I see Zooma the Wonder Dog found her way onto my blog again yesterday.
Because so many of you seemed to like her post, I thought I would link to some of her past posts for any of you who are terribly bored and need some lighthearted entertainment and photos of Zooma when she was a very tiny, cute puppy.
Zooma the Wonder Dog Takes Over to Lift the Winter Blues
Adventures of Zooma the Wonder Dog: Out in Wall Kings Glen
I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve been able to take over the blog. A lot has happened since then (like two years ago!) and I’ve been so busy I haven’t been able to sneak over to the laptop and take it over again before Mom sees!
In case some of you don’t know who I am, I’m Zooma the Wonder Dog. I’m really just Zooma, but Mom added “The Wonder Dog” because when I run my tail and fur streams out behind me like a cape of some sort. I was born on a farm with cows and other puppies and was adopted by Mom and Dad, Little One and The Boy two years ago (or so). I also got to know The Beast, as I call her, and she loves me, even though she sometimes pretends she doesn’t.
I love life, especially when I can be outside with my boy or girl or following Mom or Dad (or Grandpa) around to see what they’re doing. I’m always very helpful, even though sometimes they tell me I’m in the way or not being very helpful because I roll on my back and wait for them to pet me when they are trying to do something they call “work.” I don’t know why they would want to do “work”. It sounds boring and awful. Rubbing my belly and exploring nature with me sounds like a lot more fun.
Not long ago our family moved from our house to live with Grandpa and Grandma. I liked living there. I followed Grandpa everywhere and slept with him at night. I’m not sure he liked taking me out so I could pee in the mornings but I had fun with him anyhow. I smile more there than anywhere else.
Then we moved to what Mom and Dad said is our new house. I like our new house because there are lots of birds for me to chase in the backyard and new people for me to bark at. I don’t know why those birds keep running away from me when I try to talk to them but since they do, I just chase them. I think they like our game. I play the same game with the little human and the little bit bigger human.
I also bark at the neighbors when I think they are in our yard because it’s hard to tell where our yard is at this new place so I figure I better bark at everyone just to be safe. We don’t have a fence here so I’m never sure. Mom says to stop the whole barking thing because the new neighbors will think I’m so vicious creature instead of the sweetheart I am.
The other day a lady came into the part of the yard that I know is our yard to talk to Mom and Dad and I barked and barked at her but her voice was sweet so I rolled on my back and let her pet my belly. Humans seem to like when I let them pet my belly so I tried it again on the other lady on the other side of our yard. She liked rubbing my belly too.
I still don’t trust those male humans who come into the yard though. Their voices are deep and scary so I don’t let them pet my belly, even if it would make them less scary. I tell them to go away and let the women pet me instead.
My biggest job, besides alerting my humans to any movement (like people, birds, other dogs, cats, animals, leaves or wind) in the yard or anywhere outside by barking, is keeping The Beast out of trouble.
The Beast likes to run outside when I go outside for my “pee sessions” (as Mom sometimes calls my potty breaks) but I’m a good girl and stay out of trouble (especially when Mom and Dad hook me up on that thing they call a lead. I don’t get why it’s called a lead. It doesn’t lead me anywhere. It actually keeps me from going very far and being able to explore the way I want to and that’s not cool.) but The Beast is always wandering where she isn’t supposed to be. Sometimes I let Mom and Dad know she’s getting into trouble by barking loudly and sometimes I just take the matter into my own paws and gently usher her back inside by chasing her while she yowls and slaps at me. She loves me, though, I know she does.
I met another cat when Mom and I went on a walk when we first moved to this town but Mom wouldn’t let me get to know him. I’m pretty sure he would have liked me as much as The Beast does if I had been able to talk to him more.
Well, that’s it for this time around. All this sneaking around has wiped me out and it’s time for my nap – in Mom’s favorite chair, where I look too adorable for her to kick me out so I always get to take my nap there. Hopefully Mom will wander off somewhere again soon and I can share another update with you. I bet my updates are much more interesting than her’s anyhow.
It finally happened. My brain snapped this week and I had to impose an overall media break on myself.
Social media.
News media.
Gone for three to four days at least, if not longer. After snapping at people, shaking from anxiety every time I logged off, and having crying fits based in depression and anxiety I knew it was time.
