News and Notes, Small Stuff Edition (Plus a Little More Big Stuff)

A big part of this quarantine experience has been trying to find all of the little moments that brighten otherwise monotonous days.  We don't really have big highlights like we used to.  Our calendar is almost clear.  So little things like a surprise delivery or a pretty view or a small victory become significant.

I haven't posted in a bit because it's been a crazy week or so.  Work was supposed to be nuts this week because our big giving day was scheduled for today, and I worked the better part of two evenings earlier this week just trying to get ready.  But due to the nationwide events of the last week, our giving day quietly ended up turning into an unpromoted giving month instead.  So instead of a 14 hour day today, it was a mostly normal day.  Even without that, I have been exhausted this whole week.  Even good weather wasn't enough to get me outside to exercise.

Speaking of the events of the past week, as you'll recall, my last post was about the death of George Floyd, the riots in Minneapolis, and my lifelong journey through race relations.  Well, the day after that post, things hit a little too close to home.  We had a pretty decent Saturday that included a run (that ended in pouring rain!) and a wine run for me, and a fabulous takeout dinner.  But at some time later in the afternoon into the evening, all hell broke loose in Rochester.  A peaceful protest downtown turned ugly.  The parking lot outside the arena (the one Craig parks in every day and I park in for games) had city cars overturned and on fire.  A construction trailer burned to the ground.  Graffiti was widespread.  A Villa store downtown was completely looted.  As the night dragged on, the looting moved through the city and into the same suburb where Jacob's school is.  Then the rumors started that they were coming to Greece.  We got word they were at the mall trying to set JCPenney on fire, which may have been a false alarm, but a Facebook Live video did show someone in the mall.  Then we got a reverse 911 message to shelter in place.  It was all getting very scary and hitting very close to home.  Thankfully, our town's police did an amazing job, and I guess there were just a few broken windows.  Other areas were not as lucky.  Many spots were looted and destroyed, and I watched a local Twitter feed reporting scanner calls in awe.  So much was happening.  At one point it was reported they let animals out at the zoo, but luckily that was a false alarm.  But it was all so surreal and scary.  Buffalo had a rough night as well, including someone trying to burn down the historic City Hall.

Since then, every night we've watched on TV the looting, riots, and peaceful protests in other cities.  The events of this week have been crazy.  I feel like we're watching history, and I hope that years from now we'll look back on this as a pivotal moment in the modern civil rights movement.  I hope that we'll see that it was one of those historic examples of when a little more force was necessary to get the point across.  Our country wouldn't be what it is without those.  At least it would mean some good came out of all of the pain this week.  I'd love to get deeper into the parental experience and all that I've learned over the past week, but mentally I'm a bit spent this week so I can't really go there right now.  I covered the "before" version of that in my last post, but clearly things have evolved.  Hopefully soon.

Today I feel like I need to do a bit lighter of a post and catch up on a bunch of the positive small stuff from the last week or two.  Way back on Memorial Day, it was a gorgeous day and I was trying to pull the kids away from electronics since the pool wasn't ready yet.  I decided it was a great day to finally drag out the two drone-type devices we'd had sitting around forever.  Jacob got one in the hospital when he had his leg surgery four years ago, and then got another for a birthday or Christmas gift a couple years back.  We just never remembered to pull them out on calm wind days.  But this time I did, and got them charged up.  One was more of a plane, and the other was a tiny quadcopter.  It turned out neither was easy to maneuver.  We did the plane first, and it took a lot of work to figure out how to throw it, how to steer it, and how to best keep it in the air.  I never did figure out the quad copter, because it didn't matter where I steered it, and it wouldn't do the tricks it was supposed to.  But we did eventually have a little success with the plane...though our best flight ended up flying into some people walking a baby down the street!  Don't worry, the plane is light foam and didn't score a direct hit, but it was scary for a second!  The plane had a camera, and it was neat to see the view from the plane as it flew.  Here's the best video we got.  It's a bit dizzying, but it's fun!

I went back to work last week, and my first day back I finally felt a bit more equipped to deal with Carter's school work after a week of making it a priority when I was off.  As a result, I got excited to take on one of his "specials" assignments--using salt dough to make sea turtle artwork.  We've never done salt dough here, mostly because it contains flour and therefore has gluten.  We gave up Play-Doh after Jacob's diagnosis and never really bothered to get back to it with Carter because we didn't need chunks of gluten all over the kitchen.  But I had some expired flour that needed to go and some extra salt from salt potatoes, so I figured I'd just use that.  Carter wasn't super into it--either the dough making or the artwork--but we did it!

I helped him a bit more with the top one and then let him do more on the bottom one.

His art teacher was thrilled!  He was the first one to get it done and she even posted it on Facebook!  It was such a victory to get an art project done for the first time since this all started!

Last week I made a last-minute decision to get out for a bike ride.  It was a gorgeous night and I just felt like I needed to get out and get a change in scenery.  I ventured down the canal path in a different direction than I had previously, and ended up making it about halfway to my office.  It's a goal of mine to ride there and back someday.  It's almost 10 miles each way, and while I can do 10 miles, can I do it twice in one day and survive sitting at my desk all day after round 1?  Hmmmm.  But it started to get darker before I got any farther and I was already over five miles in and needed to save energy for the ride home!  I did make it to the Rochester city line, though!  I captured a few photos on my way back.

This cool railroad bridge was on some abandoned tracks outside the city, and if you click on the photo and look close through the bridge, you can see Xerox, The Metropolitan (former Chase Tower, where I worked), and the Legacy Tower (former Bausch & Lomb), all the way downtown.

The sun was starting to set as I crossed a bridge back to the path on the other side of the canal to head home.

It was lighter than it looked, I promise.

Looking back in the direction I came from...

On the path closer to home, where the canal was a solid 6-8 feet deeper than it was when I passed through a month ago.

One last shot before it got too dark...

I took this pretty picture on Saturday, just before all the chaos started, while I was waiting for our dinner at 110 Grill.  I was excited to have stopped at the liquor store to buy some new wine (I have a lot of time off coming up!), to get gas for the first time in 10 weeks, and to have a fabulous dinner.  The coleus was actually even hotter pink than the picture shows.  It was just so pretty.

