Another week off has come to an end! It was a lovely, slightly productive week with a lot of pool time! It was pretty blissful in the pool, actually--at least once I was alone in there! I ran some errands and continued to take care of things outside. I love watching stuff grow!
Wednesday was a big day because Carter finally finished up school! For a while it felt like it would never end! But it did, and this kid was pretty thrilled about it:
I'm still sad he missed out on time with his teacher, but I'm glad he seems to be right on target, in her estimation. It'll be nice to not have the daily school battles, but the screen time battle might be worse and we are still going to be forcing some reading and one other school-ish activity (maybe just on weekdays?) to earn screen time. With whatever he may have missed out on this spring, I want to make sure he's not suffering from the summer slide heading into fall. We have no idea what the fall might look like, so it never hurts to be prepared, right?
Wednesday night I was eager to get out and about on a beautiful night, and decided to take the canal path as far west as I could within my 10ish mile round trip distance. I made it to the main drag of the town of Spencerport just beyond the five mile mark! The bridge on their main drag is under some major construction...
It's just sort of hanging over the canal!
I love the little canal tugboats like you see in the background!
This was back at the entrance to the park I ride through on the way back home. It was so peaceful.
On Thursday evening, Jacob had gym time for basketball (he's back to no team, which stinks). I was determined to get to the Maplewood Rose Garden this week. Carter would not stay away from screens, so I dragged him out with me! We visited the garden when Jacob was a newly minted one-year-old, and somehow I never posted it! Look at how tiny he was!
This is one of my favorite pictures I have ever taken.
This is the Lower Falls on the Genesee River. The Driving Park Bridge near the park has a lovely view. The Kodak building downtown is in the background.
You can see my other visit with a slightly older Jacob here. It had been a few years, and with not a whole lot on our schedule, it seemed like a nice, socially distanced activity. Carter was not thrilled, however, and despite plenty of room to run, he kept asking when we could leave. Sigh. I tried to speed through, take lots of pictures, and appreciate what I could. Too many pretty pics to choose, so here's a sampling...
Managed to get a smirk out of him!
We walked over to the bridge this time, but we were on the other side of the street--I forgot how amazing the view was of the falls until I could hear it, but the road was busy to cross and I knew Carter was lacking patience. So the gorge and the bridge in the distance had to be cool enough!
As part of his "patience", I promised to find a playground for him. I also got us Taco Bell Freezes on the way there, so trust me, he made out well. The playground was in the same park but a totally different section that we had to drive to. It was a city playground so it probably wasn't the best kept, but considering playgrounds have been off-limits for months, I think he was excited to be at one. And as usual he tried to engage all the kids there in a game of chase. He cracks me up. He tried to figure out how to climb this, and also was eager to do the monkey bars, which seem to be his favorite at school.
It was a nice little bright spot in the week for me. Other than that, we've been gearing up for a couple important days--Jacob's birthday tomorrow and Father's Day on Sunday! Hard to believe our first baby is going to be 12!
Sunday was a good day. We don't have a lot of those right now, and it was much needed. As I mentioned in my last post, screens have become way too much of a thing around here, and no one ever seems excited to go anywhere. It's like everyone's become willing introverts. Except me, of course. I mean, I don't miss the evening rush, but my runs and bike rides are necessary right now, and I have dreams of hikes and walks that no one else wants to do. I think I need some other family to adopt me until this is over and take me on their hikes. But this past weekend we made a plan to go out. We originally thought about doing it Saturday, but it turned out to be a rather cool day, and Jacob ended up spending most of the afternoon playing basketball with a friend, so Sunday turned out to be the day!
After church and lunch (and a morning Wegmans run for me), we headed downtown. Our first stop was to see the Black Lives Matter road mural.
It lined the road between an office building and a Martin Luther King Jr. Park. It was actually right below the building where I took the kids to see the aerial performers at the Fringe Festival almost five years ago.