Luckily, after starting the break I felt so much better with less bouts of anxiety. Until I went back on and got in a completely unnecessary word exchange with an acquaintance
I broke it a couple of times for brief updates then went right back into my clueless hole and blocked the sites on my phone and Facebook.
If anyone else wants to join me on my break, you’re welcome to. Just make a list of things you would rather be doing and then commit to staying away from news and social media and at the end of the time you set for your break write about you felt during the break and after.
So far, I have filled my time with some reading (not as much as I would have liked), blog reading, working on formatting novel two and writing novel three, researching gardening and compositing (Lord Jesus, help me. I’m not sure I’ll be able to figure all that out), and watching The Chosen.
I also spent two days avoiding looking out the window since it snowed. Yes. Snowed. In May. I did not take any photos of it because it was insanely depressing.
I thought I’d share what the family is reading this week, since I’m reading pretty much the same books that I’ve been reading for a while.
What I’m reading: A Light in the Window by Jan Karon and Sweet on You by Becky Wade and About Your Father by Peggy Rowe (I read one story a night from this and talked about the book first HERE).
Planning to read soon:
Death of A Gossip (A Hamish Macbeth Book) by M.C. Beaton
Husband: The Poet by Michael Connelly
Description: An electrifying standalone thriller that breaks all the rules! With an introduction by Stephen King.
Death is reporter Jack McEvoy’s beat: his calling, his obsession. But this time, death brings McEvoy the story he never wanted to write–and the mystery he desperately needs to solve. A serial killer of unprecedented savagery and cunning is at large. His targets: homicide cops, each haunted by a murder case he couldn’t crack. The killer’s calling card: a quotation from the works of Edgar Allan Poe. His latest victim is McEvoy’s own brother. And his last…may be McEvoy himself.
Son: Harry Potter and the Half-Bred Prince
Daughter (with me) Ree Drummond’s book Charlie and The New Baby and Ramona The Pest.
Mom: Somebody’s Daughter by Rochelle B. Weinstein
Description:
Emma and Bobby Ross enjoy a charmed life on the shores of Miami Beach. They are a model family with a successful business, an uncomplicated marriage, and two blessedly typical twin daughters, Zoe and Lily. They are established members of a tight-knit community.
Then, on the night of the girls’ fifteenth birthday party, they learn of Zoe’s heartbreaking mistake—a private and humiliating indiscretion that goes viral and thrusts her and her family into the center of a shocking public scandal.
As the family’s core is shattered by disgrace, judgment, and retribution, the fallout takes its toll. But for Emma, the shame runs deeper. Her daughter’s reckless behavior has stirred memories of her own secrets that could break a marriage and family forever.
and before that Angel Killer by Andrew Mayne (My mom reads much faster than me so I have trouble keeping up with what she is on).
Description:
In this self-published bestselling e-book by a real illusionist—the first thriller in a sensational series—now available in paperback, FBI agent Jessica Blackwood believes she has successfully left her complicated life as a gifted magician behind her . . . until a killer with seemingly supernatural powers puts her talents to the ultimate test.
A mysterious hacker, who identifies himself only as “Warlock,” brings down the FBI’s website and posts a code in its place. It hides the GPS coordinates of a Michigan cemetery, where a dead girl is discovered rising from the ground . . . as if she tried to crawl out of her own grave.
Born into a dynasty of illusionists, Jessica Blackwood is destined to become its next star—until she turns her back on her troubled family, and her legacy, to begin a new life in law enforcement. But FBI consultant Dr. Jeffrey Ailes’s discovery of an old copy of Magician Magazine will turn Jessica’s carefully constructed world upside down. Faced with a crime that appears beyond explanation, Ailes has nothing to lose—and everything to gain—by taking a chance on an agent raised in a world devoted to seemingly achieving the impossible.
The body in the cemetery is only the first in the Warlock’s series of dark miracles. Thrust into the media spotlight, with time ticking away until the next crime, can Jessica confront her past to embrace her gifts and stop a depraved killer?
If she can’t, she may become his next victim.
