a dorm room, given the likelihood of needing to come back early and retrieve their kid.
Even without a pandemic, I can’t even at the idea of a college kid needing enough stuff that they need a moving truck to move into a furnished dorm room. Back in the early 90s, we thought we were pretty hot stuff to be able to rent a microfridge for a dorm room. (I totally understand getting a bunch of stuff for an apartment that the kid is going to occupy for several years, though.)
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I plan to digitally hover by 1. using Find My Friends, 2. reading his email, 3. checking his Blackboard courses, and possibly 4. befriending one of his suite mates or their parents and getting reports. I guess that last one is just old-fashioned espionage.
We didn’t do a big thing for S for college. And E is very minimalist, so I am not worried at all. I wish we could pre-decide about the fridge and gaming setup before they move in, but E actually refuses to be on Facebook or most social media, so they have no way to get in touch with him.
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I was pretty flabbergasted at the amount of stuff some people took last year when I did my internet research. But, flying limits how much we could actually gather for my child. On the other hand she very much wanted to nest in her dorm room. Given how little room there was going to be, though, she concentrated her nesting on art. She made and bought art for her room and it was a big improvement (and, I think she got some art that she will love for a long time).
I am thinking hard about how much stuff she takes with her this time around and brings out of storage (her stuff is mostly stored with her aunt now). And, with current plans, even (maybe especially) if things go extremely well, she might have to move again.
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A trick we have used to stay sane: buying multiple seasons of the old Perry Mason on DVD and watching them 2-3 times a week. We both love it (he wants to watch the HBO one but I can tell it will be too gory and depressing for me). It is both a) often fairly interesting to watch; and b) perfect to fall asleep to. There are 271 episodes in all so we are not afraid of running out.
I’m still cooking a lot and bought my first cast iron skillet a month ago. I’ve discovered a recipe for Crispy Chicken Thighs that makes the purchase worthwhile on its own (https://houseofnasheats.com/crispy-cast-iron-skillet-chicken-thighs/). I like to marinate them in buttermilk for a while first, a trick I learned from Nigella Lawson’s roasted chicken recipe.
Gardening has been great, though I am tired of the weedy areas of my yard. Just had a porch happy hour with a friend and those things are lifesavers.
What is Steve’s favorite pickle recipe? I have some extra cukes I need to use up. I can only do refrigerator pickles, though. Even if I were up for canning, apparently all of the stores around here are out of canning supplies.
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We watched the first episode of Colombo the other day. It was interesting to see all the things that become the signals in the first episode. I agree that watching some of those patterned old things can be soothing.
And family is watching Avatar for the 4th time (spouse for the first, because it was our show for when he was away and we could never convince him to watch anime. But, he’s enjoying it now)
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Was that one of the ones where Robert Culp was the murderer?
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Don’t know who Robert Culp is, but it was the one where a psychiatrist murdered his wife after getting his girlfriend to pretend that she was his wife to provide an alibi.
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The white guy on I Spy. He was the murderer twice on early episodes (but not that one).
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My mom used to tease my dad that he wasn’t able to win all of his cases like Perry Mason. My dad would respond that if all his clients were innocent, he would.
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I have a recipe for crispy chicken thighs that I want to try out. I’ll find the link for you.
Love the new Perry Mason HBO series. The plot is extremely complicated and hard to follow, but the acting is amazing and it has so much great eye candu.
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Oh, yeah, rollerblades.
My husband and the big kids all have rollerblades, and husband and the 10th grader rollerbladed 4k one way and 4k back on the top of a local dam.
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Canning: wow, I’m glad I already own the necessities. I had noticed that all of a sudden the canning section at my local grocery store was nearly empty; I hadn’t known that was a larger trend.
For those who are interested in learning to can, here’s some advice from a relatively new canner:
You can find supplies at your local grocery store, hardware stores, Walmarts, Targets, and Bed Bath and Beyond. Many of the equipment can be repurposed from stuff you already have.
You need:
A large stock pot, large enough to allow water to circulate above and below cans on a rack.
a rack, which fits the bottom of the pot, that keeps the jars off the bottom of the pot. Some canning racks allow you to lift all the cans at once, in and out of very hot water. If it fits, a standard circular metal cooling rack can do double duty.
A funnel, large enough to allow chunky pickles and jams to fill jars.
