Monday - 269th

There is that saying that kids keep you on your toes. Oh yes they do. You can't tell what their next words, actions, ideas will be. You can't prepare yourself. Much of your play with them is reactive: ultimately, they hold the reigns. 

I was thinking about that today as I scrambled to move stuff around to accommodate a sudden switch of Snowdrop's school Zoom time -- from work space, to a select play spot. For that, she chose a hidden corner of the farmhouse where there stands a potty. It's waiting for its next user and then I suppose the yet-to-be-born user. I quickly grabbed the little seat out of camera range, but it was no use. When asked to describe her play space, Snowdrop looked around and noted that there was a sudden conspicuous absence of the potty. I had to smile: perhaps her teacher and class playgroup think that this child's one play space at the farmette is in the bathroom. (In fact, there is no bathroom on the ground floor here at all and I've preferred keeping a potty handy rather than having the kids scrambling up the and down the steep slippery steps when the urge strikes.)

If you keep an ear to the classroom conversation, you can pick up interesting tidbits about kids' lives (including which families do and which do not take mitigating measures against the spread of the virus). An insight into private spaces, exposed now because the kids are home rather than in the classroom.

 

I had a few extra minutes for idle thoughts because the move of kids from home to farmhouse came a little later than expected. The teacher's early morning session lasted too long and there was no time to do the transfer before the next one. So Ed and I lingered over breakfast...

And then finally the kids came, insisting this time on using the refurbished front entrance!

They plunge into play with such vigor that you'd think they hadn't been around toys for years.

All this, of course, punctuated by Snowdrop's school sessions. I listen in a little and I hear others doing some math counting. But Snowdrop is quiet. I whisper -- shouldn't you join in? She gives an impish smile and whispers back -- I'm mouthing the numbers so that it looks like I'm saying them with the others! She has invented a way to keep herself amused. Didn't we all do that in school...

There is a moment where the kids do some form of relaxation yoga-ish exercises. I like that. I want to melt into my own space too! Unfreeze all that is tense and stiff within me!

(Snowdrop is growing out her bangs. For now.)

There is, too, some productive solo work time today: Snowdrop has to write about and illustrate her  surroundings. This she likes. And again I just have to smile. On one page, presumably depicting the main room of the farmhouse, she has drawn two items: a couch and a TV, possibly giving the impression that this is the thrust of her time here: couch, TV.

Toward the end of their time here, we do another wonderful nature walk!

True, we don't have the sunshine. And yes, it's pretty close to freezing. None of this appears to bother the kids today. They frolic as if it were June. Well, Sparrow is a little tentative about the running and jumping.

 

Snowdrop flies with abandon.

 

 

(Hiding...)

 

And then I take them home.

 

Toward evening Ed and I take a walk in the new development. I look at the new homes, many of them already occupied and decorated for the holidays. Perhaps the joy of moving into a new home will soften the ache of spending time away from the extended family this year. I hope so. Anything to fight the fatigue that I see in so many who just have had it with the virus even though the virus has definitely not had it with the likes of us. Just ask the wife of our friend -- she is a physician on the Covid unit at one of our hospitals.

Thinking tonight of all those who work so hard, so very hard to help those who are so very sick.

With love...

Sunday - 268th

 Lots of mini steps, all day long! Do this, do that, tidy here, clean there, cook now, cook later. With hardly a pause. And so I especially profited from my "morning with the pines..."

... and breakfast with Ed. 

 

The rest is a blur, really it is. Yes, there was a quiet walk squeezed into the afternoon, but it wasn't to any great destination. Ed said -- gorgeous, we're running out of places to walk, but I thought that was the wrong approach. It really doesn't matter where we walk -- the goal is to clear the head and move the legs and feel safe. That's it.

(loons, geese and ducks...)

 

 

(frozen)

 

(now I know who knocks the air out of holiday inflatables!)

In the evening, it rains awesomeness my way. Primrose calls and tells me about her tree, her holiday chain, her bells...

 

 

And there is familial overlap: the Madison young family is here once again for dinner. They have joined our isolation pod and they follow our strict safety protocols. And so we have Sunday dinners at the farmhouse again.

 And the kids play...

And we are reminded that this is what we all want and are waiting for. It's worth doing your bit if you can, just so we can all return to evenings like this.

