Quarantine Journals - Inching through the week

It truly feels like this week has lasted a lifetime. I'm encouraged by the fact that I'm not feeling worse, and Oliver's fever is gone, but he's just been incredibly clingy and fussy and restless and not wanting to sleep for the last several days and I am exhausted. Everything is a crisis or a rage storm, and it just seems like he's crying or yelling at me all. Day. Long. Which is why I'm still up tonight… Just trying to decompress and get ready for another day tomorrow.

Anyway, this morning I woke up and Richard and I were kind of bickering out at the gate, so He went to the computer to work and I scooped the kids up and we went outside for a picnic in the front yard. The weather was beautiful, 75°, and we were able to sit and eat and play outside for a few minutes and try to reset and start the day off on the right foot. When you're stuck at home 24 seven and doing pretty much the same schedule every day, I think sometimes it helps just to do something unusual. And a little tiny inchworm ended up on our picnic blanket— both kids had a really good time watching it and letting it crawl all over their hands.

Speaking of insects, our caterpillars are getting pretty big!

Amongst the other exciting events that are happening here, Mosley has had a pretty terrible case of the fleas.Richard has been using a flea shampoo on him but I suspect is giving him skin issues, and last night his back looked so bad. I've spent the entire full week going back-and-forth with the vet and getting the shipping expedited to get his flea medication here which arrived today. He seemed much better by the end of the day, but now I'm just worried that it's already gotten to the point that we're going to start finding fleas around the house. I guess we will see.

Richard has been working on cleaning up and power washing the deck, wanting a nice weather day to go out and re-stain it. He ordered everything he needed about a week ago but it's been raining on and off pretty much ever since.  I had suggested that he do the staining today since it was 96° yesterday and only 76° today. So he was outside for the vast majority of the day, staining and re-staining and topping and all of that good stuff. Which is fine, but since Oliver was inside screaming and losing his mind and asking for daddy the entire time… It was rough. He had some questions about how to properly apply the second coat, so I ended up having to make a couple of phone calls. I called the people who produce the product, and a guy there gave me some advice about what we did wrong and what we need to do to fix it. And then I called Ace hardware and ask them if they were delivering orders. Though the personnel there is far from friendly every time I call, the guy was very kind and took my order, even added toilet paper to it, and they delivered it within the hour. So Richard was able to get all of the deck taken care of today. And though he's not happy with the end result, maybe he will be tomorrow. At least it's done! I thought it was very kind of them to deliver everything, especially when it was probably quite a small order… I don't know I never even chase down the receipt. But he asked me when I needed it and I said well they said within the hour but tomorrow morning is fine, and he said he would be here within the hour.

During all of this, my dad called very upset. His Internet has been down for nearly a week, and he spent countless hours on tech-support and trying to schedule somebody to come out and fix it. I guess they came out today and he instructed them to work on it from the outside since that's where all the equipment was, but they insisted that they need to come inside. They came inside didn't find an issue and went back outside which is when my dad called me. He was upset. And rightfully so. He has been successfully self Quarantine for weeks now, and all that kind of goes out the window when two people come marching into your house. I was so angry that I couldn't possibly see straight. I don't seem to have any speeds except from 0 to 60 in terms of anger rage or panic anymore. I experienced them all at the same time Listening to his phone call, and I almost felt like I was going to pass out from the adrenaline. I'm really upset that they were people in there digging around his house. And because he wasn't planning on going anywhere or doing anything, he doesn't have Lysol, disinfecting wipes, or anything to spray over there to clean up and feel better about the situation.  They ended up going out and coming in multiple times, running a new line I think. My dad sounded stressed out but not necessarily too angry when I spoke to him. He said he just wanted to let somebody know that there was someone out at his house. But then I got a phone call from Brandon about 10 minutes later saying that dad had called him all stressed out and upset because there were people in the house. He said he still had an hour of work to do and he couldn't help him right now, and I told him I'd already talk to dad but that he hadn't said much of what Brandon had said.  I wasn't exactly sure what to do or what to say, so we talked about the situation for a few minutes. I think more than him not having time to deal with it, he just didn't know what to do, and frankly neither did I. I called the company to yell at them, but ended up waiting on hold for so long just to talk to somebody that I hung up on them so I can call back and check on my dad. While we were talking, Brandon consider the fact that he might've left some lights all over there and said he could call back and give my dad the locations to look at. I suggested that if nothing else it would give him something to do to distract himself from what was happening. He was wearing some big gas mask that he had there, and having trouble breathing in it, which certainly wasn't helping the situation. Anyway, probably over an hour later, my dad texted me saying that the guys had left and that he was sitting Down to eat and have a drink. I sent him a couple of messages after that but he never responded to any of them. Which I'm now only realizing… And it's somewhat stressful. I kept giving him suggestions on how he could clean the area that the guys have been in, but he kept insisting that he didn't have anything there to do any of that with. I'm really worried about him. Obviously he's high risk and older, and having those people coming in and out of his house was a big breach of safety.