I tried to distract myself this week with movies, but mostly failed on that front. I had considered the newest version of Emma, which you could have rented on Amazon for $20 and now can buy for $14.99. I knew I didn’t want to buy it and after reading some reviews, I’m not sure I even want to rent it. This was my favorite review on Amazon:
“I am sitting here alone, in the midst of quarantine, because the rest of my family couldn’t handle this movie any longer and fled. I have not left my house in five days, but death by coronavirus would be more merciful than continuing to watch this movie. Everyone in this movie is so unlikable, which is not Jane Austen’s fault. The other versions were good. The only saving grace is Chummy from “Call the Midwife.””
Ouch.
So then I tried Little Women. My brother and sister-in-law loved it and telling them I didn’t was hard, but I didn’t. I just didn’t. I guess it was supposed to be artistic but I had to agree with what a reviewer on Amazon said: “The film felt like a very long trailer.”
All the flipping back and forth between the past and present was extremely confusing at times and the orange glow on all the outdoor scenes made me want to adjust the lighting on my computer. If the story had been told in a more linear way I might have been able to actually like the characters, but since it was a movie of five minute clips here and there, I never really had a chance to get to know them unfortunately. Of course, I know them from other movies. I should say I know them from the book, but I never finished the book. I know. I’m awful, but it’s true.
The actors were very good, however, so I really wanted to give the movie a shot again after stopping it only half an hour in the first time. The guy playing Laurie looked 14 whether he was actually supposed to be 14 or in his 20s and he looked slightly stoned the entire time so I really had little interest when he came on the screen. I won’t lie and say there weren’t parts I didn’t cry through, because there were, but I’m not lying when I say I barely had time to cry for Beth because they had flipped to another scene before I knew what happened.
Instead, I watched a more traditional version I found on Amazon that was split into four episodes and featured actresses who seemed to fit the parts more for me than the other actresses did.
I also distracted myself from the news of the world by blogging last week:
Faithfully Thinking: He will lift it soon
A small family greenhouse in the middle of nowhere (this was my most popular in months. I think because it was shared on Facebook and a lot of local people saw it.)
“Did you go outside today?” Yes, Mom, in fact we did.
Fiction Friday: The Farmer’s Daughter Chapter 7
So how about all of you? What are you reading, watching, writing and doing these days? Let me know in the comments.
We spent all day Sunday outside. Well, from 12:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. anyhow. By “we” I mean my entire immediate family. The only one who spent less time outside was my teenager, but, well, he is a teenager. He did, however, go on three bike rides around town, so I can’t complain about that small amount of time he spent on the computer.
We started our day planting the flowers we’d picked up at Doans on Saturday. In actuality, we didn’t plant so much as put flowers in pots, pour some potting soil over them and deciding we’d replant them again after the expected cold nights this week.
I didn’t really care if we properly planted them or not, it was just fun to get dirt, literally, under our fingernails. My daughter loved playing in the dirt and taking care of the flowers and our dog loved chasing us all over the place while we planted, running free, off her lead, for most of the day (until she walked into the road infront of the house and wouldn’t come back out again without me sounding a mean dog owner and saying her name sharply to get her attention.).
After planting most of the day it was time for my daughter to chase the dog in the backyard, then me to cook hamburgers on the grill, my husband to mow the lawn, my daughter to swing on the porch swing, then draw with sidewalk chalk on the front sidewalk and steps, and then . . . I don’t know because by then my brain started to melt.
Did I mention we had two meals outside as well? My daughter decided we should have all our meals outside at the table on our front porch.
All four of us agreed when our son said “I love this house.”We do love this house.
We’re still getting used it though and I see my daughter trying to see the familiar in it, comparing the smallest things to the house she grew up in. “That drain pipe looks like the one we had at the other house,” she said. “And the siding.”The siding only looks slightly like the siding at the old house, but if it feels familiar to her, then I’m okay with her looking for similiarities.
There is a lot more room in the backyard here and while our property bumps into the neighbors there isn’t a fence, which made our property at the old house feel more constrained somehow. There is also a lot more nature here, as well. Last week we saw five or six deer (one kept wandering in and out of the woods) in our neighbor’s backyard, two cottontail rabbits hopping over each other, vultures circling our property (that was disconcerting, but not unusual in this area), hairy woodpeckers, bluejays and further down the road a Canadian goose couple and three little fuzzy goslings.
We saw more people walking on our street today than we have in the two weeks we’ve been here and my daughter was thrilled to say ‘hello’ to them and get a few waves and ‘hellos’ back. I’m glad we were able to enjoy the day because the temps are supposed to drop into the 50s this week with off and on rain.