Hard to see, but the city put in their flower logo at the end
It was quite striking to see. At the same time, it was hard to turn around and look at the broken windows to the bank on the ground floor of the building. The city took a bit of a beating during the protests and riots a couple weeks ago. Over the course of our day, we saw a lot of large glass windows still boarded up, and some precautionary boarding up of a building near where the original riot was (including Craig's old office) and a CVS just outside of the downtown core. It's sad to see, but understandably not as sad as what caused it. But seeing your city looking a tiny bit like a war zone isn't a great feeling.
We walked across the street to the park, which I have been trying to get to for years because they fixed a unique fountain in the park three years ago (after it had been broken for about 30 years) and I wanted to see it working. Sunday was not that day, however, as the fountain wasn't on. Instead, we saw this:
The quote up top is a permanent part of the park, and the quote at the bottom perfectly captures our current time.
The walls in the fountain/amphitheater area had been painted with black chalkboard paint, and people have left their messages. There was a wide variety, from someone wanting to give their white privilege to their black nephew, to proclaiming the value of gay black lives, to a large John 3:16. It was actually a really cool thing to see and talk to the kids about.
There was a play area nearby that is a spray park during the summer. I went there once with an instructor from my old gym and had to run laps up and down the ramps. Carter liked running around, and he and I eventually raced down the giant slides.
My view at the top of the slide
This park is actually just outside the Strong National Museum of Play, and there are some cool sculptures and structures nearby. If you look closely just to the left of center in the picture below, there are two metal cymbal-shaped sculpture pieces, and if you stand directly between them, your voice echoes really crazily!
Our next stop (after glimpsing the beginning of construction at the arena--crazy to see the old patio and planters outside our old office gone!) was Warner Castle, which was built in the style of an old Scottish Castle. I've wanted to go here for at least a year, since I found out it existed, and it just so happened to be right where we pulled in as we tried to figure out where to park for our next stop. So, we got out and checked it out!
Look at that iron work. It was very grand from the front.
Around back, with a little balcony
The most notable feature of the house is its Sunken Garden.
The grass on the ground needs some work, but the stonework was amazing.
We wondered if the wrought iron gates down below were original, or if they were added to keep drifters out.
This is looking across from the other side. Notice the planter on the wall across the top patio. The area beneath it is a bit overgrown but I saw an old picture where that once was very elegant, too.
There was a very pretty garden on the property up above, and there was even a local graduate taking pictures there. You know me and flowers!
Guessing this is some sort of coleus
Tons of flowers!
This was about twice the size of my fist!
I had no idea what this plant was (thanks to Google, looks like spiderwort), but I've never seen anything like it. Small purple flowers with giant single leaves extending out. Zoom in on the photo...the flowers are really cool.
Our ultimate destination for the day was Mt. Hope Cemetery, a very historical spot in Rochester. Neither Craig nor I had ever been there. Jacob had, however, because he would go on walks there with his summer camp since it was right across the street. We parked by a very old chapel and crematory, which was adjacent to this beautiful fountain.
It took us a bit to get our bearings, but eventually we did figure out where we needed to go to find our first destination--the grave of suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony:
The grave is a favorite for locals to stop by on election day (particularly in 2016 after their first vote for a female president) and stick their "I voted" stickers on the headstone--though it's now discouraged as to not damage the stone.
As we walked through the cemetery looking for another prominent local leader, we happened by this very cool headstone with a cannon engraved on it. Craig did a little researching and found out the guy died of diphtheria while on the ship mentioned on the stone.
A couple times as we were walking, I noticed chipmunks on top of grave stones. But of course, I was walking with boys so they always managed to scare them off before I could get a picture. I did get a shot of this little guy who peeked around the corner after his first scare!
We passed by this area called Sylvan Waters, which had a really cool fountain in the middle. It was a very peaceful spot, and I liked that some people had bench monuments erected down near it.
