Date Night

How do you schedule a date night when: 1. Your waking hours are already significantly stretched between watching the kids, working a full job, keeping the house in order and trying to maintain your sanity; 2. No restaurant, bar or activity is open to go to (and something about a masked walk around the block doesn’t seem that romantic) And 3. You are officially on house arrest which means a babysitter isn’t even an option if you were able to carve time out of the schedule and find an activity outside to leave the house with your husband.

After seven weeks of not spending any real time together Martin and I figured it was worth a try.  Here is how it went.

We had a small dinner with the kids and went through our normal bedtime routine to get the kids in bed.  Once asleep Martin headed out to pick up dinner at Mo’s Grill and I stayed home to make our table seem less like a disaster zone and more like a restaurant… I lit some candles, brought out the tablecloth and pulled out the water glasses.

Come to find out that most restaurants in our neighborhood, while open for takeout, close early due to lack of demand.  Martin tried four different restaurants before he found one that was open passed 8pm.  Instead of our fancy dinner (okay, it wasn’t going to be that fancy), he came home with two solo burgers (no fries) and two beers. I am going to be honest, my fancy table setting made the burgers seem even sadder.  Thankfully what they lacked in appearance, they made up for in taste… they were really good!

We rounded out the meal with homemade chocolate treats from Oskar’s friend Max and a sip of our favorite whiskey Nant, which prompted us to reminisce about our trip to Australia over 9 years ago.  

It might not have been fancy, and definitely not what we were expecting (did I also mention that I had cried earlier that night due to stress from work?  No? Well there was that as well), but it was still really nice.  We are going to try again in a few weeks and hopefully this time we can find a place that is open!

x

Quarantine Day 43

Well, we are officially 7 weeks into the quarantine and it has definitely been filled with some ups and downs.

First, the parenting side of things.  I am amazed that we continue to find fun activities and reserves of energy for the kids.  It feels like we have done everything: paper airplanes, ping pong ball toss, bike rides, bubbles, obstacle courses, forts, baking, racetrack ramps, alphabet letter search, homemade party hats, playdough, beans, arts and crafts and general nonsense.  My biggest lesson learned so far: breaking down the weekdays into 30 minute increments definitely helps the day and week go by.

Timber Cove has become our piece of heaven allowing us to experience a break in the routine and get some outdoor time and space on the weekends.  It also doesn’t hurt that there are still plenty of projects to do around the house…we have definitely gotten crafty and domestic up there. I bought and built up a compost bin for all of our food scraps and green waste, Martin installed the door handle to the barn door and the toilet paper holder in the bathroom (it is the little things) and the whole family helped to build a new planter for in front of the deck.  In the meantime, we have started growing rosemary and lavender seeds in San Francisco for up at Timber Cove.   

43 days in and I have worked out less than three times but have found joy in a stretching class which I have also only done three times. 

Day 20 was the day I started to get the onset of a dizzy spell so Martin took the kids to Timber Cove and I had the house to myself for a little over 24 hours... I now know what life would be like in quarantine as a single woman living alone: I bought $80 worth of alcohol from BevMo, spent $70 to have dinner delivered from Tacolicious (including premixed margaritas, because the BevMo order wasn’t enough) and instead of doing anything productive (like practice the piano, read, organize a closet, workout, or catch up on work) I opted to binge the entire season of Love is Blind. Yep, not my finest moment.

As soon as the recommendation to wear a cloth mask became official (I think it was shortly after my night alone) I gave the idea of making masks myself about two seconds of contemplation and then reached out to my mom. 48 hours later my parents and Kona were in our alleyway dropping off my mom’s handmade masks as well as an Easter activity for Oskar and Alva. They stayed and visited for about 45 minutes, us on the steps and they on the street by their car, and it was everything I could have asked for and exactly what I needed to ease the numbness and stress of our new routine. I didn’t realize how badly I missed them and needed to see them in person. They have since been over again and it was even more amazing. The kids sat on the stoop blowing bubbles and throwing Cheerios for Kona to eat and I was able to have a somewhat proper conversation with my mom and dad. After the hour visit, when they were getting ready to go Oskar proclaimed “I don’t want them to go”. I hadn’t seen him that happy in a long time and it broke my heart to see it end.

Week 5, aka spring break and Easter, was celebrated at Dunsmuir. Within 24 hours of arrival we had made ourselves at home, having unpacked our weeks’ worth of food and supplies, gone for a bike ride, celebrated Easter, thrown rocks in the river and burned a dinner.  The rest of the week went about the same.  And while we still had to work during the week, the change of scenery really felt like a break from the routine and a mini vacation. 

Zoom happy hours have become my social life line. With nowhere else to go and no other competing plans it has been so great to have virtual happy hours with my friends from all over the world! Post dinner drinks with the Colorado girls where we joked about our last hurrah. Post bedtime routine with Amber (with Jack crashing halfway through), a midday catch up with the girls in Switzerland, Australia and Boulder, a round robin with the college girls (which almost felt like sitting around a kitchen table) and a virtual team happy hour where I hosted a trivia night!

As we enter May, with the knowledge that this will last at least until June 1 (and most likely longer), I have no profound thoughts or insights to share other than it truly has been a feat of strength just focusing on taking each day at a time, trying to find joy in the little moments and not losing my shit in between.

Wish me luck!