COVID-19 life as we know it

Safari Adventures:
Our neighbors moved out about 2 years ago.   The house has stood empty through windstorms that brought limbs crashing into the house and long bouts of neglect.  Last year, Q-dawg and Chugger-dude arranged with the owner to mow the lawn over the summer to keep it up...never to get paid.  Well, we paid Chugger-dude, but learned soon after that the property was in a foreclosure status so it made more sense about the owner's lack of true interest.

We have made it into the most epic back-yard sledding hill we have ever had this last winter, enjoyed the long tree swing as well as the extended shore-line access to our lovely river/stream (depending upon the time of year).

Over the past couple months, the maintenance crew hired by the bank mows only the top portion of the lawn in the back.  Downed trees and safari-length grasses have provided a wondrous haven for my little ones' imaginative enjoyment.  They can crawl among the grasses and hide from each other and make a little "house" out of the downed trees. At first I was going to hire one of the older ones to cut the back half down but soon saw the wonder and magic of the long grass.

Book exploration:
Over the past several months I have been gradually packing away things.  Not only do I love an uncluttered home but there are many things I don't use often but keep for various reasons--like my three extra copies of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." (Book discussion in the future...totally going to happen, and no one likes to share a book that long.)  I also figure that eventually we are going to be moving to that farm we have planned on acquiring since before me moved here, only anticipating this would be a temporary "stepping stone" type of place.  Well, over five years later, I am grateful for all the memories and experiences we have had here, but we are looking on now, having canvassed the internet religiously for all the homes that might serve our long-term goals, needs and preferences.
So in the meanwhile, I pack up stuff :D.

One of the hardest things to pack away has been books: trying to guess which ones we will still need but knowing using the random boxes that come our way to pack things up now will help in the long run.  So I guess and I pack.

Well, apparently, that means I should also stop buying books.  But with so many to choose from and the libraries closed what's a woman to do? I buy books :D.  We have fleshed out our collection of Gail Carson Levine and added some delightful youth fiction books like "Wish," "Pax," and "The Girl Who Drank The Moon" which I am excitedly awaiting.

The kiddos have picked up so many books off our shelves, like "Turn the Page: How to Read Like a Leader," "The Cellist of Sarajevo" (personal favorite!) and "Created for Work" about how working is a blessing.  It has been so fun to see them lost in books when it is too hot outside or they just need some "me" time. It is amazing how curling up in a book can help you feel like you've entered another world.

Right now, Q-dawg and I are reading aloud to each other "Way of Kings," the epic fantasy novel by Sanderson.  At first I figured it would take us a few years to get through the book since we tended to fall asleep mid-chapter if we weren't the one reading.  However, with a couple trips down south looking for houses, we have had some nice long stretches of reading to get us more than 3/4ths of the way through the book.  Now we tend to read the chapters ahead after the other one falls asleep since it is getting harder to put down.  One or two more house-hunting trips may not get us any closer to our house but it will help us finish the book!

Cooking:
We had a fun "Chopped!" imitation night initiated by Hava, our resident passionate chef.  That girl loves to cook!  The recipes turned out scrumptious, from Avot's "tomato, pumpkin, white bean" cookies to Piper's fiery potatoes and fried chicken to Hava's kale breaded steaks.  Pipalicious was funny about hers: "I had to use alfredo sauce and since I don't like it, I just put on a lot of extra seasoning to cover the flavor."  Well, Avot's "spice-ometer" sure went off with that one!  The rest of us loved it, though :D.

Avot is home during the COVID time since she would otherwise have just been stuck in her dorm room in Idaho.  She is cooking about half of the breakfasts and dinners and has been bringing back some lesser-used recipes like "French Breakfast Muffins" and "Lembas Bread."  She has also figured out how to incorporate either beans or random flavors and colors into the foods to keep the kids guessing, particularly Spooner who is hyper aware of his food.