So, between the pipe that's leaking in the front yard but I'm too scared to hire a contractor to come fix it because I'm afraid they'll have to come in the house, and my dad's experience with the Internet guys and worrying about his health and safety now, and Richard trying to stain the deck and then worrying that he screwed it up and helping walk him through it, and ordering the stuff from the hardware store to be here, and trying to figure out why Mosley's heartworm medication hasn't been shipped, and doing the homeschool and taking care of screaming Oliver, today was just one big ball of adrenaline riddled internal screaming for a vast majority of the day. But, it ended on a decent note when Oliver learned how to use the scissors and he and penni sat perfectly content cutting up paper for 45 minutes while I fixed them dinner. They went to bed early, and I came out here and ate a little bit of food and watched a little bit of TV and typed up this post and got ready to go to bed.

Sleep is still hit or miss, I was up until nearly 3 AM yesterday after I stayed up late doing the laundry and then just couldn't quite get to sleep. Allergies have been so bad outside that my whole body pretty much itches And I laid in bed imagining that there might be fleas everywhere.

and I laid in bed imagining that there might be fleas everywhere.

I don't have the stamina or drive or passion to get on my computer to do anything. I haven't been doing much work other than posting inspirational art images encouraging people to stay home. And I think that's OK. But it's also depressing to see how much my sales have suffered and how little traffic I have to my social media accounts and to my website. I think pretty much it's going to be like starting all over when this is said and done.

Bernie dropped out of the presidential race which is really disgusting and disappointing and depressing. He was the only person, and office or not, that seem to be raising tons of money and really trying to help people during this time. I think it made him sick to death of the idea of pushing people

I don't have the stamina or drive or passion to get on my computer to do anything. I haven't been doing much work other than posting inspirational art images encouraging people to stay home. And I think that's OK. But it's also depressing to see how much my sales have suffered and how little traffic I have to my social media accounts and to my website. I think pretty much it's going to be like starting all over when this is said and done.

Bernie dropped out of the presidential race which is really disgusting and disappointing and depressing. He was the only person, and office or not, that seem to be raising tons of money and really trying to help people during this time. I think it made him sick toDeath the idea of pushing people to go out and vote when the most important thing is for everybody to stay home right now. So he dropped out of the race, and were left with useless slow Joe, and very little hope for getting Trump out of the office at this point.

The president gave a speech about how things are going so well here that are now starting to donate ventilators to other countries, and things are going great and cases are going down… Blah blah blah. Then you get on social media or you know, actually look at the news, and you'll see that things are as bad as ever. People can't find groceries people people can't afford food people. There aren't enough and Laters, lots of people are dying, and they keep saying that the numbers are Going down but the fact of the matter is that there's not enough test anywhere and you still can't get one unless you're in a super high risk category.

Meanwhile, one of the men that works for Richard is going up at the office trying to talk to the receptionist refusing to wear a mask and bringing workers into the office even though it's been a month of that not happening. When all this started going down Richard told the workers not to come into the office and Amy was supposed to stay on one side of the office and Eric was supposed to stay on the other side of the office. Eric doesn't listen to any of it, he thinks it's all a big fat jokes, and it doesn't matter how many times Richard has brought it up, he just does whatever he wants to do. Then Amy messages over worried about her own safety, and it makes me furious and mad and disgusted. Richard ended up yelling At him yesterday. I see neighbors watching shoulder shoulder down the street one inviting another into the house and then going in together… People still aren't taking this seriously and it's just going to continue to get worse. I'm really terrified that they're going to send everybody back into the world too early and it's just gonna be another big wave as bad as the first one. Anyway, I'm sitting here anxiously and nervously picking up my fingers and smashing them into my leg and my foot and my toes, without any regard for the fact that my fingers still massively injured and now I am in excruciating pain. So no more typing, I'm off to bed. This was a lot of rambling, but hopefully it gives you a good snapshot of the madness that still going on here.

Easter is this weekend, and it's supposed to rain. Trying to get some Easter Activity started with the kids tomorrow because we're just kind of behind on everything. Richard still hasn't gotten the Easter decorations down. 

Penny lost one of her front teeth.

Our seeds don't seem to be growing.