They have learned how to clean a bathroom, which is a crucial life skill even though they bathe so little these days.
I also had them clean the fridge down to a shine, which was a huge job, both educational and rewarding.
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Chores
Early on, we used the extra time at home to get some big jobs done, and used this as an opportunity to get the kids off the screens for a while. For example, they moved a lot of dirt. The kids like a tangible task and are cheerful participants. At this point we've kind of run out of projects, but it was fun while it lasted, and maybe I'll think of more.
They have learned how to clean a bathroom, which is a crucial life skill even though they bathe so little these days.
I also had them clean the fridge down to a shine, which was a huge job, both educational and rewarding.
They have learned how to clean a bathroom, which is a crucial life skill even though they bathe so little these days.
I also had them clean the fridge down to a shine, which was a huge job, both educational and rewarding.
Samson
We are pretty sure that Samson loves the pandemic: since we are home all the time, we can open the windows for him. He is an indoor cat and all the windows have screens, but he loves the fresh air, and the open windows allow him to at least mentally hunt the bunnies and scare off the other cats. We certainly love having him with us: he is great company and very entertaining. I especially love to take pictures of his fuzzy belly.
Pandemic cooking
Cooking is soothing and rewarding for me: the process of preparing food is a pleasure, the meals I cook give pleasure to my family, and it gives me control over something. I have been a seriously excellent provider of meals if I do say so myself. One of the pandemic-specific cooking efforts I have made is to make simple yet luxurious lunches. I am especially great at dips, which add punches of flavor to substance to platters of raw veggies: some are bursting with herbs, some pop with pickled peppers, today’s is a hot buffalo chicken dip. I also make lovely dinners, of course. Lately I’m trying to do more vegetarian dishes: last week was a whole week of vegetarian meals, and no one even really noticed, because we all just enjoyed what we were eating. Finally, I have been trying new things from scratch. At Passover we made matzo -- not kosher because it had olive oil in it, but so much more delicious than the stuff in a box.
And I regularly make yogurt now. The Instant Pot makes it a little easier, and we are working out our system for draining it.
We make our own pizza, including the dough; why not, we've got all day, and it's easy enough. I have not yet run out of flour or yeast.
One day Jordan asked to make an elaborate dessert, so I had him make and frost a layer cake. I figure, if he can go off to college ready to make a fun birthday cake for a friend, he is an asset to any dorm.
Another day, he and Aaron made a rhubarb upside-down cake. Desserts are motivating for sure... I've been making a lot of them myself, and we grow the rhubarb.
On Wednesdays, Aaron's school has "expeditionary education" days, where they are asked to choose from a variety of educational activities that are beyond the confines of regular school: wash the dog, camp in the yard, make dinner. Aaron pretty much always chooses to make dinner. Here he is making broccoli melts, which came out absolutely delicious.
The kids also cook willingly and with pleasure and pride. I love what they are learning and when they do it, I remember to take pictures. :) Jordan got it into his head one day to make gnocchi; we used sweet potatoes, and it was fantastic.
We make our own pizza, including the dough; why not, we've got all day, and it's easy enough. I have not yet run out of flour or yeast.
One day Jordan asked to make an elaborate dessert, so I had him make and frost a layer cake. I figure, if he can go off to college ready to make a fun birthday cake for a friend, he is an asset to any dorm.
Another day, he and Aaron made a rhubarb upside-down cake. Desserts are motivating for sure... I've been making a lot of them myself, and we grow the rhubarb.
On Wednesdays, Aaron's school has "expeditionary education" days, where they are asked to choose from a variety of educational activities that are beyond the confines of regular school: wash the dog, camp in the yard, make dinner. Aaron pretty much always chooses to make dinner. Here he is making broccoli melts, which came out absolutely delicious.
Family TV
TV time is a fun and relaxing way to be together in the evenings. Before pandemic time, we were watching Parks & Rec, which was fun for everyone and entertained us for many evenings. One day on the drive to school (ah, driving to school...) Aaron said the show was getting him interested in government, and I thought... if you're going to get access to government through a TV show, I know which one it should be! We started watching The West Wing, and wow, is it good. It is every bit as good as it was 20 years ago (!), and many of the issues are eerily unchanged... like gun control. The only area where it seems happily dated is LGBTQ rights. Some things get better. And there are many, many seasons, so we can watch it a lot.
