Last week was really terrible. My response to almost every situation was tears. I was miserable. One day, I went for a walk alone to the library and passed a house that had been decorated for Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras! The green, yellow, and purple decorations were festive and beautiful. Seeing it made me happy.
Over the weekend, things got better gradually. On Sunday night, I went out and bought supplies for Carnival masks. I thought to myself, that was it. I’m over (or through?) the pandemic wall. I’ve done enough grieving about not traveling this year. There’s no school this week. Things are going to be great. I’ll make a short to-do list and be kind to myself about it. I’ll be less stressed because I won’t be doing school with the kids in addition to feeding, supervising, and managing my household. Maybe I’ll want to craft again!
A while back, I said I planned to write more thoughtful posts and fewer sewing and book posts. That commitment might have happened on a Superwoman day, or sometime before the pandemic. It seems like it was too hard to manage, because despite my commitment, the blog hasn’t changed.
Now, I sit here with a collection of five books that from outward appearance have nearly nothing to do with one another, and I’m trying to figure out how to knit them together into one cohesive post.
By the time you read this, it will be February. Things might be better than they are now, or they might still be about the same.
Maybe you want to consume something other than news, to stretch yourself, or just escape into a good story, learn something new, or melt into a puddle… one of these books might just do it for you. I hope so.
Many times during the pandemic, it’s felt like my hold on reality was tenuous. My body has been hurting, and it keeps getting worse. My brain was overloaded with the daily onslaught of requests. It is literally burning right now, right around its outer membrane.
After a particularly hard week, with major parenting struggles in addition to the regular parenting demands, I was teetering on the edge of not being able to cope when I walked into my new rheumatologist’s office.
I want to introduce my kids to voices that historically haven’t been amplified.
I asked our children’s librarians for books about Indigenous people, and by Indigenous people, and they provided me with an big bag of books from board books all the way up to YA lit.
These are four of my favorites.
The Chaplain is working more. I am walking, sewing, and reading less and parenting more. Quiet time has become an elusive ghost of a former life when I got to be alone for a period of time each day.
It feels like we are all in a constant negotiation for what we need, the kids and The Chaplain and I, and none of us are quite getting what we’re looking for.
So it was as we rearranged our dining room around a new piece of furniture, and my grandmother’s teacups came to the kids’ attention. They asked if we could have a tea party.