Our state is also set to reopen, in a small way at least, on Friday, but our governor has been flip flopping like a dying fish on the bank of a lake so who knows what will happen by then. Regardless, we’ll be able to do some planting and fixing up outside our home and hopefully have some outside adventures to keep us busy in between homeschooling lessons.
Around the beginning of May every year, the traffic on the dirt road in front of my parents triples when a small greenhouse in the middle of nowhere opens. Doan’s Greenhouse is located through a grove of trees and at the bottom a hill a short distance from my parents. It’s been there, cradled between a couple of barns and a cute farmhouse, since 1973 when Bob and Shirley Doan opened it.
I remember many trips to the greenhouse with my dad, often in May, sometimes throughout the rest of the summer, to pick out flowers to plant around our house or vegetables to plant for the garden. We often went there right before Memorial Day to pick up flowers to put on the graves of family members buried in various cemeteries around the county, with the majority buried at the tiny cemetery behind the church down the road from my parents and at the county cemetery 25 miles north.
The sweet smell of flowers, plants, and fresh soil is inextricably tied to my childhood because of Doan’s and my dad’s gardening. I’m sure running a greenhouse was not easy, but I can’t remember one time when I visited the greenhouse that Bob and Shirley weren’t smiling.
I told my kids Saturday that Shirley always had an amazing smile complete with red cheeks that they always draw on older, apron-wearing ladies in cartoons. Her cheeks really looked like round cherries on her cheeks, even though I don’t remember the rest of her being round.
We had to break out of the house this weekend and Doan’s was one of the first places I wanted to hit when the weather warmed up. I’d actually been counting down to their opening day for a couple of weeks. Old memories slammed into me as soon as we pulled into the small, dirt parking lot and looked out over a stream running under a handmade wooden bridge, the greenhouse it’s backdrop.
The greenhouse is now owned by Bob and Shirley’s daughter, Jeannie, and son-in-law, Tom. They live kitty-corner to the greenhouse. Bob and Shirley still live in the house next to the greenhouse but are retired. For various reasons they couldn’t come out to see their customers (many of which are longtime neighbors and friends) this year but their daughter Cindy and granddaughter Hannah, son Dan and other two grandsons (whose name I don’t actually remember!) were busy inside the greenhouse, putting out plants and helping customers. Bob and Shirley have four children, 19 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren (at least according to their website. That number of great-grandchildren could be a little higher now.)
I’ll admit it was hard not to see the familiar Doan’s smiles, with them being hidden behind facemasks mandated by our governor, but I knew they were there because just like Bob and Shirley, their eyes revealed their emotions.
I almost called my dad while I was there, to glean advice for what flowers or herbs I should buy, but Dad knows I kill most plants and I had a feeling he’d discourage me from buying anything when all was said and done.
So, instead, the kids and I picked out what we thought was pretty, deciding to choose floral therapy over planting practicality on this day. I even snatched up (okay, had to ask for it to be lifted down) a hanging basket for Mom for Mother’s Day (knowing I’d better grab it then or I’d forget to do it later this week). I dropped the hanging basket off on my way back to our house and then tried to decide what to do with our flowers since I haven’t decided where to plant them yet and since a new neighbor reminded me this is Pennsylvania — we could still get another frost before the month is out.
For now I’ve set the flowers and the herbs I picked up in some containers I found in the garage and garden house (my husband calls it the out building. I’m calling it the Garden House.
It sounds more romantic that way, right? ) and placed them on our front porch. I’ll water them and try to keep them alive until I plant them, but I can’t promise anything since I’m a well-known plant killer. I should probably start speaking life over my plant-maintaining skills instead of death and removing my “plant killer” label. I’ll work on that this week.
(Click on the images below to see larger versions and a sliding gallery.)
Don’t touch.
Don’t hug.
Don’t kiss.
Don’t get close to any other humans.
These are all along the lines of what government and health organizations have told us in the last two months. They may not have said these words exactly but the words they have used are close to this.
Yes, we all must be careful in the middle of the spread of a virus we don’t know much about but dangerous messages are being sent to our children right now and one of the most dangerous is that we can no longer physically touch each other. In circumstances where we don’t know enough about a virus it is important to be careful who we touch or be close to, of course, but when children are told “Don’t hug Grandpa and Grandma!” that has to do something to the children psychologically and that something can’t be good.