We finally swung around to our second destination, the grave of abolitionist Frederick Douglass. It felt especially important to be there given all that's been happening lately and with what we had seen earlier in the day. Craig did a little researching while we were there, partly about his kids and partly because there were two wives buried there with him. I don't think I ever knew that his second wife was not only 20 years younger than him, but also white! I guess it was a bit of big deal back then (not surprisingly)--although (who knew) he was actually half white.
It's neat to have this kind of history in our local cemetery. I really want to go back, ideally for a guided tour in the fall. There's so many amazing monuments to see, so many famous Rochester names, and a lovely, peaceful setting.
I just liked the look of this pretty statue.
This tree was giant. I should have had Carter stand near it or something. The smooth, gnarled trunk was amazing.
It was pretty to look up into, too, but even this pic doesn't do its giant expanse justice!
The boys were ready to go by the time we got through Frederick Douglass' grave, so after that we headed back to the car. We stopped for a couple snacks on the way home--we had promised Carter a slushie to ease his sore loose tooth, but Burger King only had Coke Icees so Craig and Jacob opted for Tim Horton's options. The snacks were a fun way to wrap up a really great day out!
It was so nice to have a day where we were doing something aside from desperately trying to stay occupied at home and constantly fighting the screen time battles. The boys barely fought, we learned some history, and enjoyed some nice weather. It really was an awesome day, particularly compared to what most of our days have looked like for the last three months. I want to do more of these, especially with all the time off I have coming up. It's just a matter of finding destinations that are safe and that we can agree on. I have a few in mind, and we even talked about where we might be able to do a quick getaway. I'm hopeful we can work something out since this summer is looking pretty dull without parties, trips, festivals, or even a readily accessible mini golf location! We wait all year for this time of year, and right now it looks pretty underwhelming. The kids will probably be fine, because they're happy staying home, close to the hoop and pool and especially not having to get up and rush off to camp. I loved my free summers of TV, toys, and bike riding, and this is probably their one shot--well, Carter's one shot, at least. Jacob will probably have summers like this for quite a few years now that he's aging out of camp But it'll at least be a first for him this year. Hopefully Carter will be back to activities next year--if not by the end of this summer if we get especially desperate--so hopefully he enjoys his freedom while he has it. They probably won't miss the activities the same way Craig and I will, but I still want it to be a memorable summer in good ways. Give me a bunch more days like this, and I hope it will be.
Let me preface this by saying that I love my kids with every fiber of my being. And that is precisely why this is all so hard. As a parent it is very unnerving to be angry with your kids, because everything in you just wants to love them, but when they're doing something that upsets you (especially when it seems purposeful), it's hard to manage the emotions of being alienated from the little people you brought into this world. And when it happens ALL THE TIME, it's completely draining.
For a long time, it seemed like a lot of trouble in this house could be traced back to Jacob. He was misbehaving constantly, he disliked his brother, and he made daily life challenging in a lot ways. These days the tide has turned a bit. Jacob is still a contributor, but the bigger problems go back to Carter. He fights school, he is constantly drawn to screens at the exclusion of all else, he's intolerant of almost everything, and he is an equal contributor to the sibling battles.
In my mind, many of Carter's issues go back to screens. He's always been fond of screens. Jacob used to watch TV but usually played something while he watched and rarely sat transfixed. Carter had TV favorites very early, and admittedly, Craig and I used to love sitting with him while he watched his shows. When handheld electronics entered the picture, he was pretty quickly a fan. For the past couple years, we've relied on screens for getting him through Jacob's sports or other less exciting events. But this time we've spent quarantined at home has taken things to the next level--in a very bad way. We have a lot of hours to fill. We have a few hours of school in the morning, but even that has to be taken in small doses because his tolerance for school is so low. Often the only useful motivator is to offer up a break with screen time. Beyond that, usually I'm stuck at my desk, and while Craig can encourage non-screen play once in a while, he has work responsibilities too, and Carter is definitely not the best at playing solo. As a result, he ends up spending a lot more time on a screen than we'd like, just because we're in survival mode with needing to get both our work and some de-stressing downtime in.