As I said, this week was really stressful with work, and yet Carter's been harder to manage than ever.  He is just OVER school.  Any request to do work is met with moans and avoidance.  We definitely have a screen problem there (a post coming soon, I'm sure), but now is a really hard time to manage it.  But he does have his sweet moments.  Lately he's been favoring this stuffed puppy that was originally Jacob's, and he had his puppy hanging out in my hoodie for a while.  I guess it was his "best day ever" and he liked the snuggles!  I felt like the picture totally embodied working mom life.  Sitting at the computer, eating my lunch, with the school checklist behind me and the puppy in my hood.  It's been a challenge to balance it all, but you do what you have to do to get through.

Yesterday was such a stressful day because our giving day plans collapsed and the very busy day I had planned was suddenly on hold.  Not that being less busy was terrible, but it was a letdown and the whole situation was overwhelming.  I took a walk outside while my chicken was baking and my water was coming to a boil.  It had been a busy and somewhat rainy couple days, so I hadn't been out much.  Here's what I got to see...

Miniature Lilacs

Variegated Weigela

Our giant rhododendron #1

Giant rhododendron #2 was only a little bit open (oddly--since they're usually the same), but I at least captured the close up of the reddish one where it was open.

Bachelor buttons/cornflowers are so stinking cool.  Every year when they bloom I love them so much!  This one had mounded up huge this year, but I think it got pounded down by an overflowing gutter after some heavy rain earlier in the week.  The flowers are still pretty, just a bit more spread out than they were before.

Today was Jacob's last day of school!  Back when I first saw his school calendar last year, I was shocked to discover June 4 would be his last day.  I wondered what we'd do with him for three weeks before camp started.  I originally told him he should start his summer reading to keep himself occupied while we were at work all day.  And now here we are, but circumstances are totally different than we expected.  Now we're here with him every day.  Who knows if there will even be camp this year?  He's happy to be done with work, that's for sure.  He's been oddly determined to finish his school work before he does anything else for the day, which has meant 11:30am breakfast, 2:30pm lunch, weird shower times, and an unappreciated delay in taking his ADHD meds, which usually leads to some sort of obnoxious run-in with Carter.  I hope now he'll get a little more normal with his daytime schedule (and maybe he can play more morning basketball before it gets hot), but he's already been pushing bedtime badly, so it could be a challenging summer.

Still, I'm proud of him for getting through this year.  He made honor roll for the first three quarters (still waiting on #4) and all things considered he did amazingly well keeping himself on track with his online work.  Not that we didn't have a few complaints, but there were maybe a handful of days out of the last 12 weeks.  Considering our struggles with homework when he was younger, this was downright miraculous.  But now we have one kid down, one more to go...less than two more weeks!  Of course that's when the screen time battle gets even worse, but at least I'll have some time off to help manage it.

Hard to believe summer is pretty much here.  We still have pretty much nothing scheduled and it could be a pretty boring one.  I guess we'll just get all rested up and be ready to go once the world allows!  Hopefully there are lots more fun small moments ahead...

On Race

Full disclosure: I wrote most of this post three months ago, just as Jacob's last basketball season was ending.  I didn't feel it was quite finished and for obvious reasons I was nervous to post it.  And then it just felt inappropriate once the coronavirus took over life as we know it.  But given the events of the past few days, where a black man in Minneapolis was killed by bad cops (including one who kneeled on his neck for a significant period of time), and then a mob destroyed part of the city rioting in response, made me pull it back out and take another go at it.  So bear with me--and trust that the back story is important:

Jacob's journey into basketball has had some unexpected side effects--lots of busy evenings, exploring new parts of Rochester, getting to know new people, watching sports without planning around the weather--but the one that seems to be resonating with me the most these days is the extra diverse world it has launched us into.

Here's the thing--I was debating writing this post at the risk of it coming off the wrong way.  It's happened before here, after all.  This is clearly a divisive subject and I don't want to come off sounding racist or naive or elitist.  I want to come at it from a place of honesty, as a human work in progress...because as ridiculous as it sounds at age 41, this is all pretty new to me.

I grew up in the whitest of white suburbs.  Not necessarily a rich one, but a white one.  We still had the rich areas and we had "the other side of the tracks", but everyone was white.  While I thought we were somewhere in the middle, I know that there were some kids who would have quickly labeled me "rich" based solely on our neighborhood.  We didn't live a fancy lifestyle but we had a nice, newish, 1800 square foot colonial in a neighborhood that featured some 2000+ square foot houses, mostly courtesy of the builders and their relatives, who built their own nice homes in the neighborhood when it was new.  But most of the houses were pretty similar, along the lines of 1980s nice-but-modest colonials, and while I never felt rich, I know our big green yards and ubiquitous sidewalks were a step up from some parts of the city.  But like I said, it was all very, very white.  Heck, even about 10 years ago I did a demographics search of my old zip code through some work software, and the stats even then showed a white percentage in the high 90s.  I recall approximately two black kids in my high school of about 1600.  I'm sure there were some Hispanic kids, but I feel like most of those were still solid suburbanites, at least 2nd generation.  One of the black kids in the school was a free-spirited girl in my class.  We definitely ran in different circles, though.  The other was a sizable kid, possibly a year or two older, who transferred into the school mid-year, supposedly after having troubles elsewhere.  No big surprise, he transferred back out pretty quickly, no doubt because it was a bit of a hostile environment where he didn't seem to fit in.

This begs the question...Was the town racist?  I probably would have said no at the time, but now I'm pretty sure racism was horribly rampant.  I never remember witnessing anything too obvious, but I know it was happening.  I don't know how much of it came from straight-up hate, though.  I mean, it probably came out that way, but hear me out: I truly feel like most of it was a simple lack of knowledge and experience.  When you're coming from a long legacy of white people who grew up among pervasive racism in previous decades, and no one's really had much opportunity to be exposed to people of color who could change their mind, I think it's hard to actively get out of that mindset.  It seems simple enough to treat other humans as humans, but when stereotypes are passed down as fact, it impacts your entire perspective growing up.  And if you never know someone who breaks that stereotype, you may never even take the time consider that it's not true.  I literally never really thought much about race until I got to college because I never had to.