We have also diverted into other shows here and there: we watched the last season of The Good Place (terrific), introduced the kids to Seinfeld (definitely counts as Jewish education in my book), and watched all the Harry Potter movies in order. Right now we're watching Apollo 13, and I have Breaking Away and 20 Feet From Stardom on deck. But it's good to know we have The West Wing to go back to whenever we want.
We have also diverted into other shows here and there: we watched the last season of The Good Place (terrific), introduced the kids to Seinfeld (definitely counts as Jewish education in my book), and watched all the Harry Potter movies in order. Right now we're watching Apollo 13, and I have Breaking Away and 20 Feet From Stardom on deck. But it's good to know we have The West Wing to go back to whenever we want.
Home offices
We each have a private desk for work, each in our own room. This is a luxury!
Sometimes I have an officemate.
The boys also spend a lot of time at the dining room table, especially when they are playing together. Posture is an issue for all of us.
Sometimes I have an officemate.
The boys also spend a lot of time at the dining room table, especially when they are playing together. Posture is an issue for all of us.
Weekday schedule
7:00-7:30 Dale, Aaron, and I all get up. The three of us have breakfast together.
8:30-4:30 Aaron is in school off and on. The first live class meeting is always at 8:30am. After that, he has a mix of synchronous meetings (usually two per day) and independent work (typically about one hour). He takes care of this completely on his own and is keeping up just fine. He also has choir twice a week. They can’t sing together, but are building their musicianship in other ways like ear training, sight reading, and singing alone, working towards creating recordings like [this one]. When Aaron isn’t doing school he plays Minecraft, either alone or with Jordan.
9:00 Dale and I start our workdays. We both have 2-3 live zoom meetings per day, plus independent work time.
10:30-11:30 Jordan gets up. Sometimes he has breakfast, sometimes he waits to eat until lunch. (It’s practically lunchtime when he gets up, and he prefers lunchy kinds of things for breakfast, anyway.)
12:00-1:00 We have lunch together if we can. The boys make themselves nachos unless I’ve made something else. I often put out a platter of veggies with delicious dip. If they make their own lunch, it means they pause the video games for about half an hour; if I make lunch for them, they eat it in front of the screens, unless I make them not do that.
1:30-3:30 Somewhere in this time period we go out to the park for sports time. We usually go to Magnuson. For a while we played pickleball; we have now leveled up to tennis, because it is more wind-resistant. This is the only time the boys get out of the house. It is such a wonderful thing to get outside in the middle of the day! We all need it. I play a little tennis but also use the time to make phone calls (walking).
4:30-6:30 In the late afternoon I make dinner. I also usually realize what jobs have not yet been done for the day and make the kids do them: piano, folding laundry, etc. We have dinner together at 6ish.
7:00-9:00 Family TV.
9:00 Aaron strictly goes to bed at this time. He is clear that this is better for him and takes the initiative to make sure the TV stops in time. I appreciate this; I like for quiet time to start around 9pm. Jordan, meanwhile, begins his night life of video games with friends at this time, in his room. Dale and I clean up the kitchen (mostly Dale) and talk about the news.
10:00-11:00 Everyone is in bed.
Weekends are basically the same, but without school.
8:30-4:30 Aaron is in school off and on. The first live class meeting is always at 8:30am. After that, he has a mix of synchronous meetings (usually two per day) and independent work (typically about one hour). He takes care of this completely on his own and is keeping up just fine. He also has choir twice a week. They can’t sing together, but are building their musicianship in other ways like ear training, sight reading, and singing alone, working towards creating recordings like [this one]. When Aaron isn’t doing school he plays Minecraft, either alone or with Jordan.
9:00 Dale and I start our workdays. We both have 2-3 live zoom meetings per day, plus independent work time.
10:30-11:30 Jordan gets up. Sometimes he has breakfast, sometimes he waits to eat until lunch. (It’s practically lunchtime when he gets up, and he prefers lunchy kinds of things for breakfast, anyway.)
12:00-1:00 We have lunch together if we can. The boys make themselves nachos unless I’ve made something else. I often put out a platter of veggies with delicious dip. If they make their own lunch, it means they pause the video games for about half an hour; if I make lunch for them, they eat it in front of the screens, unless I make them not do that.
1:30-3:30 Somewhere in this time period we go out to the park for sports time. We usually go to Magnuson. For a while we played pickleball; we have now leveled up to tennis, because it is more wind-resistant. This is the only time the boys get out of the house. It is such a wonderful thing to get outside in the middle of the day! We all need it. I play a little tennis but also use the time to make phone calls (walking).
