Quarantine Journals - long day on a long week

Though I can't exactly remember what has happened this week that makes it feel like such a hard one, it has been unusually long. I actually woke up this morning thinking today was Monday somehow. Today was a rough day. It started out OK. I got a really sweet text from penni's teacher where she if I only noticed the payment, and she asked me to call her. I called her we had a chance to sit and chat on the phone for a few minutes about the gift in the cards and what she's going through. She told me again that Penny is the best student that she has ever had in her class, and she doesn't think that she will ever have a class this amazing or a student as wonderful as tiny as. I thought that was really sweet.

Penny's school work was very interactive and fun today, but that also made it pretty time-consuming. I felt like it went on and on and on until early afternoon, when she's usually done in a couple hours in the morning. Oliver had a lot of fun playing on his iPad, and then had moved on to do other activities leaving his iPad behind. It's nice to see that there's some self regulation happening.

We did some art for one of her projects, and then we had a nice little lunch. I swept Oliver away for a nap, and Penny had a call scheduled with two of her best friends again.  The call was scheduled for three, but at 3:05 one of the moms informed me that her son didn't want to come inside, so he would not be participating today. I tried to touch base with the other mom to make sure her son was still coming, but after over half an hour of waiting it was clear that he was not. Penny was pretty upset, and she felt like her friends had forgotten about her.

I think that just causes an emotional trauma, because the rest of the day was just very touch and go with the emotions. She wanted to go outside and build something with Richard, but the lumber that he ordered for tomorrow for them to make their giant Jenga game got canceled.  So, instead, they went outside to work on a birdhouse together. And of course Oliver wanted to be involved, and I ended up bringing him out a little toy hammer toolbox and nails that he hadn't seen before. And he did a great job of playing with that for a lot of the time.

While they were getting started and before I had brought out the toolbox, Richard ended up kind of yelling at me because I was inside and he was trying to manage both the kids in this project outside. It was really frustrating for me, because I had literally sat down at my computer for the first time in four weeks to make one graphic to post on my Facebook page so that I wouldn't lose my entire following. It's really hard to feel like I'm on duty all the time, whereas he gets to break away and have some time to do what he needs to do at his desk, I am parenting six days a week always.  Anyway, my website has totally tanked. Of course. You don't want to be in a event space business right now. My traffic is the lowest that it has ever been in probably the decade. I've lost 70 to 80% of my ad sales. I've lost 100% of all my other event-based revenue. I'm not making any money. I'm spending more money building this website yet again, which I also haven't heard any progress on because everybody's trying to deal with pandemic crap. And that starting to make me anxious too.

Anyway, I managed to finish out my quick graphic, and then Oliver kept pointing down the alley and saying that he needed to go this way to find his parents.   So I took the kids for a walk to find his parents while Richard got dinner started. The struggle here with food is not necessarily obtaining it, but holding a variety and presenting foods that the kids will enjoy. Oliver is willing to try anything once, and he usually enjoys what he eats, but penni is pickier than ever. So we do big grocery runs and then try to use up all the food that we've purchased, but it really feels like there's only three meals that she wants to eat, and we can't eat those all the time. Tonight, Richard made chicken teriyaki, which she loves at restaurants, but wouldn't even try here. Asking her to try a bite to see if she even liked it before she decided she wasn't going to eat it resulted in a full on meltdown with tears and crying and hysterics and Richard sitting in the kitchen floor and holding her. I explain to her that when I was a child A lot of times my parents wouldn't even let me get it from the table until I had eaten the majority of my food, and she was shocked. She killed "what! Why!?!" And I explain to her that that was the way that they parented. It didn't matter to them if I didn't like the food, because they had spent their money on the food, and that was all we had to eat. And then I pointed out that Richard and I have never felt that way with her, and we've always given her the option to eat what she wants to eat and fill up her stomach and feel good enough to make it to the next meal, and all were asking is just for her to give things a serious honest try before she decide she won't eat them. I was actually shocked to see her ride her out rage all the way to the table and take a bite, even two, before deciding that she didn't like The food.  I asked her why she wouldn't at least eat her rice, and she said she was bored of it. And I emphasized but I asked her why she wouldn't at least eat her rice, and she said she was bored of it. And I emphasized but pointed out that this is what we were having for dinner and sometimes you have to eat boring things just to fill up your stomach and feel OK. And she did while we talked about a variety of other things. The tears continued on and off pretty much straight towards bedtime though. And when we laid down her body was practically vibrating with anxiety. I'm hoping that the cuddles and holding her and singing to her and reading her a book about Love helped to fill up your cup enough to get to the exciting parts of tomorrow and let her add some good memories to this week.

Both of the kids did lots of building inside and out with magnet blocks and real nails and you name it. I spent three hours in the middle of the night yesterday cleaning up the living room, and they really took advantage of the nice big space and pulled out some toys they hadn't seen in a while and enjoyed them. The house feels like a disaster, overwhelming mountains of laundry and food and toys everywhere and never enough time to pick any of it up, but I'm slowly working on trying to make a dent while both the kids are doing their "schoolwork."