Re-focusing

 

I'm writing this post on Election Night. I haven't looked at any results yet. I want to get some thoughts out before the emotions cloud my judgement.

When I was learning photography, I was taught to focus a lens by turning it all the way to both extremes before finding clarity somewhere in the middle. I've been thinking about this as a metaphor for finding clarity in life these days. It speaks to my Libra qualities of balance-seeking.

I have been coasting along in my narrow range of focus assuming I was at my sharpest, clearest point. It's easy to ignore to edges, believing there is nothing there for you, both in life and in lens focusing. And it's true, there's probably not. I'm guessing there are very few people who actually find clarity all the way at the edge. But it's also true that you cannot appreciate your point of focus as a conscious choice until you allow yourself to really see the whole range.

I came to this metaphor and realization first in regards to my professional aspirations, thanks to the gift of space I have been given this year from my career. And so I have been turning my lens to the edges of the realm of possibility, gaining perspective to my focus that I didn't have before.

But it has also helped me gain perspective in regards to parenting. (Check out Free To Learn by Peter Gray. It will stretch you and then sharpen your focus on the choices you are making.)

And then there's politics. This chapter in our country's history is ugly and embarrassing. "Both sides" have been so hatefully accusing of the other: stereotyping and name-calling without ever stopping to ask, listen, and learn. What if we used our lens to reach to the edges and and truly seek understanding as opposed to coasting along in our narrow range of focus, assuming there's nothing else out there for us?

No matter what the results of this election are, I will continue to seek balance by stretching, not narrowing, my field of vision.

 (Picnic lunch with the Princeton H.S. Marching Band)

Same Day, Different Sweater

Before the pandemic, I thought my life was monotonous. I had a silly mantra for this feeling: "same day, different sweater". There seemed to be little time for creativity, spontaneity, or deviation. (I can no longer believe how many times a day I yelled "MOVE IT, MOVE IT, MOVE IT!!!!) Then we "sheltered-in-place" and I got a whole new perspective on monotony. Time seemed to stop, giving the perception of a gift of space to be creative and spontaneous. But I lacked the capacity for creativity and couldn't understand why. Turns out it was grief and I didn't know it. (Reference any of the articles or podcasts featuring grief expert David Kessler https://grief.com/covid-19/ between April 2020 and now.) Remember in Groundhog Day when Bill Murray finally realizes what's happening and he lays around in his pajamas for the first (few) days? Yeah, I'm definitely putting that movie on my list to watch again through the lens of the pandemic. I think it might be eerily prophetic.

Fast forward 6 months to today. Now, six month into this, I feel like I have the capacity for creativity and spontaneity. Six months, all the stages of grief, AND giving up my paid day job which occupied at least 75% of my mental space. (So if you're still not there, give yourself a break.) I have finally gotten to the point of realizing that this period I'm in that feels like I'm stuck on Groundhog Day, is actually a gift of pause. Each day is a unique opportunity to learn something new within the exact same context, without fear of losing time, missing an opportunity, or never getting this day back. Because tomorrow will be exactly the same and I get to start all over. (ala end-of-the-movie Bill Murray.)

I want to take a moment to acknowledge that for many of you, the pandemic did NOT push the pause button in your life, but instead it pushed the hyper-drive button with an anxiety booster. And then for most everyone else, the 'daily grind' climbed slowly but surely right back into place. I am certain both of these scenarios came with their own shitload of emotional and physical baggage, but since that is not my experience, I cannot directly speak to it. I acknowledge my privilege and I see you.

So my shift in perspective allows me to pack a lunch and walk across the street to watch marching band practice. It allows me to say "yes" to paint or games or books when they're requested, turning them into spontaneous teachable moments. It allows me to focus an entire day through the lens of a stupid holiday. It also allows me the grace of saying "no" whenever I don't feel like any of the above, because "Stay-At-Home-Moming" is a full-time job with even fewer breaks than teaching. So some days, much to my surprise, I have more patience than I did when I was teaching full-time (because my heart only has to hold two children as opposed to 500?). And yet most days my patience (and answers) are completely gone by 5:00 because see above re: full-time job with minimal breaks. And so I continue to be a walking, breathing contradiction. Except now, it feels a little more like "different day, same pants".

What to Eat?

 What to Eat?

One of the most time- consuming tasks during the pandemic has been food. What to eat, when to replenish the pantry, how to make time to prep, what can the kids help with, and mostly: how the hell to keep up with the never-ending cycle of dishes and kitchen mess! Spoiler alert: I've only partially answered these questions and have a LONG way to go before mastery.

Realizations: 

• We relied on other people/ sources to fix our meals probably 50% of the time before the pandemic.
• We only have two young kids that don't eat large quantities at the moment. (I have a new appreciation for families with three or more kids, especially if they are teenagers.) 
• I am never worried about how we are going to afford to feed our family or whether or not we have enough to share. We are very lucky.