4:30-6:30 In the late afternoon I make dinner. I also usually realize what jobs have not yet been done for the day and make the kids do them: piano, folding laundry, etc. We have dinner together at 6ish.
7:00-9:00 Family TV.
9:00 Aaron strictly goes to bed at this time. He is clear that this is better for him and takes the initiative to make sure the TV stops in time. I appreciate this; I like for quiet time to start around 9pm. Jordan, meanwhile, begins his night life of video games with friends at this time, in his room. Dale and I clean up the kitchen (mostly Dale) and talk about the news.
10:00-11:00 Everyone is in bed.
Weekends are basically the same, but without school.
Screen time
Early on we co-constructed a loose daily plan for the kids. That lasted a week or so; then the boys wanted more screen time. We said yes but still asked that they spend some time each day away from the screen, doing something else. I know it can be hard to think of what else to do other than stare at a screen (we all have that problem), so I erased the chalkboard where we used to write our weekly calendar (no need for that anymore) and wrote a bunch of prompts for other things to do. Some responsibilities, some things that they find fun when they do them but don’t do spontaneously.
They cheerfully agreed that this was a good system and then entirely ignored it. Every so often I prompted them to check the chalkboard, but the lure of the screen is sooooo strong. Eventually I erased it… it mocked me.
Now they play video games all day except when they are doing something else, which basically means, unless we are doing one of our daily family time things or I otherwise stand over them to do something else. They are reasonably willing to do other things if we stand over them. But I don’t do this most of the time, because I have my own work to do.
They cheerfully agreed that this was a good system and then entirely ignored it. Every so often I prompted them to check the chalkboard, but the lure of the screen is sooooo strong. Eventually I erased it… it mocked me.
Now they play video games all day except when they are doing something else, which basically means, unless we are doing one of our daily family time things or I otherwise stand over them to do something else. They are reasonably willing to do other things if we stand over them. But I don’t do this most of the time, because I have my own work to do.
Bar mitzvah postponed again
I can hardly express how sad this makes all of us: We have to reimagine Aaron’s bar mitzvah again. When we moved it from March 14 to July 25, it seemed like plenty of time; surely we would have this pandemic figured out in four months? But no. Things are still so uncertain, and so limited. And even though it is remotely possible that state law would allow gatherings of our size by that time (and I briefly daydreamed about a drive-in service), what it boils down to is that we absolutely do not want our beloved elders to get on a plane. It’s not going to be safe yet and we will not put them in that position.
We had multiple conversations to decide what to do next -- with our partner family, with our rabbi, and with Aaron. All of these conversations were beautiful examples of respectful candor, where everyone got to say where they were coming from. They were also heart-wrenching and exhausting. Our rabbi was wonderful: she was a good listener, helped organize what she was hearing into a clear set of options, and gave her own input, which I was really grateful for.
We needed to decide between three options:
(A) Go ahead this July (2020), knowing that guests could attend only by zoom. There is a chance we might be able to be in the sanctuary ourselves, though masked.
(B) Wait until next summer (2021), in the hope that we could be in person for some part of either the service, the party, or both, with zoom attendance as the backup plan. (We don’t want to do it in the winter because then we’d have to be indoors, which greatly reduces the chance of being able to gather safely.)
(C) Wait until we can be fairly confident it will be safe for vulnerable people to travel to be with us, i.e., when there is a vaccine. This is not next summer, but maybe the summer after that (2022).
The only one of these that we felt able to rule out was (C). The boys would be turning 15 and a year through high school already; it just feels developmentally wrong at that time. Among the four adults, there was pretty much equal inclination for (A) and (B). One preferred (B) because there is a chance of gathering our community together, one preferred (A) because (to be really frank about it) loved ones could die in the coming year, and two felt equally divided. Is it better to wait until it can be more like we want, or does it suck to have it hanging over your head for another year? What if we wait until 2021 and then it turns out to be the same as it would have been in 2020? To be honest, there is no great option.
