The past five weeks have been a real roller coaster for me…deep swoops of anxiety and fear, then loop-de-loops of gratitude, followed by unsettling ascents of uncertainty and then back to the start again.

Part of me is surprised by how little I’ve accomplished during this time of self-isolation. Yesterday I made soup. That was it. I mean, it was good. But as far as scratching things off the to-do list, it’s not very impressive. But the other part of me realizes that I am indeed juggling a lot, between all the day-to-day responsibilities of keeping the family fed and watered, and homeschooled (this is the one I hate the most) and running the house and trying to kind of keep myself from losing it.

I thought there was a small chance I could take up a new hobby or at least tackle some extra organizational jobs on my list, but nope. NOT HAPPENING.

There have been a few new things I’ve taken up though:

1. Counting my grey hairs. Now that I’m not able to get my roots bleached, and my natural colour is coming in with gusto, I am seeing a lot of tinsel in there.
2. Popping my stress pimples. Bonus if one hits the mirror.
3. Seeing how long I can go in between washing my hair. Record so far is six days. I’d like to thank the Academy.
4. Crying in the fetal position while locked in my closet when I’m supposed to be helping the kids with their homeschooling
5. Blogging. Who’d have thunk I’d ever be writing here so much again? Not me, that’s for sure. But it’s been a nice little distraction, a chance to focus and connect and search for giphs. Really important work. Feels good.

What has surprised you most about your time in self-isolation?

I hope you had a lovely Easter weekend and that you were able to celebrate (virtually) with loved ones and take time to remember the Hope we have.

Also, I hope you got to eat lots of chocolate and carbs.

There used to be a big tree at the top of a hill nearby that we called The Chocolate Tree and in Easters past we would hide chocolate in its branches and it would blow the kids’ minds. Then the tree got cut down. Boo. So this year, in an effort to sprinkle some fun and surprise on a kind of weird day, I went and hid some chocolate eggs in the Chocolate Stump.

The kids were pumped. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade; when life cuts down your Chocolate Tree, you find a way to make it work with The Stump. Feels fitting for this strange season we all find ourselves in. May your stumps be chocolate-filled.

This video is hilarious:

Also, in case you’re wondering what it looks like to age four years in four weeks, here you go:

I start most mornings with a steaming cup of coffee (splashed with heavy cream) on the couch while watching the Prime Minister’s address to the nation.

Me and Justin: just like the good ol’ days!

(Except now I have no eyelashes left and we wouldn’t be able to get this close for a photo due to physical distancing restrictions. Oh, how the world has changed.)

Long, multiple daily walks continue to be what keeps me sane…which is what I need to be as we forge ahead into the new, wild land of Homeschooling. (It gives me actual chills to write that.) This is just not how I pictured things going. Alas, we pivot.

I am truly thankful for the team of educators we have backing us up…this just feels like a lot to manage right now as it all launches. We will get into a groove eventually (I hope) but for this week I have just been trying to not let myself get overwhelmed and to take baby steps towards a successful implementation of what I affectionately refer to as our “We Homeschool Now? What the HECK?” regime.

Here’s some footage of me watching my inbox fill up with dozens of daily messages from all my kids’ teachers with new assignments and different tech sites for them to log in to:

It’s fine. WE’RE FINE.

In other news, I made these homemade bagels yesterday and they were a hit. No yeast, no problem!

The girls are taking all of this in stride. I am thankful to be able to be home with them, and force them to go for walks with me.

They really are such great little people.

I’m not sure what happens when the last one falls, if some sort of curse becomes concrete, like maybe I will forever lose my fashion sense and be doomed to walk the earth looking like this:

Oh wait, it’s already happened. I give up. We refuse to be HIT BY A CAR while out on our walk. You will SEE US and swerve accordingly! Corona virus isn’t the only threat out there! Be sure to also watch out for distracted drivers while out for your daily walk!

Last night I made a variation of Jen Hatmaker’s frittata. Her recipe posts always make me laugh. I just used up whatever random stuff I found in the crevices of the fridge and voila! It was delicious.

There is so much great content circulating online in this season. Jann Arden wrote a really powerful and moving post this weekend and I recommend you check it out.

Also, this video made us all lol.

Last night we watched “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” and really enjoyed it. I had read the book years ago and loved the casting choices for the movie.

The kids’ schools are doing a soft launch of their distance education this week and I feel a little twitchy about it, but it’s going to be ok. We will all just try our best, take it one day at a time, and remember to take deep breaths.

I hope this new weeks brings some hope and peace and beauty for us all.

1.-Attempting the Home Haircut

(Please don’t look too closely at the ends. Momma tried her best.)

2. Watching Tiger King

3. Bread-baking (if you can find any yeast, that is…where did it all go??)

4. Thinking about planting a garden

5. Trying to only have wine on the weekends, but making it to Tuesday and giving yourself an A for effort.

6. Learning to use Zoom

7. Curling up in a ball, hoping this is all just a bad dream

8. Sneezing once and immediately Googling symptoms of Covid-19

9. Wondering what day it is

10. Doing the best we can

Happy weekend! (It IS the weekend, right?)