Let's talk about dinner. First of all, I have to confess: my kids are not picky eaters. I eat gluten-free and we generally prefer a paleo-centric diet (I might have made that term up). (Although I tested negative for celiac, I have discovered that many of my previously mysterious symptoms have mostly disappeared since I eliminated gluten from my diet. Shout-out to my good friend, Erica, for the reco nearly 13 years ago!) The kids eat what we eat 95% of the time. So the 'suggestions' I have for food may or may not work for everyone. I learned a great deal about cooking, using fresh ingredients, and what flavors work well together by cooking with Sun Basket delivery kits for 3+ years. We found many recipes that we loved and saved that I am pulling from now. I usually start with the seasonal  vegetables that I have access to and build from there. Since I had been in the habit of cooking dinner with Sun Basket, this was the easiest transition for me.

Over the past few months, I've been trying to get creative with lunch. We have slowly been eliminating lunch meats because of the processing/ chemicals so I've been on the hunt for healthy "grab and go" proteins (so that lunch doesn't take as much work as dinner). That's when my mom introduced me to the charcuterie board. Ok, not "introduced". I knew what charcuterie boards were, but my response to her was "those are really expensive to make". (My brain can be surprisingly binary at times for a creative person. If you don't buy fancy ingredients, you can make 'cheap' charcuterie boards!) In the past week, we've made at least five. There are SO MANY great benefits of charcuterie boards for meals...

• Kids love to arrange them
• No matter what you have available and in what quantities, the charcuterie board will make it work
• You make ONE board for the meal with all the ingredients in one spot (I was getting tired of feeling like a line prepper at the restaurant)
• Kids love a buffet: everyone serves their own plate
• Grab and go healthy (or not) ingredients like cheeses, nuts, olives, vegetables that are fun to eat because they're bite-sized

The other thing that I have discovered during the pandemic that has helped give us a tiny sense of focus is the "Holiday Today" app. If you're American, you probably know that every day there are multiple (often stupid) holidays. Each day, I highlight one or two (stupid) holidays on our daily white board to give us something to fall back on when we feel lost. The first day of school fell on "waffle day": fancy first day of school breakfast bar! The second day of school fell on "banana split day": celebrating the start of school with a new (old) dessert! "Grape popsicle day" gave us an activity (blending and freezing grape smoothies) and a treat (grape popsicles on the patio). Not every day is so involved. (On skyscraper day, I drew a picture of a skyscraper on the white board and when the kids asked about it, I explained to them what it was. End of holiday.) But what I love about it is that I don't have to pick the theme or the activities, they just happen!

Intro: The Surprise Homemaker

(Leaving my classroom in May, 2020)

 Never Say Never!

When I entered this Art classroom in the Fall of 2005, I thought I'd never last for the long-haul in the same room for the majority of my career! I had been married for just two years and we thought we might never have kids of our own (I couldn't imagine being responsible for kids all day at work and then coming home to my own)! When we finally decided to start a family 10 years later, I KNEW I could NEVER be a stay-at-home-mom (I am terrible at self-discipline and maintaining a schedule)! And on the day pictured above in May of 2020, it never occurred to me that I might be embarking on a leave of absence from teaching to stay home with my kids for a year.

As we all know by now, everything is normal until it's not. On March 14, 2020, the world stopped. No more racing to get out the door, lucky if we had everyone's hair brushed and bags packed, kissing goodbye until nearly 12 hours later when we'd be together for a late dinner. No more daily commutes while taking first meetings on the phone and passing barf bags to the carsick kids in the back. No more juggling 3 school bags, a lunch bag, a thermos of coffee and a bottle of water while unlocking my classroom door. No more mapping out the week to see when the next day we'd be able to cook dinner would be.

Over the past five months, we have learned how to live without the noise, the excess, the multiple schedules and the 'being busy' as a badge of honor. I have learned how to both follow the kids' lead on what they need/ want to do and create some structure in our day so that we have a framework to lean on when we need it. I have learned how to make time to take care of myself. The past five months of necessitated self-reliance have made me realize that I am capable of much more than I ever allowed myself (because there was no need?) to explore. So when we began to imagine all the possible scenarios of our daily lives this school year in the midst of a global pandemic, my staying home with the kids was a viable, not-so-scary, and eventually ideal scenario.

I have relinquished my Art classroom and my 500+ dear students to someone else for the year and have agreed to stay home with our own two kids; Kate (5.5) and Maggie (3.5) for an entire year. Kate is enrolled in "Remote Learning" for her Kindergarten year in (public) Princeton City Schools, which I will be helping her navigate and manage. Maggie and I are on our own for a "homeschool" Pre-school education. We have cancelled our "meal kit" subscription and weekly produce orders that made eating healthy possible when we had little time to grocery shop, let alone meal plan and prep. I will now be taking over meal planning, grocery ordering, and cooking each week (something I haven't done since the summer after my first year of teaching, 15 years ago).

So this blog will serve as a place to chronicle our adventures and my discoveries as a Surprise Homemaker. Here we go!