According to Healthline, “Failing to experience frequent positive touch as a child may affect the development of the vagus nerve and oxytocin system damaging intimacy and social skills.”
Don’t misunderstand my meaning here. I’m not talking about inappropriate touching in a sexual manner. I’m talking about the simple touch of a hand to a shoulder, holding hands, a hand on top of a head, an arm around another person. There is no denying we, as humans, created by a loving God, were wired to be touched.
I’m sure most reading this would agree that is true and if you want further proof, simply go to Google and type in “the human need for touch.” Thousands of articles will pop up and let you know how true it is that humans need to be touched.
One of those articles was on Healthline (I’m not sponsored by them, it was simply the one that caught my attention) and it concerns the term “touch starvation.”
According to Healthline, “Scientists have found that a nerve ending, called C-tactile afferents, exists to recognize any form of gentle touch.” In other words, it isn’t only “sensual touch” that benefits us and if we don’t get that touch we do start to suffer from touch starvation.
Touch starvation symptoms include so much of what so many of us experience and are already experiencing on any given day, let alone during a pandemic:
According to Healthline, “You may also subconsciously do things to simulate touch, such as taking long, hot baths or showers, wrapping up in blankets, and even holding on to a pet.”
There is even a suggested speed for the touching (between 3 and 5 centimeters per second to be exact) to help facilitate the release of oxytocin within the body, which is a pleasure producing hormone secreted from the pituitary gland.
According to Live Science (livescience.com), “oxytocin is a hormone secreted by the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland, a pea-sized structure at the base of the brain. It’s sometimes known as the “cuddle hormone” or the “love hormone,” because it is released when people snuggle up or bond socially. Even playing with your dog can cause an oxytocin surge, according to a 2009 study published in the journal Hormones and Behavior.”
(Read more about oxytocin HERE.)
This hormone is very complex, since it can also increase the retention of bad memories or unpleasant feelings, but the bottom line is one of it’s main functions is creating positive feelings of attachment in people. In women, the hormone is released during childbirth and especially during nursing.
So without human touch, our body is deprived of oxytocin. Not a great thing for us overall. Without human touch and without good levels of oxytocin we can produce too much cortisol. Many of you have probably heard a lot about cortisol in recent years. It is a stress hormone created by your adrenal glands. It is supposed to rise in the morning to help wake you up and fall at night to help you rest, but in our constantly-on-the-move society, cortisol is often too high or high and low a the wrong times.
Stress puts a strain on our adrenals and when that happens the adrenals kick out the cortisol at the wrong times. (read more about cortisol and how to lower it naturally and safely HERE).
When another person touches you (again, does not need to be sexual) it can help produce a calming effect in us (unless the person does what my dad jokingly used do to my mom and pat her quickly on the back while asking “Why are you so stressed?!!” Ha!). The article on Healthline says that touch helps us relax by “stimulating pressure receptors that transport signals to the vagus nerve.” The vagus nerve connects the brain to the rest of the body and “uses the signals to slow the pace of the nervous system.”
Other benefits of touch:
So, what do we do about this right now in a time when we are being told touching someone can give them a virus that could be deadly to them (though more than 80 percent of cases of the virus are thankfully not fatal)? While articles suggest that under normal circumstances a person get a massage or start dancing or even get a manicure to help facilitate touch in a healthy way, that can be a challenge when we are under stay-at-home orders and many businesses like this are closed. And no one is suggesting you fill your “touch meter” by running around randomly touching people. That sounds like something that might happen right before the police say “You have the right to remain silent.”
But even in a pandemic we can find ways to fill our Touch Quota. Maybe you don’t feel comfortable with your children kissing their grandparents right now or even spending a lot of time with them in person, but what about letting them see them with a facemask on, gloves or even an apron and letting them hug each other. I can image the rush of endorphins that will result for both the child and the grandparents. And if you are in the home with your immediate family, don’t withhold physical affection. You’re already exposing each other, unknowingly, to germs, simply by being in the same house.