Anyway, I never knew why we didn't have black families in town, but I have a feeling that much like that kid at school, anyone that tried to come in may not have stayed long anyway.  These days the city is much more diverse, to the point I see kids of color walking down the street almost every time I visit.  I'm honestly not sure what prompted the change or what impact it has had on the city, but I'm guessing it's a bit of a mixed bag given the number of holdovers from my era.

I had a few non-white friends in college, which was a new experience for me.  And trust me, it was thought-provoking at the time, trying to clear out preconceptions and realize that despite different backgrounds we were all just a bunch of college kids figuring life out.  Sadly, it probably took until my second real job to make another black friend, and then I made another when she was my trainer at the gym.  But even my current job is mostly white, so exposure has still been harder to come by in my daily life.  As a result, sometimes my interactions still feel unnatural.  Part of me wonders if I'm  holding on to some sort of implicit bias that makes me subconsciously assume things about them, right down to wondering if they just see me as some clueless, privileged white girl.  Sorry, I'm an overthinker....this is just where it goes.  I'm like that with pretty much everyone in some way, honestly, regardless of race.

On the other hand, we currently live in a super diverse suburb.  My kids have almost always grown up with a rainbow of kids in their class.  It amazes me to see the class list each year, with a variety of ethnic names, and then to see the diverse faces and cultures upon visiting the classroom.  I love that this is how my kids are growing up, because it's definitely something I didn't have.  I'd much rather diversity be their norm, as picking it up later in life has its pitfalls (see above).  Even as a more-educated adult I've had my moments.  A couple years ago three of our neighboring houses were sold.  Our neighborhood always seemed predominantly white, and then families of color moved into all three houses.  For a moment I let a terrible stereotype enter my mind, recalling that past generations have often blamed the downfall of cities on people of color moving in.  Was this some sort of turning point?  Of course it wasn't, but it crossed my mind.  The mom and son next door (who Carter played with for a summer) have since moved, and I'm a bit concerned about one of the other families as their house has been in pre-foreclosure (per Zillow) since last summer.  But the family across the street has been a blessing, as they have kids around Carter's age and he loves playing over there.  The kids are together at the bus stop and were at the afterschool program, too, until the dad started working from home a while back.  But they're great neighbors and I love that Carter has friends nearby...or at least will again once social distancing is over.

Jacob has also always had a diverse group of friends through school, from a kid from Nepal early on to a couple black best friends over his last couple years of elementary school.  The good news about his current school is that it's one of the more diverse private schools you'll find.  In that way, he's really comfortable there.  But the real turning point was basketball.  Last summer on his first summer basketball team at the gym he trains at, he was the only white kid on his team and he loved it.  He felt right at home.  As you can imagine, though, that left us as the minority in the crowd, which is a pretty rare feeling in my world.  Not bad, just different.  Although, I will say I was surprised to discover how many mixed families there were.  That was another rare phenomenon in my world growing up.  In fact, I was actually *taught* once by someone that it was wrong.  Otherwise, I'd say it was strongly "frowned upon".  I've known for a number of years it was becoming far more common, but again, it wasn't super common in my circle.  I had a couple friends in mixed marriages, but basketball made it clear just how common it really is.  I sometimes find myself curious about their lives--about how their families reacted, whether they were always attracted to another race or just found the right person, and what kind of struggles it may have presented them over the years.  I've seen so many more mixed families represented on TV and in commercials in recent months, and after seeing so many of these families in person, it seems so much more normal to me--and it almost makes more sense because it's more representative and relatable for multiple groups.

Jacob's last team also featured a number of single moms, all of different ethnicities.  They were all very chatty with one another, and while they were friendly enough with me, I'll admit I always felt a little out on the outs, probably because I couldn't relate to their conversations about managing things solo or dealing with an ex or custody situation.  I almost felt a little guilty that I have a pretty seamless partnership, including the luxury to have a built-in buddy at almost every game and not have to be at every practice.  I guess that made me feel a little awkward about trying to be part of that "mom squad" when I didn't know how they perceived me.  By the end of the season, I knew that one of the boys would be on Jacob's travel team, so I knew it was probably a good idea to at least get to know the one mom better since we'd be seeing a lot more of each other for the next few months.  We chatted quite a bit at the end of the season and bonded over normal mom-of-tween-boy stuff.  Of course, the coronavirus completely derailed our travel season, so our "baby" friendship is currently on hold.  I hope our paths cross again soon, because I feel very fortunate to know someone like her.  She's amazing--a hardworking nurse and a strict but super supportive mom.

Long story short--and I guess my point to this entire original post--is that I'm grateful to this latest phase in our lives for giving me the opportunity I never had in my younger years.  If lack of exposure was an issue then, it shouldn't be now.  I don't want to treat this as some sort of experiment, mind you, but it's definitely something that's newer to me than it should be.  I'm still trying to figure out how to fit in when there aren't a lot of other people like me.  Lacrosse was hard enough with a lot of other "typical" families that were more like us (but not quite), so this is entirely different.  And you know, I sort of like it.  I like that it's pushing me out of my lifelong comfort zone.  I want to learn.  I'm not sure how to do it well, or sensitively, or not-naively, but I want to try.

Fast-forward a few months removed from basketball season, and the latest racial incidents in our country, primarily the murders of two unarmed black men, give me pause.  The guy in Georgia who was jogging could easily be a friend of Jacob's 10 years down the road.  The man in Minneapolis wasn't resisting, and yet four cops decided to go above and beyond to restrain him, and it cost him his life.  These events are tragic, no matter the color of your skin.  But they are personal to people of color because it illustrates the fear and the racism they experience on a daily basis.  White people like me have no concept of what that feels like or how it changes your mindset, every single day.  And clearly as a society we're not doing enough to stop stuff like this from happening.  At the same time, I wonder how: How do you weed out all the bad cops?  How do you manage an impulsive, human response driven by fear?  When someone has had a negative experience (a cop with a criminal or an innocent person with a bad cop), how do you prevent that from coloring your future interactions?  We can't let those concerns stop us from moving forward to make this better, but the more everyone truly understands, the easier it is to treat each other as fellow human beings and equals.