But now it's a full-on addiction for him, I'm afraid. It's the first thing he wants to do in the morning, it's the only thing he wants to do during free time, and it's like pulling teeth to drag him away at meals or bedtime. Sometimes he even has a physical reaction to it--a full-blown toddler-style meltdown. All he talks about is Fortnite and Minecraft and YouTubers, which gets extra awkward for those of us who do not follow any of it. And while I probably should so I can relate better to him, I don't really want to get into it because I hate what it's done to him. He loves Fortnite, which he only even got to play because it was one thing he and Jacob managed to do without arguing. That has mostly ended for various reasons, but the Fortnite is sadly now a must-have for him. He's still vaguely interested in Minecraft, but mainly only because he is fixated on a handful of YouTubers that talk about it. He can only play Fortnite on Craig's phone, which limits that a bit, but when we took away his tablet he realized in his desperation that he could sneak away with his school computer and watch stuff there. He will not stay away from screens unless we forcibly take them away. But if we do that, we have to manage constant complaints and questions about when he can get it back. It's exhausting. He can eventually do some things on his own for a while if he has no other options, but inevitably always comes back to the electronics. If Jacob is playing Fortnite, he literally can't pull himself away from watching. He will run back downstairs multiple times at bedtime if we leave him for even a second. If he can't have a handheld screen, he'll run off and turn on our TV to watch this show called Player Select, which is just watching gamers play obscure video games and commentate. It is overwhelming to manage because he will seek it out constantly.
What worries me most is that his behavior just seems to keep getting worse. Beyond the tantrums (or complete refusal) when it's time to stop, he seems to be more hyper and needs more stimulation. He mindlessly jumps on the (new) furniture all the time, but mostly when he's watching Jacob play Fortnite. He has almost no tolerance for any sort of school work, so getting him to sit for a half hour of reading (even on a screen), or--God forbid--writing two sentences, is torture. It's completely boring to him. All of the hundreds of books in his room are comparatively uninteresting. Playing with toys is beyond him. He has very little desire to go outside, which used to be his favorite. Even going on outings doesn't hold the same interest as it used to. He's standoffish with people (not that we see anyone anymore anyway), he's rude to us half the time, and he currently has no desire to play with the kids across the street (which we're finally ready to allow, partly out of desperation). I've read a few articles about how screens raise the level of dopamine in the brain in the same way that drugs do, and ups the threshold at which the brain is satisfied. So like a drug addict, he's essentially always looking for his next high. It's super scary to think of it that way, but I can see where that makes a lot of sense.
Adding to the issue is that Jacob hates that he's on screens all the time and can't help but express his frustration. He's upset with Carter for not wanting to do anything else. He's mad at us for not doing more to stop it. He refuses to play Fortnite with Carter anymore because he doesn't want to encourage more screen time. He brings it up all the time as an excuse for his anger and negative behaviors, and it's exhausting to listen to and deal with. We want to do more, but when we're trapped in the house working most days, it's hard. We need something to keep him occupied, because otherwise the kids end up fighting and we get nothing done. Of course, even if Carter is on a screen minding his own business, Jacob will take matters into his own hands and try to stop him, so that's miserable in its own right.
The irony, of course, is that part of the reason this has even happened is because Jacob has basically done everything possible to drive Carter away. He wonders why Carter won't play basketball with him, but doesn't seem to understand that his constant pointing out of Carter's flaws and his overzealous behavior on the basketball court (from physical play to gloating) has damaged Carter's self-esteem badly and completely unmotivated him. It extends far beyond just Jacob now. If we give him gentle critiques or correction on his school work, he flips out and tries to walk away. He told me the other day that he doesn't want to play with the kids across the street because they bully him. I don't think they actually do, but I do think they might tell him how to do something and he takes it as bullying. He's a terrible sport and will quit almost everything he plays, and I think a lot of it goes back to Jacob constantly putting him down. It's not all purposeful, either--it's little underhanded stuff that Jacob thinks is a joke but that Carter takes very seriously. It has all built up over time, and he's a bit of a broken kid now, I think.
