(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!