You may need to buy, if you don’t inherit:
A jar lifter
A lid lifter (basically a magnet on a stick)
canning jars (Ball is commonly available. Check that any jar you buy can be immersed in boiling water. Anything tagged mason jar or canning jar should be fine.) If you have a family member who cans, the jars he or she gives as gifts can be reused.
You definitely need to buy:
Lids (must be new for each jar)
Canning salt
Pectin
Foolproof Preserving: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011G4E2WA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(I have been making their “Quick Sweet and Spicy Pickled Red Onions” weekly.)
The quantities work well for someone who doesn’t own an orchard, i.e., wants to make fun recipes, but doesn’t plan to spend a week canning.
Gorgeous, great book to give as a present:
There are also many other cookbooks covering preserving. There are canning sections in many standard cookbooks. You can also find many other recipes online. I admit I tend not to take the advice of bloggers who tell readers they can skimp some normal food safety procedure. Canning is not as hard as it seems from the outside, but it is very, very important to keep things clean and safe.
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Please also make sure that you are water bath canning only things that can be water bath canned – typically acidic fruits (tomatoes are not acidic enough to be water bath canned without the addition of lemon juice – use bottled as fresh squeezed is too variable.) For anything else, you NEED a pressure canner. Botulism doesn’t make you sick. It makes you dead.
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I follow the recipes in published cookbooks. So far, it’s been all acidic fruits. I own a pressure cooker, but haven’t needed to pull it out yet. I did go so far as to establish that no, you should not use an Instant Pot for canning.
There are also recipes that produce things which last for maybe a week in the refrigerator. I like such “refrigerator pickles.”
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A pressure cooker isn’t a pressure canner. You can use a pressure canner as a pressure cooker, but not a pressure cooker as a pressure canner. That’s why you can’t use an instant pot.
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Cranberry said, ” I admit I tend not to take the advice of bloggers who tell readers they can skimp some normal food safety procedure.”
Yeah.
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Sadly, our backyard garden crapped out on us this summer, so there’s nothing beyond Steve’s cucumbers to pickle.
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Presumably locusts, given this year.
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Still, the government must not legislate food service standards. Voluntary compliance has to be enough to keep food preparation safe.
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MH said, “Still, the government must not legislate food service standards. Voluntary compliance has to be enough to keep food preparation safe.”
If we’re defunding/abolishing the police, who is supposed to enforce all these regulations? Even just less funding means less enforcement.
I suppose you could do it by just having health inspectors and only publishing the scores and letting the public caveat emptor, but if you need to actually shut down a restaurant, you need the police to back up health inspectors. That’s why it’s called “law enforcement”–they are necessary for enforcing laws.
(The funniest/scariest health violation I’ve ever heard of involved a local Asian buffet that was recently accused of falsifying their sushi log. EEK!)
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“If we’re defunding/abolishing the police, who is supposed to enforce all these regulations? Even just less funding means less enforcement.”
The police do not enforce health code regulations at restaurants. The Department of Public Health does.
But this is the whole point of the “defund the police” movement. Most of what they do/people think they do/people think they should do is more than they should be doing.
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Wendy said, “The police do not enforce health code regulations at restaurants. The Department of Public Health does.”
What if a restaurant owner says, nah, I’m good, and keeps on rolling with health violations? Or what if a restaurant or bar operates illegally during the pandemic (as has happened quite a number of times)?
Ultimately, the police is the “or else” behind the Department of Public Health, as well as every other regulatory body in the US. Even (or especially) social workers are toothless without police back-up. If CPS comes to do a home visit or take a kid, they can’t do it without the implicit “or else” that the police provides. See also the IRS. Where would the IRS be without the possibility of forcible confiscations, arrest and federal prison for the non-compliant?
That’s not to say that police and police methods ought to be the initial go-to–but a lot of the solutions that people are talking about don’t make any sense without “real” police available as the enforcer of last resort when dealing with uncooperative members of the public.
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The whole edifice of the state rests on the police.
Destroy the police, and it all comes down.
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Great. I won’t do that.
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“What if a restaurant owner says, nah, I’m good, and keeps on rolling with health violations? Or what if a restaurant or bar operates illegally during the pandemic (as has happened quite a number of times)?”
The DPH has the ability to publicize their results and inspection grades. If you want to go into a restaurant with a low grade or no visible sign with the grade (as is common in NYC, for example), you should feel free to do so, but I can assure you that you are in the very small minority. I regularly will eat food I drop on my floor, and I still won’t go into a NYC restaurant with less than an A grade.
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