Complicating the Minneapolis story was that riots overtook part of the city over the past few days.  The damage was shocking--a completely looted Target and grocery store, a destroyed strip mall, and countless neighborhood businesses were ruined (200 at last count).  Multiple buildings burned down, including an auto parts store, a Wendy's, and giant under-construction apartment building that was to be affordable housing.  The second night they set the police precinct on fire after significantly vandalizing it the night before.  I saw a video of a local surveying the damage after the first bad night, and it was sickening.  On one hand, I get the anger, and it had to go somewhere.  I'm mostly thankful they didn't take anyone's life.  On the other, this was completely over the top and certainly did more harm than good.  They destroyed their own neighborhood, ruined the livelihoods of countless neighbors, and flat-out broke the law with all of the looting and destruction.  It undermines the very battle they were fighting.  Instead all of us uniting under the notion that these cops were wrong, now everyone's split again because one side thinks the anger is justified and this is a much-needed cry for attention, but for the other side it just reinforces the stereotypes and "proves" they can't be reasoned with.  When people react this way, they may seem no better than an animal that acts on primal instinct.  It plays right into the racist perspective that they're not "like us".  Even at best, it's almost like negotiating with terrorists who will destroy the city if they don't get their way.  It's tragic on so many levels--a needless death begat needless destruction, and now a community is completely fractured.

I had a friend on Facebook that basically dismissed the rioters as degenerates who were raised to believe that behavior like that is okay.  I'm sure there are bad apples in there, and the mob mentality just made it worse.  I'm sure there were people who were just happy to benefit from the looting to pick up a couple things they can't afford but feel they deserve, and that's just rude--but I've never felt perpetually pushed down by society so maybe that's just something I don't understand.  But at the core of it, whether you're a looter or a murderer, something has to happen in your life that makes you go from a logical, rational, loving human being at birth to someone who thinks their best option to express their anger is to kill someone else or destroy someone else's property.  That doesn't just happen, and most likely no one actively raised them to think that way.  As I said, those basketball moms were some of the strictest I know--they desperately want to put good men out into the world--and I don't think they're an exception.  And for the record, this isn't just a black/white thing--there were white looters too, but clearly it makes more sense for the black community to be enraged over the repeated examples of racially motivated murders of unarmed folks of color, so I'm probably going to focus there for now.  But what happened in the lives of those involved in this rioting that made them think that behavior is okay?

One of the more special parts of my job is that I get to work with an organization that uses scientific research to treat and heal childhood trauma.  They study trauma and its effects, and run programs based on their research that help prevent trauma and manage the effects.  They help young moms through parenting programs, they run programs for kids who have been through trauma and families impacted by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and they can even financially support these families when they are in a short-term emergency situation.  It's an amazing organization, and it has opened my eyes to the long-lasting, life-changing effects of trauma.  It leads to lifelong disordered behavior if it's not dealt with, and we can all assume pretty easily that poor families and families of color have a harder time accessing proper mental health treatment as it is.  What are the odds that many of those rioters have dealt with trauma--a bad home life, absent or abusive parents, drug abuse?  Add in a feeling of being unseen or unheard in society, or of having their needs unmet and feelings ignored by people who are supposed to love them or by society as a whole, and it gets exponentially worse.  Multiply that anger over many years, and I can see how it might build up and be triggered by an event like this.  I assume that would lead to feelings of justification in destroying what's good in someone else's life, or stealing something you think you deserve but that society never allowed you to have.  It doesn't make it right, clearly, but can we just bypass the "bad people" narrative and figure out how they got to that point in the first place?

You know how one side of the gun debate has insisted that treating mental health is more important than taking guns away?  Well, here's another chance--let's treat the mental health issues that led to this community destroying itself.  Part of that is fixing the systemic racism and bias to alleviate that constant weight and remove a trigger.  Part of that is dealing far earlier with the broken family units, lack of strong male role models, and managing the trauma caused by abuse.  I don't have the answers for how to get there, but dare I say universal health care could help the second part of that.  The first part seems to be partly holding one another accountable to reduce racist behavior--from outing bad cops to calling out someone's insensitive joke, to making different voices heard on social media.  Another part is using those different voices to try to understand each other better.  I never knew black people when I was younger, so how could I know about their struggles?  How could I know the stereotypes were wrong?  There was no social media back then, either, so my world was pretty small.  But now I realize, the more you step out of your comfort zone, the more you'll understand someone who's different than you.  Then their race won't be what divides you--it may only serve to highlight what makes them special among your circle.

For me personally, I struggle with knowing what's appropriate.  I want to learn and understand, but because I'm a suburban white girl, I wonder at what point I'll be looked at as inserting myself into a situation where I don't belong.  I know my white privilege has likely carried me through a lot in life, but I don't want it to be what makes me think I can stick my nose anywhere I want.  Is it really my right to understand their struggles if they feel I can't relate to them?  How can I speak to things I haven't experienced?  I feel there's probably a level of trust that must be built before that's appropriate, but how do you get to that point?  So for me personally, I'm not sure what my next steps are aside from looking for opportunities to learn and share and defend.  This is all hard--not in the same way it's hard for people of color--but in watching a country continue to be torn apart and in knowing that there are people that think those cops did nothing wrong or can't figure out why the protesters were that angry.  I'm sad and I feel powerless.  But I guess you have to start somewhere, so I guess I'm starting here.

A Night Out

Saturday is usually our designated "take out" night.  We usually order food from somewhere, pick it up, and eat it at home.  It gives us something to look forward to, supports businesses (though sadly, not many local ones since our gluten-free options are pretty limited), and gives me a break.  It's been a fun little routine and it's always nice when everyone can eat something they love.

