These days, I’m missing respite.
We live several hours from our nearest relatives and have a spotty social network in our area (life is busy, and it’s hard to make new friends post-college), so each time we added to our family, it was with the assumption we’d be doing the parenting by ourselves.
Mostly, we have. The Chaplain and I figured out how to ask each other for what we needed to keep our tanks from running empty, and we made it work. That was when I had out-of-the-house activities a couple of times a week, and so did the Chaplain. Those out-of-the-house options narrowed to one during the pandemic: The Long, Solitary Walk.
If it had to be just one thing, the Long Solitary Walk is the best. But there comes a time in an introvert’s life when she just wants to be home alone. And when everyone has to stay home all the time, that just isn’t happening.
Last week, the Chaplain came home, saw my face, and offered to take the kids to the pool and leave me home.
It may have been my first time home alone since lockdown started.
You have seen How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi, recommended across social media and on every list of books about racism. In the weeks after George Floyd, it felt like reading Kendi’s book was the action point to start with.
I made a wearable muslin of the Seamwork Jo. It’s the kind of shirt with pretty details and lots of ease that needs a little finessing to get just right.
It’s been hard to distill what I want to share about this book, so I’ll start with what my mom told me about it after she sent it a copy to me to read during quarantine: “It’s good.”
What The Wind Knows, by Amy Harmon falls into a unique category that makes it special.
I made a wearable muslin of the Seamwork Jo recently, and as soon as my eight-year-old son saw the almost-finished product, he asked for one.
I often hesitate to say yes to these requests. It’s intimidating to take an adult-sized pattern and try to make it fit a kid. Secondly, with seven kids there is a good chance several others are going to want one, too, in the name of justice. And I just can’t, most of the time, fit and make even three or four items to so many tastes and sizes.
Sometimes, one person makes a request and I do it before I can think better of it.