With love...

Saturday - 267th

How much do you like holiday music? I have found that people have really strong feelings about this: negative or positive. Let's see if you can guess where I land...

You're right! I have always loved it: choral, instrumental, traditional, jazz and even occasionally the playful stuff (Muppets come to mind). It's all great. For 25 days I can't get enough of it. Since I don't like using ear plugs, I am so grateful to Ed for tolerating this. (His music engagement is... slight.) Yes, I keep the volume really low, but I do consider it an essential part of life on these very short days of winter.

And the days are indeed short (though not as short as in, say, Poland).

And they are cold. 

I notice that frosty crispness on my morning farmette walk. But then, I notice a lot on this short stroll!

 

 

Ed and I were listening today to a snippet on public radio about the concept of taking a forest bath, where you slowly absorb, with all your senses, all that a forest (or even a few trees) can offer. Deliberately, intensely. For me, the farmette pine grove offers this space where I can connect to all that grows around us. It's just magical to me, especially now: winter pairs well with pines!  

(A fragment of my morning forest bath...)

 

 

 

I do a bit of housecleaning before breakfast and so Ed and I get to our meal just before it's time for me to meet up with my Polish friends (always at noon my time).

The Zoom Polish call has become an anchor for all of us. Sure, we have our families, our friends and pals, but navigating this strange new world is hard and sharing our own personal sagas is important. We do it together, every few weeks.

Unfortunately one (absent) friend from our group has taken a turn for the worse with COVID, but it helps to talk this out with all the others. Who would doubt that sharing information that's not so great is important.

And it is true that I am the one who is especially grateful for these Zoom calls. I'm the outlier, the one who lives in that strange country where they can't seem to get the virus under control. Poland, too, has had a bad run of it lately, but it never had the initial surge that we did and even the second surge appears to be tapering off a bit, though accurate data are hard to come by. 

As we Zoom chat, we don't have to say out loud what we miss most -- we all miss our kids and grandkids terribly. And after that? Friends. (Though for me, seeing these people would require such a long trip! Right now I am not thinking that far ahead. At the moment I don't miss travel at all, because travel has been contaminated with transmission. How soon will it become the bedrock of my retirement again? I cannot tell. One month at a time.)

 

In the late afternoon, Ed and I drive out to the Brooklyn Wildlife Area. Deer hunting by rifle is over in Wisconsin, but hunters are still prowling around. They're allowed to go after squirrels, rabbit, pheasant, quail and grouse. Too, you can still kill deer with a bow and arrow or a muzzleloader whatever that is. (Yes, I could look it up, but do I want to?)  It is overall safer now especially if you wear blaze orange, and we do.

The views are familiar to us, but still very pretty! Against a beautiful Wisconsin sky.

The sun is setting by the time we come home.

Music on, candle lit, salmon panfried with a tart sauce and cheesie veggies to fill that ache for something comforting.

Be good, stay healthy.

With love...

 

Friday - 266th

A full day! So let's not get lost in the detail. No need to mention morning walk to feed the animals and the fact that the cheepers were hiding, possibly because an opossum has been prowling around here in recent days. And I can skip the details on how Tuxie caught a mouse and brought it to show off to others as they had to make do with regular cat food for breakfast.

Speaking of breakfast... Ed, if you're coming down then hurry up! 

 

 

The kids once again come to the farmhouse and this time they both seem to enjoy a brief moment in the brilliant sunshine that more than makes up for the coolness of the day.

Inside, it is nearly a repeat of yesterday: Snowdrop plunges into her pretend play, Sparrow takes out every bit of toy food (and there is a lot of it) many times. (In between, he'll be back with the duplos.)

 

We do read, alternating chapters of a book for the girl with less demanding books for the boy. 

 

 

And Sparrow asks to paint, which is a bit more fun to watch than having him do art with markers where no cap ever gets to go back onto the marker unless Gogs makes a fuss and then ultimately does it herself.

Snowdrop has her school meetings... 

 

 

... and we realize that it wont do to have the teacher announce at 11:30 that art equipment, found in the school box, would be needed for the 12:30 meeting. It appeared, for example, that the little girl would need glue. In the end, I found some glue sticks that were last used many years ago. Dry as anything. Ed watched youtubes on how to undry glue sticks.