We've hit up most of our favorites already, except for one place that just reopened for take out and our favorite little pizza and cookie joint a half hour away.  We'd been thinking that if we hit a nice day, it would be a good opportunity to go there, because we could tack on something as big as a trip to Letchworth, or just head to Geneseo for a little time in one of my favorite places.  We don't get out much these days, so even a walk around there sounded lovely.  It also would provide a nice place to eat our food, since eating in restaurants still isn't allowed.  There was a bit of griping from the boys about just wanting to eat at home and spending the evening at the house.  That blows my mind since we already spend so much time at home right now.  How could they not want to do anything else?!

But pizza and cookies was a good bribe, so off we went.  It was weird just stopping in and grabbing the food, since we almost always eat there.  All the customers had masks on, though keeping distance in the tiny space was hard!  The staff was not wearing masks (ugh) but it was nice to see the woman who almost always cashes us out.  We drove to Geneseo and parked off Main Street.  I've never seen the lot so empty!  We walked down the hill on to the campus, and fortunately there's a relatively new patio space outside a building that was completely renovated a few years ago.  It was the first thing we came to, conveniently, and it overlooked the College Green.

I will say that the walk down was a little odd.  The kids didn't want to wear masks, and honestly it was pretty easy to keep distanced, so we all went without.  But it's weird seeing people without masks and feeling the need to judge if they should be wearing them.  Oy.  Our pizza and wings were tasty, and when we were done, I dragged the boys on a walk.  There was one spot in particular I wanted to see, but first...

That building wasn't there when I was.  It's actually blocking the view of the (very ugly) lecture hall building I spent a ton of time in.  The green dome just in front of it was erected when I was a student.  This whole area was dirt for my first year or two, due to construction delays, after once being a beloved tree-filled space.  I don't think they really learned how to use it for much besides outdoor classes and frisbee until after I left.  Pretty sure the grass is a lot nicer now, too.

I missed most of tulip season due to being at home and the weather being chilly, so I was happy to see these.

When we got down to the space where I wanted to go, sadly the row of flowering trees was already spent.  It looked like this when I was a senior:

The trees are much bigger now, but they do still bloom brilliantly magenta.  Luckily, there was still this pretty pink one on the other side of the path:

You can see the other trees in the background.  They did have a lovely pink carpet of petals underneath them.

Pretty in pink

We walked through this tunnel, which is one of my favorite fall photo spots, and headed back to the van.

Sturges is always photogenic.  Although, I realized just as I was typing this that something looked different, and in looking at an old picture, I think they must have killed some ivy in the past handful of years.  It used to cover most of the far side and significant areas where the top windows on the left are bricked in.  The vines are there but no leaves.

The Seuss Spruce is getting all sorts of funky these days.  It grew funny on top due to ice storm damage, but now has a second, more normal top sprouting off!

This is Milne Library.  It was announced earlier this year that it would be closing for as long as four years.  Originally it was just going to be a semester to do some asbestos remediation, but then they moved up a planned full renovation so they could do everything at once, but it could take four years...and who knows how much longer now.  Oddly, I didn't see much happening on the site, but I did see asbestos remediation happening in a couple dorms, so maybe they're getting that done now while the students are gone?

This is the other end of the College Green, right in front of the building and green dome.  The trees were pretty.

It just so happened that there was another motivation to head down that way, but I wasn't sure we could pull it off.  There was a drive-through hot air balloon event happening at the airport in Geneseo.  It wasn't a launch, but they would have some balloons out and as the night got darker, they would glow as the flames shot up inside them.  It was still pretty early when we wrapped up our walk, and I knew it would be asking a lot to stick around until dark.  As we drove around the campus so we could look at the stadium and I could point out a couple things Jacob was asking about, I noticed the balloons were going up for the very start of the event.  I begged a little, promised it wouldn't take long, and we headed back toward the airport.

The airport is home to the National Warplane Museum (hence the plane that flew near our house in my last post originating there).  There were some old planes visible as we drove in.

Admittedly, there wasn't much else to see (although the sunset and dusk pictures a local photographer posted were stunning), but I did ask Craig to pull off into my old dorm parking lot so I could snap a picture from above.

I lived in two different suites in this building.  My last one was on the third floor, just above the back door just to the right of center in the picture.

By the time we got there, the fourth balloon was inflated.  I really didn't watch the airport nearly enough when I lived there.  Small planes took off periodically, though.

The sunset was starting to kick up while we were there, and in retrospect I wish we could have killed time until it got darker (you'll see why in a minute).

I caught one of the balloons' flame...but not much of a glow yet.

As we headed out of town and took 390 back north to Rochester, the sunset exploded.  It was gorgeous!

It took over so much of the sky and was one of the best ones I've seen in a while.  The pictures barely do it justice.  It made me so happy to have at least gotten out to see something different for a change, to feel a little normal for a while, and to have a chance to enjoy such a lovely sunset.  Considering a year ago this weekend we were in Toronto to try to get into the Raptors' Jurassic Park for game 6 of their conference final series, this definitely pales in comparison on the adventure scale.  But considering our lives for the last couple months, it was actually pretty great.  I never would have imagined that a year later we wouldn't even be able to get into Canada, so clearly the world has changed.  But for one night, things felt just a bit more normal.

The Break

I can't really put into words how badly I needed this week off.  I'm pretty sure I didn't take a day off after February break, and considering the generally odd stress of the past two months, it probably would have been helpful.  But it felt weird when I was already home and the kids were doing school anyway.  If Carter had spring break off, I probably would have taken a day then.  Instead I worked for a couple months straight, some days really busy and some days not.  It's been different.  Despite the reason being furlough, I was so grateful to finally have some time to get my life together.

I was excited to get to work with Carter on school a bit more.  While I originally had great thoughts of getting creative with him, his current setup (with his tolerance level) doesn't really leave a lot of time to do anything beyond the existing lesson plan.  When this all started, there were suggestions for different at-home math activities, and we added in the opportunity to watch an educational show or play a learning game to round things out.  But after spring break, things got a bit more intense.  He got his laptop from school and that's the focus of a lot of his learning.  He usually has five or six things to do, and it takes him until a little after lunch (with a couple breaks) to get through it.  Some days are easier than others.  He hates getting corrected and will find every excuse to run off and find the tablet for a while.  It's a challenge.  But it's been nice to see him having online meetings with the boys in his class and getting a one-on-one reading session with his teacher.  I did really enjoy having more time to sit with him and help him through his subjects, or snuggle with him while he read.

