Quarantine Journals - Zooms, Gardening

This morning Penny had her lunch Bunch zoom with some of her classmates, followed by a one on one video chat with A classmate who was later having a drive-through birthday party. I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but when I replied to the moms text to ask what a "drive-through birthday party" would be involving, she said that the families would be driving by and cars, and stopping to talk to her daughter and get a goodie bag. Since that is obviously nowhere near no contact, we had to politely decline. Instead, I offered up a zoom meeting between Penny and her daughter so that they could chat. The chat itself was somewhat awkward because the other little girl really said pretty much nothing, and after 20 minutes or so of talking to her self, Penni asked Richard if lunch was ready and got off. The little girls mother said that she had fun though.

I took the kids outside a couple of times today. But, Oliver was a total mess this morning. He was clearly exhausted but we were in a place where we could do naptime yet. So, he asked to go for a walk in the stroller, and Penny rode her scooter around the block. She wanted to come in and play in the backyard, but Oliver didn't want to stop, so we did another lap, and then he got out of the stroller and walked yet another one.

I forgot to mention that during Penny's speech one on one meeting yesterday, she was telling her teacher about all of our plants, and the teacher said "wow, it sounds like you guys are growing a lot of stuff!" And Penny said, "Gardening gives my mommy her patience." The speech teacher just laughed and said "wow, I got to try that myself."

After naptime, the kids went outside and played with Richard, and Oliver cried to go in the bike trailer, so Richard took him around the block while penni played on her scooter in the front yard. She was practicing using both her scooter and all of her scooter to move back-and-forth on the sidewalk. I watched her through the window while I did some gardening.  Both kids have gotten pretty good at coming up to the door whenever they see other people walking by, so that was a relief to watch her execute such excellent social distancing.

After that, we all had hamburger leftovers, and watched the little mermaid.

Deanna continues to send me one long message and then ignore me for the rest of the day. I told her today that I can't do this anymore. I've reached out to her multiple times, and when she's ready to have a full conversation about what's going on I'll be here.

It occurred to me at midnight tonight that tomorrow is not only her last day of school, but that I didn't have anything planned for it. Typically, they have parties and celebrations and all sorts of things all day at school, but I guess it kind of fell on our shoulders to make sure the day was extra special. So I wrote Penny a little letter, colored her picture, and left her out a new book called "the dinosaurs go to school." She has been asking for Macarons, so I dug in the freezer to find some that I had saved, and I went ahead and defrosted them so that we could have a treat for tomorrow snacktime.

I had a chance to review the new website stuff that Tom sent over this morning. The layout concept looks good, but it also feels kind of generic. It's definitely an improvement from what I had, but I was a little underwhelmed by the spirit of it. It looks like a demo site, but it doesn't really feel like it has much soul and wow factor to it. So I sent them over some notes, and I'll be interested to hear what their response is. I did take a look at the website in the morning, but it pretty much took me all day to kind of process the change in the layout and really pick a part what was an emotional response and what was an actual response to the design. There's just so much baggage and negative emotion associated with the website, especially when you're talking about a website for a business that is essentially dead right now, and a website for trafficking people to large events during a time where I don't think anyone should be leaving their house.

Anyway, it's nearly 2 AM and I just finished getting all of Penny stuff together. I'm gonna go watch a few minutes of TV and then try to get some sleep.

Marco polo continues to be a huge part of feeling connected to someone and also almost plays the role of a video diary. I found that sometimes the only way that I can really feel my emotions right now as if I sit down and leave a video talking about what's going on. It kind of helps queue up the tears and lets me feel my emotions, so I'm really grateful for that and for Rachael right now.