The initial tiebreaker was Adam, who does not want either (A) or (C). Aaron pretty much agreed. To him, the most important part is to be welcomed by your community, and he wants a chance at that. He understands the risks of waiting, and is concerned about those risks. But also, he says that these days he is very anxious generally, and maybe he would be less anxious by that time. (I will add that by then we are likely to have gotten better at Zoom ceremonies, and more used to the sight of masks.) So… our choice is (B), the new date is July 17. We will also acknowledge their bar mitzvah date this summer with an aliyah, to mark the occasion, and especially their in this decisionmaking.
I share Aaron’s values for community, and I am extremely proud of him. When we can all gather around him and celebrate his incredible journey to get to that point – what a day that will be! Meanwhile… we are so sad, we can hardly talk about it.
We had multiple conversations to decide what to do next -- with our partner family, with our rabbi, and with Aaron. All of these conversations were beautiful examples of respectful candor, where everyone got to say where they were coming from. They were also heart-wrenching and exhausting. Our rabbi was wonderful: she was a good listener, helped organize what she was hearing into a clear set of options, and gave her own input, which I was really grateful for.
We needed to decide between three options:
(A) Go ahead this July (2020), knowing that guests could attend only by zoom. There is a chance we might be able to be in the sanctuary ourselves, though masked.
(B) Wait until next summer (2021), in the hope that we could be in person for some part of either the service, the party, or both, with zoom attendance as the backup plan. (We don’t want to do it in the winter because then we’d have to be indoors, which greatly reduces the chance of being able to gather safely.)
(C) Wait until we can be fairly confident it will be safe for vulnerable people to travel to be with us, i.e., when there is a vaccine. This is not next summer, but maybe the summer after that (2022).
The only one of these that we felt able to rule out was (C). The boys would be turning 15 and a year through high school already; it just feels developmentally wrong at that time. Among the four adults, there was pretty much equal inclination for (A) and (B). One preferred (B) because there is a chance of gathering our community together, one preferred (A) because (to be really frank about it) loved ones could die in the coming year, and two felt equally divided. Is it better to wait until it can be more like we want, or does it suck to have it hanging over your head for another year? What if we wait until 2021 and then it turns out to be the same as it would have been in 2020? To be honest, there is no great option.
The initial tiebreaker was Adam, who does not want either (A) or (C). Aaron pretty much agreed. To him, the most important part is to be welcomed by your community, and he wants a chance at that. He understands the risks of waiting, and is concerned about those risks. But also, he says that these days he is very anxious generally, and maybe he would be less anxious by that time. (I will add that by then we are likely to have gotten better at Zoom ceremonies, and more used to the sight of masks.) So… our choice is (B), the new date is July 17. We will also acknowledge their bar mitzvah date this summer with an aliyah, to mark the occasion, and especially their in this decisionmaking.
I share Aaron’s values for community, and I am extremely proud of him. When we can all gather around him and celebrate his incredible journey to get to that point – what a day that will be! Meanwhile… we are so sad, we can hardly talk about it.
Monday, May 18, 2020
68 days
It has been 68 days since the kids were sent home from school. This is a historic time, and it would be really good of me to keep a better record of what our family is experiencing, but I keep finding that hard to do. It’s not that I’m too busy… it’s more like I don’t want to. Basically I wish it wasn’t happening and would rather just look the other way until it’s over. But it’s not going to be over for a long time. I’m even social-distancing in my dreams.
Overall we are fine. I work remotely and cook. Dale works remotely and gardens. Aaron keeps up with school and plays Minecraft. Jordan… plays Minecraft (school expects very little of him). The kids do household tasks; we go the park; we watch TV together. And then there is another day.
School will be with us in this sense for another month-ish, and then for the summer, the kids are likely to have nothing. Most of their beloved summer activities have already been canceled: sleepaway camp is gone, choir camp is extremely unlikely, ultimate frisbee camp is gone in June and only remotely possible in August. A long vista of strange time stretches before us. But for today, we have a wonderful home, we get along, we eat well, and the weather is beautiful.
Overall we are fine. I work remotely and cook. Dale works remotely and gardens. Aaron keeps up with school and plays Minecraft. Jordan… plays Minecraft (school expects very little of him). The kids do household tasks; we go the park; we watch TV together. And then there is another day.
School will be with us in this sense for another month-ish, and then for the summer, the kids are likely to have nothing. Most of their beloved summer activities have already been canceled: sleepaway camp is gone, choir camp is extremely unlikely, ultimate frisbee camp is gone in June and only remotely possible in August. A long vista of strange time stretches before us. But for today, we have a wonderful home, we get along, we eat well, and the weather is beautiful.
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