It was nice to slow down and not be constantly distracted by work (or worry about being distracted from work).  I could even think clearly enough to resume using the checklist of his subjects on a dry erase board.  I gave it up when things got more complicated, but this week I was able to think through it more clearly and figure out how to do it so we always know what he has and hasn't finished.  I can't say his school work this week was fight-free, but we did have more good days than bad days, I'd say.  And I did get to do one extra activity I'd been wanting to do: I took all of the words he spelled wrong in his daily writing since we started, and wrote them out neatly in a notebook.  When he misbehaved and lost his tablet one day, I had him write all of the words correctly in order to earn it back later in the day.  All in all, it was much easier to work on school without my work...but I'm still pretty excited for him to have Memorial Day off!

When the first weekend started, it felt like a wave of stress just disappeared.  I felt like I could get myself organized, and I had seemingly unlimited free time to get done all of the things I'd been putting off for months.  The good news is that the weather improved considerably as my break went on, and I had a lot of outside work to do!  I knew I was going to go to Walmart and Lowe's--and possibly the garden store--early in the week when the weather perked up, and all of a sudden I was adding items to my list left and right because I was realizing all of the little things I needed to do during this time.  From last weekend to this weekend, I managed to bust through a ton of stuff:

• Two batches of amazing chocolate chip cookies
• Another batch of gluten-free bagels
• A batch of meatballs
• Send in our tax return payments (finally)
• Change up some décor in the boys' rooms (some of the superhero stuff out of Carter's room, and Jacob's baseball decor into Carter's)
• Change out Carter's closet to fully move summer in and pack away some too-small stuff
• Check the hand-me-down bins for additional clothes and especially bigger summer PJs for Carter
• Do more seasonal changes in my closet and switch around my shoe storage to bring out the sandals
• Change Jacob's bedding
• File for unemployment
• Call for our window that we've needed to replace for two years (which I did do, but now have to call again because they didn't call me back with a new quote)
• Call for quotes on getting two diseased trees taken down (one quote down, one scheduled, one I could call if needed)
• Call to take my car in for an oil change and a bunch of maintenance (done--it was pricey, but should be good to go for a while)
• Buy a bracket to fix my desk, as an old plastic bracket broke and trim was hanging low on one side...and then actually fix it
• Buy new window sheers for my dining room, since the old ones had rotted and tore when I washed them...and then iron them and hang them.  And of course one that I bought had a flaw, so I ended up back at Walmart to return it and buy a couple more things.
• Buy mulch for our back flower beds (and maybe the front if I had enough left over, which I did) and put it down
• Buy my garden plants and two new perennials and plant them
• Buy flower seeds and plant them in random spots--cheap quarantine entertainment!
• Split a hosta and move one piece to a back flower bed and another piece to a front flower bed
• Dispose of a small Norfolk pine tree that I kept alive for over two years but somehow managed to kill in the last couple months.  I guess I waited just a bit too long between waterings (which I thought was hard to do) and the whole thing dried out, so I had to take it out of the pot in my dining room and leave the pot ready for something new.  Maybe an aloe plant or a jade?
• Spray some dandelions in the yard when I realized how badly they were taking over

So basically I did a crap-ton of stuff.  It felt so good.  I also got in some TV catch-up, relaxing, a run (which fortunately went well after hurting myself on a run last week), a bike ride, lots of laundry, and some reading (two books down, one in progress, one on deck).  I can't remember the last time I had this much time at home to just get things done.  Maybe when I was off for Carter's surgery?  But even then I had to keep him occupied.  

It definitely felt a little like my unemployment early on--particularly that feeling of not having much purpose to force myself out of bed.  But that went away pretty quickly and I just enjoyed the feeling of not working.  I didn't miss it a bit.  I did check emails once when I had to go into my account to pull the unemployment info mid-week, just so I didn't come back to anything crazy.  But I had no desire to do more than that.

I definitely had plenty to do--and while unemployment issues wasted part of one day and there were a couple other times where I know I didn't use my time wisely, time went super fast.  Now I'm a little sad I just have one day left before three weeks back to work.  But I'm thrilled I had the time, and I couldn't have asked for better weather.  It was in the mid-to-upper 60s most of the week, then creeped up into the 70s, and now we're in a solid patch of 80s.  The pool is still a work in progress, so we did a water fight today to cool down.  Probably a bad idea with constantly battling siblings, but it was good for some laughs, and we did cool down.  We did s'mores on the patio tonight, which was nice, too.  

Let's see...what else...

My evening wine after wrapping up my last work week, in my Mother's Day gift

On the first Saturday of my break, there was a flyover of an old warplane in honor of medical workers.  It started at the airport in Geneseo, flew over parts of Buffalo, including the hospital where I was born, then came back east and flew over the hospital that's five minutes from our house.  I took video, which I might get around to posting someday, but this was the best picture I got.  Still, it was sort of cool.

Cookies!  It's the original Nestle Toll House recipe, but with gluten-free baking flour and replacing one of two sticks of butter with a 1/2 cup of applesauce.  We finished them up in a week.

On Friday night, we rewarded Carter for a good day of school (as part of something discussed in video therapy) with a trip to Dairy Queen.  The sunset was lovely while we sat in a line that wrapped around the parking lot.

Otherwise, we're still trying to figure out what our new normal looks like now that we've entered phase one.  Still no barbers (much to Jacob's dismay--but all the males in this house are looking shaggy!), but with more things opening and the virus not going away soon, we need to figure out our new standards for where we're comfortable going and who we're comfortable seeing.  I went through a whole debate on Facebook about churches--because President Trump made a statement basically forcing governors to allow churches to open, which seemed to be a purely political move since every state is moving through their phases as appropriate.  It's still not safe in some areas, so making a national blanket statement just seemed like a weird way to grab Christian support in November.  But anyway, indoor transmission is so much easier, so I feel churches that open need to be incredibly careful and people need to take responsibility by wearing masks.  But after all of that back and forth, it's clear to me I won't be rushing back to the building anytime soon.  Ironically, our former family church apparently opened today--despite the pastor battling cancer.  Luckily it's a huge building with very few remaining parishioners, but it seems very early to me.  Baby steps, people.  But clearly no Memorial Day picnics for us :(

But we did take a first step back into public life with the kids on Saturday night...and more on that in my next post!