The mood in our house is pretty awful most of the time. The kids have a hard time co-existing, and we're tired of dealing with their fights and trying to keep the peace. I'm at the point where I want to take everything away for an extended time, or at best give it back for an hour or so a day and that's it. But that takes a lot of commitment and fortitude and a willingness to make an effort to keep him occupied for at least part of the time. I'm close to that point, particularly now that I'm off work for a week, but it's still a tough decision. If he controlled his play like Jacob does (an hour on, an hour off playing basketball, etc.), I wouldn't be so worried, but he can't seem to control himself at all. He could play for hours and he'd still insist he only had a couple minutes. He'd probably skip meals and sleep if he could. We need to take action, and we just need to figure out how. Craig has been less strict about it than me (probably because he doesn't want to be the entertainment director, which he seems to think he's responsible for), but it needs to be a coordinated effort from both of us because I refuse to be the only bad guy. That is fighting a losing battle all around. We're going to have to do something, and soon, because this is not sustainable. We're all losing our minds.
At least yesterday we escaped it for a bit...more soon!
I've been averaging 7-8 hours of sleep each night since quarantine began. Considering for a while before this I was lucky to get six, that's pretty good. Lately my bedtimes have gone later because Jacob has been pushing the envelope on his nighttime Xbox sessions with friends, and I can't sleep until he's done. Darn you, open floor plan. And even then it probably takes me a bit to settle down to sleep, so some nights it's around midnight. But most days I can sleep until 7:30 or 8am, depending on whether it's a shower day, and often I lounge in bed with my snooze button and/or phone for another half hour. You'd think with all of that I'd be well rested and relaxed. But alas, life gets its revenge, apparently. Here are the reasons I'm still tired:
We've been dealing with a lot of pest issues. A couple weeks ago I discovered tiny ants in our kitchen, which tends to happen every other year or so. That issue is nearly done, after a couple weeks and a combination of homemade traps and store-bought ones. Just a couple stragglers left, if that. We've had an ongoing minor carpenter ant issue. We've killed maybe a dozen and a half in the last couple months. Clearly they're around somewhere, but given that they've showed up in almost every room of the house, we have no idea where they're coming from, which makes them even harder to treat. Then we also had a week or so where we killed three or four giant wasp-looking yellow jacket things. Might be a type of hornet, but no, not the murder hornets that are apparently a thing now. While it's been stressful thinking about these things, the last pest has literally kept me up at night. Four times in a week, I woke up in the night and could hear noises in the attic. It sounded bigger than a mouse, but I knew we didn't have any major holes where a bigger rodent could get in. I would lay awake for a couple hours just worrying about what damage it might be doing. We had a couple exterminators in this week and it turned out to be mice after all. They had made some pretty good trails up there, and while the one guy played it up a lot to clean up the poop and nests by replacing the insulation (same thing that happened when we had mice at our old house--and how did I not blog about that? I was pregnant at the time and totally freaked out!), we ultimately just had a guy lay baits and plug holes on Thursday. Hopefully that will be the beginning of the end and I can get better sleep at night.