One of the saddest things I read during all of this was from women in a perimenopause group I was in (and later left) who said they refused to hug their husbands who worked outside the home. I know, we are all frightened to get this potentially deadly virus. We don’t want to pass it on to anyone else, especially because studies are showing people could be asymptomatic and pass it on without even knowing they were sick (newsflash: this can happen with many viruses, not just this one), but at what cost? Are we willing to possibly emotionally damage our children by not finding some way they can connect with their loved ones while not spending every moment with them or kissing them or otherwise exchanging germs.
Listen, if you are reading this and you have a loved one who is in healthcare, dealing directly with patients who are ill, and they are not seeing their children, or you or someone they love, please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying you are doing something wrong. Not at all. Each person has to approach this situation in their own way and in the best way that suits their family. There is no one-size fits all. My concern is simply that by saying around our children that we can’t touch this or that person, we are causing a misunderstanding that appropriate touch is not welcome or needed.
My thought is that if there are family members who have already exposed each other to whatever they have exposed each other to, then by all means – hug them, kiss them even. I know in my household, I considered not hugging or kissing my husband because he was the one going to the stores and traveling to work (although he’s locked in his office most of the time once there), but in reality, I couldn’t do that. My husband thrives on touch and feels loved when he is touched, even if it is just a hug or a quick kiss. And maybe I didn’t think I needed touch in my life as much as he does because of our different upbringings (my family hugged a lot, his did not and still doesn’t), but I do.
If you don’t feel comfortable filling your touch tank by touching another person (or simply can’t right now for health concerns) another way to get that “touch benefit” in your life – a way all of us probably would welcome and can do without worrying we will give someone a virus – is petting an animal. So go ahead, hug your dog or cat (I know, most cats don’t want to be hugged so do that at your own discretion as well), pet your lizard, kiss your bird. Find some way to get those rush of endorphins, lower that cortisol and produce a healthy amount of oxytocin even during a pandemic. Your mind and soul, and even your body, will thank you one day.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about the human need for touch and how you have been finding ways to fill that need during this time. (Please keep comments at least pg-13 rated *wink*).
I thought I would share an old post tonight – this was at the house we just moved away from. I can’t believe it’s been three years since then. Looking forward to planting a garden at the new house this year.
Rain fell steady just like the weather app said it would and I felt a twinge of disappointment. I knew it would mean a couple more days of waiting to plant the garden my son and I have wanted for a couple of years now.
I had always dismissed the idea of a garden because we live in town on a busy, noisy street and somehow, for this country girl, gardens are meant for quiet, out of the way yards where they can be admired on a warm summer evening in golden hour light.
I had wanted to wait until we actually moved to the country to create a garden but since that doesn’t seem to be remotely close to reality at the moment, we started planning what we wanted to plant and where, early in the spring.
Pumpkins, squash and various herbs for him.
Cucumbers, carrots, green beans, peas…
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We spent ten days with my parents in their 200-year-old farmhouse before being able to move into our home. The house is where my dad grew up (originally I wrote ‘and where my grandparents lived’ but it’s obvious my dad lived there with his parents so that was a bit redundant.). I grew up in a house across the fields and creek from this house but when I was in college my parents moved in with my grandmother to help take care of her. I also lived there during college (when I came home on the weekends).
Since the house is very old, it comes with what old houses come with – creaking steps and pipes that squeal at night, sometimes drafty windows and . . . bugs. When I lived there it was spiders that appeared and freaked me out, but during this visit, the creatures leaving my kids and me on edge were ladybugs, ants, and cockroaches that fell from the ceiling (which I never remember having an issue with when I lived there with my parents. Thank God!). The ladybugs swarmed my son’s room on the first night and on one of our last nights there a cockroach fell on his shoulder in the middle of the night.
We discovered the ladybugs swarming in my son’s room, right before we laid down for the night. My son sprayed Raid and then hung out in my room to give time for the ladybugs to disperse. The only problem was that an hour later when he went back to check on the status of the Raid smell he discovered tiny little Ladybug carcasses all over his bed and the floor. He spent that night in the room that used to be mine with his sister and me, too tired to vacuum up their bodies.
The room that used to be mine has two twin beds that are slightly less younger than the house. The beds were used by my aunts, one of which was 87 when she passed away last year, the other who is 86 and still feisty as ever. I pushed the beds together so one of us wouldn’t fall off the tiny twin mattresses in the middle of the night. That night I had one 13-year old boy, a 5-year old girl and a 3-year-old cat curled up in the bed with me and amazingly I slept well.
