bsmiles and sunny days

March 31, 2020 Today was a good day. I was able to get out of the house for a while by myself, which is so good for my mental health. When I got home, I started dinner early so we could go for a walk when Dale got home from work. It was a rough day at the prison. Things are changing there, and rightly so, it's just a rough transition. We met Kennedy at the trails and took a long walk with scooters and skateboards down to the waterfall. The weather was perfect, the kids were happy to be outside, and we were happy to get some exercise. Afterwards, we all had dinner together, including my older girls, peacefully. Joyfully. Spaghetti and green beans and toasted hamburger buns that I bought when there wasn't any bread on the shelves and now it's starting to get hard, so that was perfect. I continued to feel the uncertainty poking at me as the day trudged on, the long, long, very long, super long days, but it didn't hold me hostage like it recently. I've resis...

02/29/2020 Tre made cinnamon rolls last night for today. They were amazing. We went to Life Church Emporia online after FBC Platte City online. I choked down sobs during the worship set with Sarah. There's a lot going on here. Last night we had an emotional crash of apocalyptic proportion. The kids are tired. Stripped. Raw from it. So am I. This afternoon we drove to Richmond to pick up some masks for Dale to wear and distribute at the prison. He's grasping at straws to try to help build morale. While we were there, we sat outside at least four feet apart in Richmond. No hugs. I hate social distancing. It feels like we are in prison with no one but our fear to keep us in line. I think that may be worse than actual eyes on us. Tonight after I made dinner, there was another emotional breakdown. The children are feeling the effects of being quarantined. The wreckage is presenting under the guise of other fears, I suspect. They've been excellent at managing the togeth...

3/25/2020 I don't have plants because I can't remember to water them. Someone gave me one a few months ago when I hosted dinner. It was generous, but I killed off all the flowers. It's still alive, I think. We'll see how long it can hold out against my track record. I can't remember what day it is. I struggle with this on vacation, during holidays, and now during quarantine. Everyday feels like Friday. Without weekly events to mark time, I'm lost. I have a metal flip calendar that sits on my kitchen window reminding me every morning, but it only stays in the que for as long as I am standing at the sink. After a two week hiatus, I finally got a route. A route means I am in the car for a significant block of time by myself. I listen to podcasts, audio books, audio Bible, nothing. Sometimes I listen to nothing and let my thoughts go.  I spend a lot of time praying through the thought processing, that's probably the single greatest asset of the time I'...

Another day in quarantine paradise... I got up early this morning, checked my email, read my Bible, stalled on the headlines... Littles were up within thirty minutes, and I joined them for our first day back the school. Everyone is in good spirits, as the world is burning down outside these walls. Our county was looped into a "stay at home order" along with several other counties in Kansas City, starting in 51 minutes. It doesn't feel real. My list of to-dos included the SOP6: (standard operating procedure 6) Prayer and Meditation Exercise- Today it was Just Dance on YouTube with the kids Shower House Chores- I pulled the septic filter and sprayed it off. It was way overdue. Caked, actually. :( Play something- Today it was Just Dance on YouTube with the kids, so... Dinner- Chicken Sandwiches and French Fries, and Steak Fajitas for me and D During school, the kids did an indoor scavenger hunt, which was wildly entertaining, but up didn't take much of th...

March 21, 2020 My girls are all writing "end of the world" memoirs. I'm sitting in some of the richest happiness I've felt inside these walls for a long time. If I die in this chapter, I'll die happy and full. Quarantine hasn't officially started for our city, but it's very, very close. The grocery store shelves are bare, the streets look like a ghost town, and the mayor of Kansas City announced a "stay at home order" today. Effective Tuesday at midnight, except for gas, medicine, and groceries, you are supposed to stay home. This morning, like every morning this week, I got up slowly. Checked my email, bank balance, Facebook, and texted my sister. I made coffee, began prayer and meditation. It takes a mountain of focus to read a single prayer and make any sense of it. I read it anyway. Before COVID-19 I was meditating for five minutes easily, but now five minutes feels like an hour. What is happening?? Laundry, the boys baths, ironing, b...

Today was my first day of total isolation. Everyday for the past week I've gone to the store. After yesterday's haul I decided enough is enough. The kids are holding up pretty well, considering it's been raining and cold, so we've been mostly inside day and night. They've been essentially quarantined for about a week. No friends, no church, no stores. I did take them out for ice cream, but drive-thru only. Today, for the first time I felt bored. Like, bored, bored. I always have all these ideas for other people when they say they don't know what to do with themselves, but I had nothing on my list. We did all the things. Devotions, exercise, shower, bake something, organize something, clean something. Made dinner. Played shopkins. Kitchen dance party. Kids went outside, and I stared at the clock. Not like I used to when I needed bedtime to come. I sort of hate bedtime because I'm not sleeping well either. Last night I woke up smelling a strange burning ...

Every time we get out of the car, I say, "Everyone wash your hands as sooooon as you get into the house!" I've never been obsessive about hand washing. Matter of fact, I have more likely suggested handwashing in various situations, than expected it. I'm not fixated on things the way some people are. I don't see germs lurking everywhere. I honestly don't see germs as a threat, if you want to know the truth. I see them as an opportunity to boost immunity, within reason. I let my babies be exposed to things that might have seemed irresponsible, but I never had sickly kids, and I really believe it is because they have hearty immune systems because of that. Today I went to the store again. I keep going. I keep thinking of a few more things we might wish we had in the apocalypse. Sausage. Baking powder. Those little white powdered donuts, they have a stable shelf-life, right? No sign of TP, but hopefully I can get some soap, maybe by some chance, I'll fin...

This weekend I finished two projects I’ve been working on for forever: the task of setting the grammar of the New Testament to music, book by book, and this wall hanging.  I feel like a million. And a little deflated. The music project ended and was done with little fanfare. People say when you get a book published, you expect to sort of “level up”, and you don’t and... it’s not what you expected. I feel like that. The wall hanging, I bought supplies for last summer. It’s finished but not aesthetically what I intended. I wanted it to take my breath away. It doesn’t. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with your God. These words, though, seem prophetic for the time we’re in. While we are all scrambling to tend to our own, we need to look for people that need help.  BE THE HELPER.  We are the hands and feet of God. We don’t have to compromise ourselves to accomplish powerful acts of generosity and kindness, we just have to keep our eyes and our...

Last night I stopped by Price Chopper to get some extra groceries. Just in case. Just in case this novel coronavirus quarantines us to our houses or shuts down the economy, we should have some extra bags of cereal and milk. Maybe bread. Can’t hurt. As I was loading the groceries in the car, I saw a guy from church and said hello. Then I got a text. "Kansas City was declared to be in a State of Emergency. Get more”. Back in I went. I’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life . I know what “a run” looks like. I didn’t think this was a run. Until I saw the checkout lines. As I scrambled around the store collecting essentials; flour, milk, potatoes, pasta, marinara, pop tarts, toilet paper, I passed the guy that I had seen in the parking lot. He said, “Didn’t I just see you loading groceries into your car?” Heh. Heh. Yeah… I felt the heat rising in my neck as I explained the text, finishing with, “Might as well feed the hysteria, right?” I knew what I was doing might have s...