I'm still having a lot of trouble processing all of the racial tensions in our country right now. I worry about my own response, the government's response, all the tensions in our society, and the people that don't seem to care. I have learned so much about systemic racism and white privilege over the past couple years, and I've appreciated a lot of the memes and videos that have been posted recently. I want to teach my kids well, but it's hard to know what to say when they're growing up among a rainbow of kids and don't know why anyone would ever be racist in the first place. I know we need to do a better job about explaining white privilege to them, but I know both (especially Jacob) would advocate for their friends. I just keep looking at the boy across the street and worry about the day he goes from a sweet little boy to a man who people fear. I worry about the backlash against cops while at the same time worrying about issues within law enforcement that allow bad cops to remain on the job. I'm annoyed that rioters and looters took away from the message of real protesters. I'm mostly annoyed at my Facebook friends that are posting things that take away from the movement--including isolated black perspectives that don't represent the larger population. I want to tell them off (and early on I did) but I don't want to ruin friendships by constantly nagging on their views (especially since we were fine for a long time). It's just frustrating to see closed minds that refuse to consider that things might slant toward white people here and there. One posted about how cops don't bother you if you don't break the law, but we all know from history that plenty of black people have been killed by cops (or gun owners) without doing anything wrong. How blind can you be? People that insist that affirmative action or diversity quotas have evened the playing field just don't seem to understand how micro-aggressions (offhand comments or bullying) or simple social burdens (like knowing a white neighborhood might not be welcoming) could build up over time and cause the anger and frustration that's been coming out in the recent protests. Why it's so hard to just care and be considerate of people no matter their color, I don't know.
Coronavirus is still a thing, and it's starting to weigh on me in different ways. We've moved into phase three, which means that restaurants can have indoor dining at 50% capacity and nail salons can open. As things loosen up, I worry people will let up on their distancing and their mask usage. Facebook photos are confirming that theory, as I've seen a lot of pictures of jubilant groups of friends getting together for parties and drinks and golf. No masks, all squished together for a group picture. I know that outdoor activities are safest, so maybe they're fine, but long durations of time can still be dangerous. I have no desire to go to a restaurant, church, or even a store. Wegmans in a mask is fine (and necessary), but I'm not sure about something like clothes browsing. Churches are starting to open (thankfully not ours), but those are already known to spread the virus, so it's nervewracking that things might spread more readily. Many other areas that have opened up with fewer restrictions have seen surges again, which is disheartening. I'm starting to worry about school in the fall, because I can't figure out how it will ever work. I wonder how all these professional sports will go when everyone's gathered together and swapping bodily fluids. I'm worried about the holidays, when we once again need to be indoors and shouldn't be gathered together. There's an off-chance there could be a vaccine by then, but it's probably not going to happen, so it could be a lonely Thanksgiving and Christmas. Jacob has been frustrated because his basketball season went off the rails when most of his teammates decided not to play, but it seems like there's a glimmer of hope now to at least be on a team. I'm happy for him, but it worries me. We can't live like this for a year (or can we?), so we need to find a way to live with this. Masks seem to be the only option (assuming they do work), but it's intimidating to think about all of the limitations we could have moving forward.
The last two weeks of work have been exhausting. Beyond our big giving day getting completely blown to shreds last week, this week we had to clean up that mess and my boss was on furlough, so it made for a challenging week. I had two major data projects that both had complications, and I was also trying to keep multiple other projects moving and attend to my units and a couple of my boss' units. It was exhausting and I didn't even shut down my computer until 9:30 last night because I was trying to wrap up one more project (so my boss wouldn't have to) and write up an email updating her on everything I did and what she might need to follow up on. It was a lot to process. I woke up earlier this week with a rash all over my face. It's almost like hives, and I wondered if the stress from work and mice and the kids came out in that way. Oddly enough, this morning I woke up and parts of it were much better, so maybe furlough this week will be the relief I need. On the bright side, our big boss did send my boss an email last night singing my praises, so that was nice. But I won't lie, these two weeks took a lot out of me. And even better than getting a week off is that I can finally get back to some house projects and get those long-standing monkeys off my back, which will lighten my overall load, too.
This list wouldn't be complete without mentioning the kids. Things may be worse than ever, for a lot of reasons. It should probably be its own post. But the stress of that is putting me close to the edge most days. Between Carter's challenges and Jacob's reaction to him, it's a recipe for disaster. And after being stuck in this house for nearly three months, we as parents are having a harder time figuring out how to deal with it all without making us all even more nuts. But suffice it to say it's a contributing factor. More on that soon.
So among all of those things, it's been a heck of a ride lately. But I think I'm ready to get off! I really do hope this week off is helpful to get a few things worked out. And maybe I'll get a little more sleep, too.
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...