What Grinds my Gears

Facebook is a necessary evil right now. It's one of my few connections to the world, but man, parts of the world are so nuts that I wonder if it makes sense for my mental health to be there. Here's the thing: I am politically right in the middle, so pretty much anyone on either side makes me crazy. However, it also means that I can see valid points on both sides, which I feel makes me uniquely able to consider (and respond to--though that is usually just stupid and fruitless) the points that have been shared.

In an effort to attempt to keep my fruitless responses here and avoid the ridiculousness out there, I'm just going to spew my views here and hopefully get it out of my system.

• The effectiveness of masks - The research on masks is mixed, but doesn't it make sense to wear them just in case? Yes, if they work, they protect other people better than ourselves. Masks keep our sneezes and coughs to ourselves rather than spew them across the room at 100mph. Even if they don't block everything, they clearly block some of it and slow the velocity. So something is better than nothing. Of course, if you wear them, keep your hands off your mask and face, learn to take it off properly, and don't pull it down to your chin. You can spread germs if you don't follow those rules. So wear your mask and follow the rules to keep others safe. Oh, and don't say that healthy people don't need masks, because the dangerous part of this virus is that it can be passed without showing symptoms. So please don't assume you're healthy, because you could just as easily be an asymptomatic carrier and spreading it to others without knowing it.  Also, the messaging from the CDC and the WHO about masks has gone back and forth because this is a developing situation--we don't know everything about this virus, and as we find out more about how it spreads, things change.  Just in the last few days we're hearing it doesn't spread as well on surfaces, so you just never know.  I also think they were conservative early on so everyone didn't go out and hoard masks that were needed for medical professionals.  Once that threat eased, it was easier to recommend them.  Long story short, regardless of what your true thoughts are on them, let's err on the side of safety and just wear one as a sign of solidarity to show you care about trying to keep others safe.
• Mask wearing is not oppressive - I get so tried of seeing people complaining about the oppression of masks. It's not oppressive--it's the thoughtful thing to do for others. The thing is, people take their lead from the government. They shouldn't need to, but we've probably been coddled a bit over the years. If the government doesn't mandate them, many people won't wear them, but then it exposes people to risks and we'll wonder why the government didn't do more. If they do mandate it, many people will wear them, but others will claim it's unnecessary overreach and they rebel, putting the rest of us at risk. If you want oppressive, think about how people in areas of the world couldn't leave their houses at all without a note saying they had a negative test and a reason to be out. No jogging, hiking, or anything aside from groceries a couple times a week. Our rules are nothing compared to that. And don't even get me started on the comparisons to the Holocaust. That is just absurd. This is not a baby step to that, and this is nothing compared to what happened there. If you think passing over contact info so you can be tracked in an outbreak is a problem, then I suggest you get off the very public internet and be prepared to stay in your house so the rest of us can stay safer through contact tracing as outbreaks emerge.
• Church and Walmart are not the same - If I see one more person comparing Walmart to church or graduation ceremonies, I might lose it. Walmart is open because there are essential items--food, medicine, cleaning supplies, household goods (like my replacement microwave), or even clothes for growing kids. Ideally people should only go somewhere like Walmart if needed, and no, it's not like it's immune to spreading the virus, so precautions still need to be taken. I do get irrationally angry every time I drive by Lowe's and the parking lot is jammed, but I did finally have to go there myself the other day.  I can see why it needs to be open (if only for essential contactors who need supplies), but I wish people would be a little wiser about needing to go somewhere less essential like that.  On the other hand, church is not essential. While it's a helpful mental health support and we'd all love to be there together, we can worship separately just fine for now. Even with social distancing, church can be dangerous. It'll be hard to avoid the hugs and handshakes, and it's been proven that singing can rapidly spread the virus. Churches are full of older people, and if churches downplay the virus or claim their adjustments are safe, it could put them at risk and that's not okay.  A church in California opened up against the rules for Mother's Day, and someone was diagnosed the next day, potentially exposing 180 people.  It's just that simple!  Regardless, being near someone for an hour at church with aerosols swirling around is far more dangerous than standing in a socially distant line for 15 minutes at Walmart.  The longer duration allows for more inhaling of the particles, to the point where the quantity is enough to jump start the illness.  Same goes for any sort of large-scale graduation ceremony, where you know there would be the temptation for hugs and large family groups congregating. Outside events might be better, but it's still risky.  I get how important these types of ceremonies and church relationships are, and they should happen in some form, but safely. And it's just asinine to insinuate that it's about the store itself rather than the type of interactions that happen there, so stop it.
• We have to open sometime, so it might as well be now - We are not going to have a vaccine for a while--probably a year--and we can't stay closed that long. To do so would destroy society as we know it--not just the economy, but collective mental health. The stress of our current situation of two months is bad enough. Multiply that out to a year? It's just not feasible. We'd lose as many people to suicide, overdose, domestic violence, and other abuse from all of the stresses that would only increase with time, as we would to the virus itself. People aren't getting services they need, starvation is a concern, and health care is as well. Over a year, the stakes are so much higher than a few months. So...if we can't stay closed, we're going to have to go out in the world with the virus still active. If we wait, we allow these problems to continue for longer, without decreasing the risk of the virus. So, as I see it, we probably do need to open now. We might as well start, slowly and carefully, to maximize the time we have to figure this out before big decisions need to be made in the fall for schools, sports, etc. We can do it carefully, one step at a time, to see if/when spikes happen. If they do, we figure out what part of the last step made the difference, and take a step back. If things continue on without spikes, take another small step forward. But in order for this to work, we all need to be responsible. We need to maintain distance, wear masks, wash hands, and minimize outings. We should be able to make wise decisions to protect ourselves and others, and it shouldn't need to take government intervention to do it. We should want to, for the greater good. When people don't do this, it puts us all at risk. If the majority of us do it, then hopefully we can outweigh the idiots who can't be convinced. I look at it sort of like herd immunity normally. If enough of us do the right thing, we can minimize the risk to all of us, including those who won't or can't conform. The scary thing is that a handful of irresponsible people can start an exponential spread, and it's clear many people aren't being responsible. People are still visiting and they're still going out without precautions.  That will lead to spread, no doubt.  So if we want to do this sooner than a year, we need to be smart.  There is no other option.