This week has been a bit of a blur. Overall, I have felt more like myself but still acknowledging we are walking through a really intense time. I have all these things on my aspirational to-do list and NONE of them have been checked off. But it’s OK.

The novelty of cooking has pretty much worn off.

The nice thing about having older kids is that I can enlist them to bake. Avelyn made these with some 2-years expired graham cracker crumbs we found buried at the back of the pantry and they were pretty good.

We have been introducing the girls to lots of random movies from the 80s and 90s like “Three Men and a Baby” and “Big” and “Turner and Hooch”. Anything with Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts just feels right.

Why is there no yeast in the stores? Are people seriously baking bread? Or are these the same people who bought 800 rolls of toiler paper? I just need a few tablespoons to keep us going for some basic recipes but it’s nearly impossible to find. I know there are some DIY yeast substitutions out there but it feels a little like making your own moonshine or something. Which: too soon. I expect we will at LEAST make it until the end of the this month before we are that point.

At which point, I will totally trade you some moonshine for your yeast.

As last week came to a close, I was struggling and feeling very anxious.

I took some time to check in with my body and noticed some things: I felt sick to my stomach, and had a decreased appetite. I felt foggy, like I was walking through waist-high molasses. Little tasks felt overwhelming, like it was all just too much. And the little patch of psoriasis I hadn’t seen in years had started to expand in an itchy circle on the bottom of my foot. I hadn’t felt this way since I watched Steve get blown up and burned in the farm accident. And that’s when it clicked for me. So much of what was hard about that season was the uncertainty (Would he ever look normal again? Would he regain use of his hands and be able to work? What would the future look like?) and the fear that all of those questions had super bad answers…and how I felt then is how I am feeling now.

It’s trauma.

It felt good to be able to name it, and then to give myself the grace and compassion to sit with that knowing. I have felt better since then. It’s like the trauma just needed to be acknowledged, saying, “I’m here,” and I creaked open the door to my heart and then held the trauma there: looking at it, seeing it, knowing it, without judgement or trying to push it away.

I know there may be scary days ahead: death tolls rising, feeling a looming threat draw closer. But there are still so many moments of light and hope and presence.

I heart you all.

Truth be told, I rode a pretty big wave of anxiety yesterday. Well, not so much rode, as was slammed by. This video made me laugh until the tears streamed from my eyes and it feels pretty accurate:

@notjeromesurfs up brah! ##coronavirus##covid19##foryou##2020##hangloose##quarantine? Only Time – Enya

We are one step closer to embracing the stereotypical homeschooling lifestyle. I just need an ankle-length denim jumper and we will be good to go. I would totally be baking my own bread but all the grocery stores are sold out.

Remember to breathe, friends.

The wire brush of doubt, oof. And your hesitant light. Let’s let it shine as best we can.

This whole experience of being housebound and also a bit afraid that…I don’t know, we are perhaps going to run out of food and all the supply chains will shut down and I will have to forage for berries in the gully and learn how to catch rabbits…it really gets a girl motivated to use up the Dregs of the Forgotten Frozen Foods.

In today’s freezer adventures I found some suuuuuper old frozen fish so we had fish tacos. The old me (of two weeks ago, I have evolved, like, SO much since then) would have probably just thrown them away in another year to clear out some space, but not today! The Amanda of today is industrious and resourceful. So: fish tacos.

I also found some rhubarb in the depths of the freezer from last spring so made this for dessert: DUMP CAKE. With a name like that, it was a no-brainer.

In other news, Margaret Atwood wrote a really great piece for The Globe and Mail. Worth a read, for sure (as is everything she writes).

Barenaked Ladies got together for a self-isolation reunion to perform one of my favourite songs of all time. It feels extra poignant right now as we do now indeed find ourselves in dangerous times.

That’s all I got, folks. Happy weekend!

(Like I said, I am taking the wins where I find them.)

I know this video has been making the rounds on social media but I found it enlightening. And then it made me panic that since I haven’t been sterilizing my groceries for the past two weeks that I will most certainly die and that it’s too late for us all. So. Take it with a grain of salt. When you know better, you do better, as the wise Maya Angelou said.

I continue to find solace in my daily walks. I feel like a bit like Forrest Gump, like I could just keep walking. But then I remember it’s time to come home and break up the girls’ fist fights, watch weird shows on the internet, use an obscene amount of heavy cream in my dinner recipe and sit around the table with my family and be thankful that we have made it through another day.

Part of this whole situation feels like waiting for a tsunami to come. As though we are just hanging out on an island, and we can’t even really see the big wave headed for us yet, but in our bones, we can feel its approach. And for every day it doesn’t strike, we are filled with gratitude, but also a residual fear of what tomorrow, or the next day, may bring.

So all we can do is be here right now.

Which is really all we ever could do, but now we know it in our spirits, not just our minds.