It did not work. It was the second time in the scant meetings with her class that Snowdrop was left scrambling through no fault of anyone's really. Just circumstances. 

 

Still, good moods prevail. More than prevail!

And it tickles my heart at the end of our time together to hear Snowdrop say -- let's do a nature walk! And for Sparrow to repeat excitedly -- I love nature walk! (Sparrow loves a lot of things.) 

 

I'd always wanted someone else to love that spot among the pines here at the farmette. I found two aficionados, admiring with me the marvelousness of a path softened by pine needles and decorated by pine cones.

Later, toward evening actually, Ed and I take our walk in the county park. By the lake.

 

The colors are sublime. The sun is low, the world is quiet.

 

At the farmhouse? There are things that need to be put back, small cleaning jobs, some catch up stuff to do on the computer and as always in this month of short days, the light disappears ever so quickly. That's okay: the candle flickers, the tree lights throw color everywhere. 

Thursday - 265th

We start our December schedule today. After isolating for 14 days (and testing), the young family rejoined our bubble for this one month and the sitters stepped aside so that I could pop into the lives of the two kids once again.

The morning is hurried. Breakfast, with a groggy Ed, in the kitchen.

 

 

There's just enough time to feed the animals, to attend to a few chores and tasks and then boom! The kids are back at the farmhouse.

They haven't been here since late August and although both of them were eager to plunge into their world of games and toys here, I'd say that Sparrow was just his usual happy self...

... whereas Snowdrop, a girl with big feelings, was besides herself with joy. Words like "I can't believe I'm here" and "it's like a dream come true" were spoken and she bounced with glee from one set of favorites to the next, settling for a long while with her dolls for which she loves to create imaginative contexts, roping me in of course, as we pretend to set one group of her "kids" into one story line and another in some competing place. This is such a common and uniquely farmhausian play scene (the well behaved kids versus the less obedient, the model eaters versus the sugar gobblers, you get the picture)!

Sparrow? Oh, he'll still spend a lot of time with toy foods and duplo blocks. I call him the "take out kid" because he loves to take out a lot of stuff, piling things from every corner in one heap, otherwise known as a mess. I spend not a small number of Fitbit steps chasing after him and putting things away.

 

It is a school day and at different points, Snowdrop has to check in with her class for 20-30 minutes at a time.

 

She is quite familiar with the routine and with the Zoom shared screens and all the rest of it, which is good, because I still find the whole set up of online assignments and random videos and questions rather puzzling and there isn't a cohesiveness to the school day, nor much opportunity to engage socially with the kids, which I suppose is understandable, as many of the kids are on the quiet side and engagement is not always easy.

Somewhere in there I'm supposed to fit in a lunch and I thought after the 11:20 mini lesson would be great, but during this class segment the teacher asked everyone if they had had a good lunch so I suppose the expectation is that they eat before that class. Oh well. We ate after.

I'm supposed to take the kids home in the mid-afternoon so that Sparrow can do a full nap there (he never sleeps long here: the house is small, the noise carries). Leaving the farmhouse turns out to be hard for Snowdrop as she has a long list of things she still wants to do. It takes a bit of effort for her to let go, but she does rally and we have a quick but lovely walk around the farmette lands...

 

 

... before I take them home.

 

It is, of course, tough to bounce around like that: from all to not much of anything, to all again, then later in the winter back to nothing. On the other hand, we have this gift of December and who knows what the world will look like in January and so I feel immensely grateful for the days that I do have with at least these two bandits!

 

When I come home, Ed asks -- do you want to play tennis? We should seize the moment, before it gets too cold! 

I'm amused. Ed, it is too cold!
Not as cold as it will be soon, so let's go!

And we do play. I'm terrible today, possibly because I have been on my feet since early in the morning and I hadn't even paused for lunch, but still, chasing after missed balls is surely great exercise, don't you think?

Evening. I need to make a frittata. 

 

 

 

 

 

I mean, something warm, with lots of eggs, veggies and cheese, for a cold December day that for once was full of movement and energy and child noises. You can almost pretend we're living in normal times. Kids, melting cheese, a game of winter tennis. What more could you demand...

With gratitude. And love...