That kid.  So funny.  We were at the doctor's office yesterday and the doctor asked him what was his favorite thing to eat in the whole wide world.  Spooner's eyes grew large as he said, "Oh, lots of things! I love so many things!"  After a few moments, he took in a deep breath and his eyes got even more bright and excited.  "But my most favorite thing in the whole, wide world to eat is..."  (pause for lip-smacking and several more preparatory deep breaths) "...tomato sou-P!" (Emphasize that "p".)  He then went on to describe it in great detail with all sorts of breathless exclamations of appreciation.

So, being the spontaneous-often-over-committing-under-thinking mom that I am, I immediately told him, "let's have it tonight!"  He was overjoyed.   I already had the rest of the family excited about "ground beef roll-ups" but figured whipping up some homemade tomato soup couldn't be that bad, right?

Well, fast forward a couple hours and I confess I was regretting my enthusiasm to support his healthy declaration at the office.  Fortunately Spooner walked into the kitchen that night as I was preparing the biscuit dough for the roll-ups, he declared how much he loved roll-ups. I took a chance and asked, "So can we have tomato soup another time?"
"Oh, yes, Mom, because I love these roll-ups!!"  Funny kid.

I didn't eat much of dinner, though, because Papaya had used her spending money earlier that week to purchase some steaks from the store.  She, Hava and Piper worked on preparing a sweet romantic "3:30 pm" dinner for Q-dawg and I after getting home from the doctor's office.  I should have taken a picture.  Carrots and celery nicely sliced and presented with a strip of ranch dressing between; sauteed mushrooms, orange juice in crystal goblets and, of course, the steak, well cooked and seasoned.  Sweet kids!

Water
Our kids love the water.  We have enjoyed the creek behind our house; our one visit down south to the Moores' farm where we enjoyed a few hours in their neighbors' Jack and Midge's pond; and our new Lake Ontario access point at the end of Lyndonville Road.  Our favorite Pebble Beach  is closed since it has picnic areas, I think. However, we were able to find this random water access at an old pier location where we were able to cool off during yesterday's 93 degree scorcher (don't forget the humidity!!).  93 yesterday, 70 today and I hear we are getting down into the 50's on Saturday.  Crazy.


Routine
We came back from the lake, I went to the doctors', Q-dawg and I feasted and then we did our somewhat daily reading time, with excerpts from some or all of the following depending upon the day:
"Life of Fred,"
"Children's Almanac of Word Play"
poetry
"History of US"
"Prisoner's of Geography"
"Our Home, or the Key to a Nobler Life" by Sargent
"There and Back Again" (historical biography in verse about a girl fleeing Vietnam in the 1960's)

We only got in 30 minutes because Liliputian and Pipalicious were off to host their weekly YW zoom meeting at 4 while the rest of us did our "8 minute" clean-up.  All the kids have areas they rotate through weekly.  We start the timer, everyone works hard on their areas for 5-30 minutes depending upon the day or condition of the house, and when you finish your area, you go and find someone else to help in snow-ball fashion until the timer goes off. And when it's off, we're done.  Music sometimes helps, but they have learned that if they hit it fast and hard, I scale off the time and make it shorter.  Seems to be working in this particular season for us :D.

The kids got to watch some short episode of something pre-approved (Masha and the Bear yesterday) as their reward and then I started hearing the bickering. "You can be happy inside or get kicked outside!" I called down.  Papaya reluctantly went out to do her enforced 15 minutes of watching Zuli in the creek while I started dinner.  Pipalicious came buzzing through after her meeting "with SO MUCH ENERGY!" and I asked her to put that energy to use trailing along with the kiddos in the creek just in case.  Hava went to go and relieve Papaya of her "duty," only to find out that Papaya was not willing to give it up at that point so Hava went to join in the fun.

The dinner time call brought in some completely soaked kiddos.  We had our song and prayer over dinner altogether and then the drippers ran upstairs to change. I had already "hosed" Zuli off in the sink but quickly put on a diaper after the prayer to prevent further necessity to clean up liquid.

