Quarantine Journals - Fort

Man, when I started this journal I never anticipated that I was going to be doing it for months. But I think it's become kind of cathartic and interesting to be able to look back on, so I will press ahead and hope that some of this is interesting to you in your adulthood.

I woke up this morning coughing, but I assume that it's from the super high pollen count and being outside as much as possible the last several days. I'm going to bed with a sore throat, but we were also outside all day today. The weather was lovely this morning, cool and windy, and even though it heated up later, it still wasn't too terribly bad.

Penny finished her schoolwork pretty quickly, and Oliver, who had woken up early that morning, was crying to go outside, so we packed it up and headed out. He's gotten to where he doesn't want to be in the front yard or in the backyard, but always walking and moving. This morning I just wanted to be in a space.  Still.  Rest.   So there was some friction about that. Eventually, though, he ended up climbing into the sandbox and playing with Penny for an extended period of time. I think he just needs to get used to the idea that sometimes we go outside to play in one place instead of covering the entire neighborhood.

We found several more ladybugs, and Penny has been relocating them to the garden that we planted yesterday. I texted Richard to let him know the weather was beautiful, and it wasn't much longer that he wandered out and started working on the fort. The kids and I checked on the garden, and everything is looking OK. But I have no faith in my gardening skills, so I hope I don't let them down.  Pretty much all the seeds that we started inside have sprouted except for the rosemary, and the aero garden seems to be doing really well. The only thing that hasn't sprouted is the cilantro, mint, and time. I planted a few new cilantro seeds tonight, first cracking them in half and also trying to germinate some other ones after soaking them.

Oliver pretty much always ends up taking a dirt bath when we're in the backyard, so I brought him in to take a shower while Richard got lunch ready.  Richard and Penny spent most of Oliver's nap outside working on the fort. I'm really impressed with her progress, and it was really neat to watch her and Oliver and Richard all work together on the floorboards.

I noticed while we were outside that there's severe weather coming tomorrow, so we spent some time making a plan to protect the plants and making sure that Richard got to a stopping point on the fort that was nice and stable for Highwinds and hail.

I emailed my dad this morning to see how his pain level was doing and if there was any improvement, but though he sent me multiple emails throughout the day, he didn't stop to reply to my well-being check. So I emailed him again around four, and he finally replied around 530 saying that he was feeling better, he guessed the meds were helping. 

I heard back from the web developer today that my detailed responses to his email had helped Paul get a clear idea of my goals with the website, and he was good to go. But they are wanting to use a different page builder, and I was too overwhelmed today to dig into that. We had a brief discussion tonight, and I told him I would give them an answer tomorrow, but that it was probably fine to switch gears. I can't fight them on everything, and this seems like a dumb battle really.

The kids had fun playing on the part of the fort that Richard had built today, and I think they're excited about him adding the railing on so that it doesn't seem so precarious up there. I'm excited about himAdding a pulley and finishing off a working sink that we've been talking about.  I can tell that he's really proud of himself, and I'm really proud of him too. He worked super hard, and I have no idea what this project was going to end up like. I certainly couldn't have done it.

There was a lot of concerning shit in the news today. I can't even really wrap my head around it or summarize it. I guess the biggest things that stood out were a lot of reports from other countries about the different ways that this virus is behaving, ripping peoples hearts apart, causing strokes in young people, and causing all sorts of long-term damage. Meanwhile, in the United States, the governor of Texas has declared that businesses can start re-opening, and restaurants can have dining customers as long as they're at less than 25%. Mask are not required. so Hugo the ignorance, flooding out into the world excited to start doing the little conveniences that they have missed all this time. And I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop, because this will surely just end up putting us back at square one. The hospitals are overwhelmed, the supplies are still not there, and now people are going to resume life as it was and just continue to increase the exposure. Dumbasses. I don't know what else to say. It's fucking depressing to live through this and watch people who  value getting their eyebrows waxed more than they do someone's life.

In more positive news, the baby fish seem to be doing well, and the butterflies are doing well as well. The only one that has not emerged is the murderer worm, and I think he still has five days to cook in there. We were planning on letting the butterflies out tomorrow, but with the severe weather, tornado threat, and hail storms, we're going to hold onto that one more day.

All this online shopping, and grocery deliveries, and paying for Jan's groceries and paying for my dad's groceries mother-in-law's groceries and paying for my dad's groceries, and starting this giant fort project etc. has really racked up quite the credit card bill.  we are really lucky and that we're in a position to not have to pay our mortgage payment, so we are saving money fairly well, but we definitely spent it last month. Things are going to have to slow down pretty quickly because we can't afford to keep up this level of consumerism. That's not even including the tips that we've been sending for Carmen ($100) and InstaCart shoppers, Which is certainly no small amount, but important to do regardless.

I still need to make us all some fabric mask in case something happens and we have to go out into the world, but I just haven't had the bandwidth or time to do it yet. There always seems to be something to do, and I'm just barely scraping by with what Hass to be done. But, the gardening has been a nice, intermittent distraction from the state of the world, and I know Richard really appreciated the extended were woodworking break today woodworking break today.