On the night when the cockroach crisis occurred my daughter and I had switched rooms, moving into my late aunt’s room. My husband slept with the cat, who had to be locked in a room because my mom is allergic to cats. The door in my old room locked better than the doors to the other rooms and I have to get up and pee at night more than my husband does. I didn’t want to be chasing the cat around the house at 3 a.m. if she escaped while I went for my latest pee-pee trip.
My son ran into the room my daughter and I were in about 1 a.m. shuddering and telling me a cockroach had just fallen on him and “it was looking at me with its beady little eyes!” I told him to sleep with us but wasn’t sure if we would all fit in the full-sized bed my aunt used to sleep in. Somehow we managed to do it but the tight fit might explain why my neck hurt for the next several days after that.
One thing I’ve wondered since these bug incidents is if my son simply attracts insects. He seemed to have more interaction with the insects than any of us during our stay there and they followed him around the house as if he was the Pied Piper or the Bug Whisperer.
I”m just hoping none of those bugs followed him to the new house.
I wrote a column for my husband’s paper when he ran out of ideas a couple of weeks ago but then they realized they had enough personal columns and didn’t need it after all, so I thought I’d share it here instead. So, this was written about two weeks ago, a little more, when we were closer to all this craziness starting and mainly for a local audience.
Looking at the news today, it definitely can be hard to find something to laugh at, but if you look close you will see there is still joy to be found in the world. Sure, most of us are under quarantine (and in nine months there will either be a large percentage of the population divorced or adding a baby to their families) and some of us, God help us, are in quarantine without toilet paper or alcohol (I’m not sure which is worse, but I’m going with the alcohol for some of you).
There are a lot of scary news reports and crazy press conferences that bombard us throughout the day, and we’ve seen more of our nations leaders than we’ve ever wanted to (no matter if you’re a fan of them or not). Yet, all around us humor is happening and when we look for it and find it, I have a feeling it will help poke into the doom and gloom at least a little bit.
I found a little bit of humor last week when our family finally explored further than our front sidewalk, where we had mainly been venturing to draw on it with sidewalk. Even before we were told not to leave our homes (other than for essential needs), my kids and I were mainly homebound. First, we homeschool and second, we’ve been down to one car while one of our vehicles was undergoing major car surgery (in case you’re wondering, surgery went well, and the car has fully recovered.) and that one car was in the parking lot of my husband’s workplace, while I was 40 minutes away in another town. I should mention that by the time this column is published we will hopefully be packing up the last of our belongings and heading to our new house. (If you caught this post, you’ll know that hasn’t happened yet, but I guess I was hopeful when I wrote this column.)
On a nice sunny day last week and my daughter, who is 5, announced she wanted to go on a bike ride. A bike ride with her means her riding her bike and me walking behind. I didn’t want to go. I wasn’t in the mood. I was depressed. The news was depressing. Moving a house in the middle of all it was even more depressing. The fact we couldn’t delay the move was depressing beyond depressing. Sunlight after several days of clouds? Eh. Not even that was interesting me in going outside. The fact I didn’t want to leave the house was why I finally did.
As we grabbed our jackets my 13-year old son skipped downstairs and asked if it was okay if he sat in the windowsill while he did his homework. I told him it was, thinking he meant inside the window, with the window open but the screen closed.
“Cool,” he said. “Because I did that yesterday and got some strange looks and then I realized I should have probably asked you first.”
I figured he had received strange looks because the people walking by couldn’t really see what he was doing inside the window, inside the house. Let me reiterate the word “inside” because when I walked outside the house to take the walk with my daughter, I saw my son’s legs sticking out his bedroom window, over the roof of our front porch, with the screen and window all the way up, reading his book. He grinned and waved.
“I thought you meant inside!” I shouted up.
He just grinned again, and I told him to be careful, but knew the roof was flat there and didn’t really see how he could fall off of it. Sometimes my daughter is too much like me because at the corner of the sidewalk near the house she said, “Maybe I should go back and tell Jonathan to make sure he doesn’t fall off that roof.” We kept walking, though, because I had suggested we walk past our neighbor Louise’s house and see if she would like to stand on the porch and watch Grace ride by on her bike.
