Quarantine Journals - Still at Grandpas

How long as it been since we have been home? I have lost count... a month, I think?  The reconstruction is going well so far, but it has been very time consuming to manage and pick out tiles and paint colors etc from here.  Dan has been kind enough to go pick up and drop off samples, and Richard and I have been driving back to retrieve them so I can decide on what needs to be done. I am also having to order and pick out every single thing myself, so I have pretty much been on my ipad day in and day out for weeks.  When I find something I like, it seems like it almost always won't be here in time, and I have to shift gears. BUT I think I just placed my last order and should be finished. I hope.  This has all been a lot more money that I had anticipated, but I guess I should have figured that would be the case when we decided to redo a lot of the owner's bathroom as well.

Today was the third day of distance learning for Penny.  All in all, I think it is going okay.  She's very self motivated and keeping up with the required THREE zooms a day well.  Their midday zooms were canceled for Wednesday through Friday, and that has actually been a nice break.  I can tell in the evenings, though, that she's working through a lot of feelings about all of it still. We got an email saying that, next week, the specials teachers will also be doing zooms, and then another email saying that her speech teacher is going to be doing regular zooms. So you can just shoot me now, I have no idea how they are thinking we are going to do 4 - 5 zooms a day. It leaves no time for her to actually LEARN anything.

Oliver has continued to be a bit of a rage machine over here.  Lots of tantrums. Lots of screaming.  Lots of meltdowns.  He asks almost daily, every day since we got here, to go home.  I am still shocked that he is so eager to go back to the place he was stuck for months on end, but he has been nothing but consistent in his requests no matter how many things we bring back for him.  Today, in his normal "must be held for dinner" rage fit, I asked him if he wanted to sit with Richard or Grandpa instead—I needed a break.  He has not agreed to sit with Grandpa since we got here, but today he climbed up into his lap and did an amazing job of sitting still and eating.  Toward the end of the meal, he said "I want to go home."
"What? You don't like it here?"
"I LOVE it here for days and days. I want to go home though."
And then a few minutes later I heard him very softly, oh so quietly say:
"I miss my friends."
It broke my heart. When my dad asked "Where are your friends?" Oliver responded, "Very so far away."

Tonight, Kamala spoke at the DNC and accepted the nomination for the democratic VP.

I am having weekly meetings to move forward on the website with Paul, but it is all still in the very early stages of production. Literally doing wireframes and talking about page function, so basically he didn't START on the website until two months after the website was suppose to be done.  But I am so overwhelmed with everything right now.. I am having a hard time making myself care.

Some folks are listing and upgrading events again. I hate to even do them, but they almost always get canceled. Though some ARE still happening, though how anyone could throw or attend a craft show right now completely blows my mind.

I am having Covid nightmares on the regular these days.  Pretty much any dream hits a point where I realize that we are out in public and forgot our masks and no one is wearing masks and I am panicking to get us out of there.  The ones that take place in Weatherford usually have LOTS of folks out, no masks, and they are carrying guns.  Sigh.

I passed several restaurants on my way to the house the other day that were PACKED FULL of cars.  And so many pictures of people filling eateries and, obviously, with no masks in sight.

I am still staying up until 3AM most nights trying to get house shit done or anxiety, but now having to wake up at 7AM for penny's school, and I am crashing.

So I am going to bed now.  Gmail won't let me attach any images, so I will send some another tie.










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