• Governor Cuomo - I generally do not like Governor Cuomo.  He's usually heavily focused on downstate and put forth legislation regarding abortion and bail reform that I have not liked.  We're highly taxed and losing population left and right.  But I think he did relatively well with the virus.  Okay, New York City is an epic mess, so clearly more should have been done there.  Maybe he was waiting for Mayor DiBlasio to take a bigger role, and he didn't.  Or maybe because the Westchester cases were so early the U.S. fight, it was hard to know what was best.  Everyone seemed to underestimate the effect of high density living.  But for the rest of the state, his response appears appropriate and effective.  Cases have been relatively controlled--though the Buffalo area is still a trouble spot.  Were there things that he may have overprepared for, like demanding tens of thousands of ventilators?  Sure.  Is the budget gap concerning?  Yes.  But this state has never been an easy one, and there's definitely no playbook for this virus.  But his calm, decisive, proactive leadership has been strong in comparison to our President's, so for now, I'll take it.
• Conspiracy theories - When the whole "Plandemic" so-called documentary came out a few weeks ago, the conspiracy theorists got even more ratcheted up.  People were convinced that this was a man-made virus released so Big Pharma could make money off the treatments and eventual vaccine.  Conspiracy theories are tempting because they build on established facts (like Big Pharma does make an absurd amount of money screwing us over and China is sketchy as heck).  While it's not a bad thing to ask questions, keep in mind that the internet has a "fact" that will support anything you believe...and it could just as easily be made up or twisted as it could be true.  Last week an old college friend of mine messaged me privately on Facebook because he appreciated my calm, measured response to another friend's somewhat misguided post.  It was about churches in California going against state orders to reopen, and given her politics I was pretty sure it was a post in support.  My response was essentially talking about how much I want to go back, but how much it worries me for the reasons I outlined above--most of all, based on what was in the article, the false assurances to the elderly that it would be safe.  The friend who messaged me pondered why Christians seem to be first in line to buy into things like this, and sadly, it does seem like that more and more.  I'm not sure if it has to do with blind allegiance to the president, who's the king of random theories right now; or if it's a result of growing up with faith in something unseen, so a random theory isn't entirely unbelievable; or if we just want to find reasons and meaning behind bad in the world, and conspiracies and human decisions are easier to work through than, "They just happen."  I read a really great article about it the other day, shortly after our exchange.  I passed it along and he appreciated the points as well.  Despite being written by a conservative Evangelical, to our joint surprise he actually called Christians out a bit to do better with what they believe and in particular what they share.  If you don't have time to fact check it, don't share it--you could be sharing lies.  I particularly liked his point that Christians shouldn't need conspiracy theories or anything else to find meaning in the world, because God and our faith should do that for us.  And just because the main stream media says one thing, that doesn't mean the opposite is true, so don't jump there automatically.  My favorite point debunking conspiracy theories, which was both in the article and in memes, is that organizing a massive, worldwide conspiracy assumes that an absurd amount of organization and agreement can happen across numerous parties...and for people who don't trust the government, you're giving them an awful lot of credit.  And as anyone who has ever run a work project or school group project knows, even getting a handful of people to agree that seamlessly is almost impossible.  It's not wrong to ask questions, but consider where you're getting your answers (hint: the internet can support it all and deny it, all in one search) and listen to the experts first.
• Statistics - I get it, it's hard to know what to believe.  On one hand, we're undercounting cases because not enough people can get a test.  On the other, spikes in cases are just because we're testing more (but never mind the fact that whether or not someone gets tested, their case is still out there infecting people).  On one hand, we've overcounting deaths because (supposedly) hospitals are making more money for every COVID death so they're putting it on every death certificate.  On the other hand, we're undercounting deaths because there are probably people dying that aren't getting tested post-mortem.  It was happening in other countries and I assume it's happening here.  So...my theory is that numbers may be pretty close to right because we're both supposedly over- and under-counting.  I've been watching hospitalizations, because you only end up in the hospital if you're sick enough, and the timing has little to do with when testing spikes.  Some people say this is like the flu, and maybe with the untested cases, the stats will end up there as far as the death rate goes.  But this has already shown itself to be worse than a bad flu season in half the time, and you can't argue with how some areas saw overwhelmed hospitals and how medical workers had never seen deaths happen like this.  Statistics aside, I keep coming back to what this virus CAN do.  Without prompt social distancing it likely would have happened in more areas, too.  We all knew that the naysayers would say it was overreaction when it worked, and they did.  Someone posted a letter the other day signed by 600 doctors asking governors to reopen because of the patients that are too scared to get care or can't because practices are closed, and how dangerous this is to them.  I appreciate their point, per my reopening bullet above, but I'd venture there are hundreds of medical professionals who would sign a counter letter because of the horrors they've seen in the ICU over these past months and don't want to subject others to the same fate.  Every doctor is obviously going to be most concerned with their own patients--specialists with theirs, and ICU docs with theirs--and honestly, no one is wrong.  Everyone is suffering in their own way, and we won't know until this is over how the stats pan out.  So in the meantime, it just underscores the importance of finding that middle ground to reopen safely.

I think those are the big ones I wanted to cover.  I feel much better now getting it out of my system here.  Thanks for sticking with me, and when you're browsing Facebook, just try to find the middle ground before adding fuel to anyone's fire.  Both sides have valid points, and since everything can be validated and invalidated repeatedly, just tread carefully (and stay home, mask, and maintain hygiene and social distancing).  Thanks!