Louise is a very active older woman normally, but she also has an autoimmune disease that affects her lungs and being quarantined during this outbreak is necessary to be sure she remains healthy. I knew she has been going stir crazy because I text her to ask how she is from time to time.
She was delighted to come out on her porch and wave at us but before we got there we saw a couple walking down the sidewalk toward us and I suddenly realized I wasn’t sure what the protocol for greeting people on the street is in the middle of a pandemic. Should I jump out of the way while screaming: “Don’t get near me!”? Or should we yell “Social distancing!!! Social distancing!!!” while holding our hands out, our index fingers forming the shape of a cross, to remind them to stay away from us? Instead my daughter and I simply calmly stepped to one side and let them pass and they walked in the street to make sure we were all practicing social distancing. They did stop and ask us some questions about when we were moving and wishing us luck in our new home, but we all made sure to lean back away from each other as if we all had bad breath. Or maybe we all really did.
Louise was ready to sit when we arrived and invited us on her porch. I was immediately paranoid about the invitation. On her porch? Could we be six feet apart up there? It turned out that her wicker patio furniture was indeed about six feet apart so there we sat, on a beautiful sunny day, chatting about her recent visit to Florida, the weather, what we all should be eating to stay healthy — anything other than the big, dark cloud of uncertainty hanging over our heads. (It reminds me of Harry Potter and how they say “He who shall not be named” for Voldemort, but instead, it’s “It that shall not be named.”).
While we were chatting, I could hear a woman talking fairly loudly from down the street. I watched her turn the corner and head toward Louise’s, gesturing as she walked with two other women following behind her. At first it looked like a tour with the woman in front being the tour guide, the other two walking behind nodding as they walked, but I couldn’t imagine what landmarks in this part of our town the woman would be showing. Maybe, “Over here you’ll notice the Little League Field and beyond that the high school and the football stadium.”? I mean, they’re nice facilities, but not exactly historical.
Then I focused on how the women were walking in a line like a row of ducks, one after another about six feet apart. The woman in the front kept shouting over her shoulder at the one’s in the back while sharing a story (she wasn’t a tour guide after all) and the other women shouted affirmative responses back. I realized they were taking a walk together while practicing social distancing. I wondered if this would be our new normal – walking around with five feet between us, shouting over shoulders.
There were actually a lot of people out walking that day. Our “neighbors” down the street (we still call them neighbors, even though they live several houses from us) stopped on the corner and the wife took a photo on her phone toward our house while I watched from Louise’s porch. I wondered what that was about, forgetting about my son sitting on the roof of our front porch while reading. The neighbor that had taken the photo walked by where I was sitting and as I greeted her she filled me in on why she had such a smile on her face (though she often has a lovely smile on her face).
Apparently seeing my son on the roof sent her and her husband into a small fit of laughter because years ago their youngest son did the same thing when he was about five, except he didn’t ask for permission. She had run to the grocery store and returned to see her young son sitting on the roof, reading a book. When she asked what he thought he was doing he announced: “I’m just sitting up here reading my book and waiting for you to come home.” My neighbor said when she went inside to help retrieve him, she asked the rest of the family “weren’t you watching him?” They said they had been but apparently not as well as they thought since he’d somehow slipped by them and climbed out on the roof. Luckily all ended well with him and with my son.
By the time I got back to my house to see what my son was up to, he’d pulled a comforter and two pillows and some snacks out and had made himself pretty comfortable, pushing the boundaries of the permission I had given him to sit in the windowsill. Our cat decided she’d like to see what the roof looked like too so she sauntered through the window later and roamed the roof near my son while people walking by gawked.
“ Is that your cat?” my son said a woman asked him.
It reminded me of that old joke series by Comedian Bill Engvall where people state something obvious and he says to them, “Here’s your sign.” I couldn’t figure out who else the woman would have thought the cat belonged to and I wish my son had told her, “Nope. Not mine. Must be one of the neighbors’ cats climbed up here on our porch roof to wander around it.”
It’s true. It really is hard to find humor when the world seems to be crumbling around us, but when you do find those little gems that make you smile or laugh make sure to hold on to them. You can bring them forward in your mind when everything else you hear is negative and scary.
In case you’re wondering that couple’s son was reading Huckleberry Finn out on the roof. My son was reading Harry Potter.
