Hey, remember to drive your car once a week so the battery doesn’t die.
Recommend, if like love stories, and don’t mind subtitled foreign flicks: Portrait of a Lady on Fire, on Hulu:
My April Fooler’s birthday is tomorrow, and all the bakeries are closed, so I am making a cake. Pray for the waistband of my sweatpants.
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Two days ago, my mother called and I did not pick up. We still have a landline in our house, and an old skool message machine that blares out both our pre-recorded message and the incoming one. It belongs in a museum, but it’s in our central living space.
Leading up to the phone call, there had been an ever increasingly close-together amount of texts from my mom, sometimes group texts including my kids’ phones, ranging from birthday present requests to observations about social isolating, to questions about how everyone’s day was going.
I recommended she check out TIGER KING. She texted back with a half-dozen questions about what kind of show it might be. I sent her the trailer. She texted with questions about why her children watched that kind of thing. Then texted to see if I thought Middle and her husband might like it. How would I know? Go ask them I did not text back.
On its basic level, I understood the problem; I am the matron introvert of HOUS INTROVERTUS, and being stressed from current strangeness, my immediate family are quietly exhausted and tending towards nonverbal. My mother, alone and an extrovert and riddled with widowmania on the best of days, a ticking time bomb of word barf about to happen.
The kids and I were piled on the couch watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and I didn’t pick up. But as soon as her voice blared across the living room, the flaw in my plan was clear by the tone of her voice. Our county has a mandatory shelter-in-place. We were definitely home. We were screening our calls.
True.
“I want to talk to you, if not today, then tomorrow,” she commanded via disembodied voice echoing through our house.
When I woke the next morning, already a wall of texts. Texting was a fine way to communicate! But there also needed to be voices! Faces! We needed to set up a time each week, dedicated to family conversation! Her father always called 10AM Saturday morning, you could set your watch by it! Let’s do that.
For now, my husband agreed to take the weight of the FaceTime. I held the phone, faced toward him and the kids, chiming in only only enough to prove I was there. It wasn’t horrible.
But it was exhausting, and stressful and I can’t figure out if I’m so angry purely because of situational stress,
(In which case, I should rise to the occasion, or failing that, be honest that I cannot) or if I’m righteously angry she could demand anything of me when our relationship has been so damaged (which sounds a lot more like FUCCCCCCCK EWWWWE, If you’re lonely, call The Exes. You chose them before, you can have them now.)
Or even if it is the latter, what I’m teaching my kids by example about The Way You Treat Your Mother. Everyone needs love, and raising kids, my big fear is doing something painful to them they’ll biologically/subconsciously interpret as love. I’m scared that even though I don’t have the energy to take care of their grandmother, by avoiding her hot mess of widowmania, I’ll teach my kids that’s what love is.
(Or maybe you’ll teach them to love and take care of themselves, my sage husband muttered, half asleep, while I sandwichmania’d him before bed last night.)
(Title of your sex tape — Jake Peralta)
(Yes, I will keep using that worn out joke. The kids are making me watch every episode. Sorrrrryyyyyyyy.)
Mostly, I feel like this, or some version of getting sandwiched, is probably happening to lots of us. We were doing it before, but you throw in the stress of a novel world crisis, and I wonder if you are also watching your parents become needier. And at the same time, perhaps your children are regressing. And maybe your spouse is a gd soldier, but you (partly or in whole) are the tent pole holding this whole ecosystem up. I bet you are exhausted.
So I guess my question is, how are you handling this? Are you going martyr route or are you feeding your elders to the fishes? Are you perfectly balancing everything while Taking Advantage Of The Wonderful Time You Have? If so, please tell us how you are doing it, because we admire you and want to learn your secrets and also hate on you a little. It’s only natural, you can’t blame us. If you want complete anonymity, email. If you want complete anonymity but also for others to see your post, let me know when you email, and I’ll post it for you.
Smol song break:
omg a ticking time bomb of word barf…fucking brilliant. Also, I am the middle…we hate any conflict. Also, we don’t video conference in a good virus year, why the fuck would we now? The oldest is trying to make us…um hard no.
HIIIIIIEEEEEE!! Start your car, yes! I ventured out to the store this morning and as I turned the key and it took longer to catch I thought, ‘oh damn, does this thing still work?’ (It did.)
RE Screening Mom’s Calls/What you’re teaching your children: I second your husband -self care. To make it teachable, I suppose you could turn to them and explain generally in a kid-level way why you didn’t answer. Or a feel good, ‘Mom will call gram back later. Right now I just want to watch tv with you.’
This is overwhelming and unnatural. It’s ok to feel what you feel.