The Goob was able to join us for dinner, as he and Chugger-dude had just spent the last hour wrestling with each other.  Dinner was a delightful and somewhat nauseating combination of conversation as usual, with lots of exclamations and opinions and "jokes" of various quality and questionability exchanged at various volumes.  People got their 1.5 cups of homemade lemonade, the asparagus was a little soggy and poorly seasoned, the frozen corn took the cake for flavor, and the roll-ups were enjoyed with varying degrees of enthusiasm, whether bare or smothered with ketchup or ranch.

We had our nightly "dinner time quiz" hosted by Q-dawg with questions such as:
-"What is the capital of Turkmenistan?" (answered correctly "T" by Papaya...everyone else has to actually know the capital)
- "What is the common name of 'urechis caupo'?" (which the kids are beginning to know as the "weenie worm," affectionately dubbed so during Q-dawg's and my late college days of marine biology at Hopkins Marine Station)
-"How would you say, 'your name is llama' in Spanish?" (Avot's answer: "te llamas llama")
...all randomly ordered in numeric sequence with "question number 23" followed by "question number 7" or "question number 72".  That way Q-dawg doesn't have to keep track ;D.  The kids have to stand in a row, with their hands below their belly buttons, if their answer is to be accepted.  No hesitations are allowed.  Mis-answered questions are penalized with being out for the next question.  And if anybody questions Q-dawg's decision, they get a strike...and three strikes and you get to do all of dinner time help!

This hilarious interchange has evolved over the years to include questions asked by little ones (like "where does a shark live?" by Zsa-man) and a fair number of times that have ended in tears as well as laughter.  Someone has to really push the envelope to get the "full dinner time help" designation and, in true Biesinger pride, they wear it with honor.  Typically, the jobs are divided up by me depending upon the number of kids participating and the size of the jobs.  The first one to answer correctly gets to choose first and so on.

A fun spin lately has been that Avot almost always picks dishes ("I get to listen to music and don't have to know where anything goes") and people have been competing to get the hardest jobs.  Papaya always wants to do "get kids ready for bed" but has met with fierce opposition by her younger siblings often enough that I don't typically let her have that one.

Dinner time help gets done moderately quickly, depending upon the day, and the house is clean-ish once again.  Small home. Less work. Like it.

Last night, we started playing games after dinner.  Papaya took the kids upstairs and got them ready.  They popped in the rest of "Bugs Bunny Collection" that they started during Q-dawg's and my candle-light dinner earlier.  That kept them busy so the rest of us could play "Code Names" and then two card games: "Meet it, Beat it or Eat it" and Scum.  It's always fun to play games but the added dynamics of Q-dawg (usually working), the Goob (usually living at the Zyborgs, his cousins) and Avot (usually at college) was particularly delightful.

In an unusually blessed fashion, Zuli fell asleep on the floor and the boys were tired enough that they went to bed listening to a cd full of the recording of their Oma and Opa singing and telling stories. We accidentally forgot scripture reading and we jumped from games and popcorn to watching "Captain Marvel" with all the other kids.  Liliputian and I are trying to join Chugger-dude in moderating our sweets (he's been treat-free for over a year except for birthdays and special holidays) so I blended a powerful smoothie that was pretty intense but sweet enough with fruit and honey to satisfy my sweet craving.   Hava and Papaya watched the movie from within Hava's new tent she bought with her own money and we all enjoyed some "HISHE" ("how it should have ended") YouTube episodes after a thoroughly enjoyed movie.

It was fun to just sit and laugh together.

Oh, right as the movie ended, it was still dark and I felt a little feathering thing on my arm. I gently touched it to brush it away and thought I felt it transfer to my other arm.  When I checked there, I felt a bug (probably a shield bug) and panicked, calling out in alarm. I flipped on the bright lights, shocking everyone's visual and auditory senses.  The Goob made some kind of comment about how I really know how to end a movie well, while Liliputian thanked me for flicking a bug her way. Nothing like an exciting end to the day!