I’m handling this by staying up waaaay too late, either watching Netflix, or reading everything ’19’ I can find so I can be most prepared to handle when it hits our area/house. Again, would not advise this. Unless you can lock that part of your brain down. Mine just starts to project all the really awful ways I or my kids or husband will die alone, or what it will mean for my kids to lose a parent or two so young….can I live without my kids, or a kid….do I kill myself, but one might still need me…(please do not call services on me. I’ve thought about this since my eldest (heart defect kid) was born (how do I live if he dies?) and have ultimately decided duh, I can’t die. #1 I’m a chicken shit, and people survive without their kids every damn day, buck up buttercup, and #2, surviving child will need me. I can be a shit mother, but I would do my level best to not inflict THAT kind of pain and fuckery on my child……So, don’t do that. Sucks.
I stay up late, I sleep a little late. We start our day with a dance party, do some school work, some lunch, chores, more school work, art or craft, another dance party (I’m the only one that seems to dance. My son runs the lights, my daughter spends all her time ‘getting ready.’ Whatever. 15 min. cardio for me!), some walks outside. Thankfully we live literally at the edge of town, backed up to ag land. I’m comfortable with them roaming a little. Some days we say whatever! to all that and watch a screen all day, sometimes together, sometimes in separate rooms.. Good for them and me. I try and grant grace and correct shitty behavior without being shitty in return. It’s a work in progress. I think I’m over the ‘Whoa crap! We can’t do normal things for months??!!? Settled into a routine. And! I’m ‘essential’ so will be working a few days a week in the office. Starting that new phase later this week. Honestly not sure how I feel about it, We broke the office up into two teams to avoid so many bodies, and having to close the entire office should someone end up exposed, but I’m still less than 6′ from other team members….. The team I am on is not the team that some people I struggle with are on, so bright spot.
One day at a time. Every day is a new day. Keep calm and carry on. Trying to keep that in mind. And: SCIENCE is AMAZING. I have no doubt that SCIENCE will get us out of this, however long it takes. In the mean time, I kinda enjoy grocery shopping once every two+ weeks, even if I look like I’m hoarding, and having so many local business models change to deliver crap to my porch. Now can we get these people some decent pay and benefits? Some heroes wear scrubs, some help me fix things when I mess up the self-checkout.
Word barf, but without the familiar guilt.
We have good days and bad days. Good days where I get up without feeling too depressed to move, get the kids going on school work, am productive on my work and make something good for dinner. On bad days I can’t sleep so I wake up late and pissed off. Then I feel so morose I can’t deal which usually lines up perfectly with teenage child being surly and tween child crying that she misses her friends and panicking and wanting me to say everything will be ok.
Usually that’s the day I’ll go on FB and some uber mom is posting shit about how good mom’s should be enjoying all this family time and kids will look back in wonder on these glorious days of togetherness. I want to sometimes go stand on the back porch and scream “fuck this shit!” at the top of my lungs but I’d scare the neighbors. But seriously, fuck this shit.
(Wait, can I curse in the comments? Oops sorry if I can’t)
I think it could be a good opportunity to talk about boundaries, maybe?! A good opportunity to talk about how your mom is family and you love her and so you owe her some care and you want to (fill in the blank) but that doesn’t mean you have to (fill in the second blank) especially when you need (fill in the third blank) and you’re allowed to have your own needs, you’re allowed to tend to your own needs.
Then you could say to them it’s like when I expect politeness from you even if you say no to wanting to watch a movie with me. It’s okay if you say no, but I need you to show me respect in doing so. Or it’s like how we spend lots of time separately each day but we do (whatever thing(s) you guys do) together. We give each other attention and respect, but we also attend to our own needs.
But it’s so tricky, isn’t it. I’ve had many a discussion with my monkeys where I’ve said “and that’s why I’m doing this” and I feel like I’ve been clear, and I’ve made my points. Then a few days later they’ll say “I don’t want to do this for the same reason as you did that” and I go er uh I didn’t mean it like that but I can’t see a clear way to explain it?!
I’m working from home. The kids are all studying from home, and my husband’s working from home too. And ye gods it’s hard. I think I could cope with it better if we had, say, 2 hours every afternoon where I could take them to a park (or dump them at a park, ideally!) or could take them to a movie or something. But everyone’s ratty, everyone needs to be outside, everyone needs to socialise in person with people who are not family, and of course those are the things we can’t do.
PS – I should note I’m VERY aware of my privilege in being able to work from home.
And we have a treadmill for some indoors exercise, which is not as good as being able to go for a walk to a nearby park, mess around on the play equipment, have a couple snacks, walk back. But it’s far better than nothing. It could be very much worse.
Swimming in the sea of martyrdom right now. We are all on each other’s nerves. I’m teaching my mom how to use zoom so she can zoom with her friends. i’m tired of yelling at her not to go to the store especially when she gets to go during senior hours and scores my household toilet paper. Being locked up with husband is a much bigger challenge. We were in counseling before this and quarantine feels like a real make it or break it. So far we are doing well in the trenches but its only week three. I kind of yearn for the Don’t Leave the Goddamned House order so I can stop trying to take care of everything. And yes, I’m working form home and letting kids completely ignore schoolwork. At 10 and 14, they are teaching themselves better than any online portal could. We are fortunate but I am like a squirrel on crack with anxiety. And sleep? What is sleep? People still do that?