(Well, it was the end for most for us...the "beginning" for Avot, who now works the night shift at a local retirement center plagued with the virus. Of course, they take extreme measures to deal with the virus but are grossly under-staffed right now.   She is doing CNA work, getting training as she goes, and has since adapted easily into a night owl role.  Gives her some quiet time on her nights off, anyway!)

Getting back to my "job"...maybe.

The other day, Q-dawg was kicking off our fast and testimony meeting.  He shared a story and somehow during the course of his testimony said something about, "And that is what we learn about the importance of Mom writing things down in our Singing Bees blog so we have a journal in our lives."

Despite years of insisting that the world needs to hear his perspective on our family's experience, that blessed man doesn't change.  I remember when we were courting that my mom took me aside, worried. "Mary, you need someone strong so you can respect them and not push them around."  Even at that point, I sensed the immobility of this man.  I have lovingly compared him to a huge Jello mountain. You can push all you want but he will just chuckle and laugh as he remains unmoved as you push as hard as you can for change, sinking up to your elbows in jiggling personality.

So we are back to this:  if I don't write these things down, who will?

I have seen my kiddos pour over this blog for hours, reliving old scenes of their childhood: laughing, reminiscing, savoring.  Somehow reading about how their life matters and is worthy of writing about brings them a degree of place and purpose.

I am so not great at consistency and struggle so often to find purpose in doing things lately as I face the classic "all these years of doing pretty much the same thing" syndrome of midlife.  The Goob shared a poem by Longfellow that was particularly timely to help keep me inspired:

 THE BUILDERS

All are architects of Fate,
  Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
  Some with ornaments of rhyme. 

Nothing useless is, or low;
  Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
  Strengthens and supports the rest. 

For the structure that we raise,
  Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
  Are the blocks with which we build. 

Truly shape and fashion these;
  Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
  Such things will remain unseen. 

In the elder days of Art,
  Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
  For the Gods see everywhere. 

Let us do our work as well,
  Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
  Beautiful, entire, and clean. 

Else our lives are incomplete,
  Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
  Stumble as they seek to climb. 

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
  With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
  Shall to-morrow find its place. 

Thus alone can we attain
  To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
  And one boundless reach of sky.

"Nothing useless is, or low" indeed. I am sure some of this listlessness that I feel is the combined symptom of pregnancy lethargy, heat, transition phase for us deciding whether and when to move, and the inherent depression I struggle with at times. Yet despite knowing why I feel this way somehow doesn't make it that easy to just "buck up and do things."  Like journalling ;).

So at least for a time, I will go back to trying to record the delicious diversity found within each ordinary day that seems to come out when I write about it.  At the time it never seems more than humdrum, but looking back I have always been glad that I have captured the "ordinary-ness" of a particular stage.  Hopefully this post is enough of a pep talk to get documenting again more consistently.

*******
Reflection:
I have decided that to keep hoping, doing and working at things even when you see no fruit takes courage.  It takes gumption.  To have faith that what you do--day after day, routine or not--means something and matters can be a huge effort of trust.   And when you feel without courage and without gumption, it can be so hard to just get out of bed and keep trying!
And keep writing.
Keep studying.
Keep serving.
Keep building.
Keep creating.
Keep working.
And especially, to keep dreaming.

Because there are seasons to write, study, serve, build, create, work...but just as importantly there are seasons to savor, reflect, snuggle, ponder, recover, and rest. 
But to stop dreaming...
I never realized how much work living with a dream can be when you are already surrounded with so much that is good and beautiful and truly dream-like.  To know when to be content and when to move forward.  When to savor and when to anticipate.  When to settle and when to initiate.  When to ride the rapids, coast in the calm or struggle upstream...without measuring where anyone else on the shoreline or in the river itself may be.  To truly achieve a sense of when to act and when to pause independent of life's circumstances when it is sometimes those very circumstances that impel action or respite.  The work of the mind and soul.

Too Hot to Handle

(or more lovingly subtitled: The four hours in which I curse the 4 to possibly 5 males in my home for their sweetness.)

I don't sleep well right now: allergies + heat + pregnancy = no bueno.
So even though I only had about 4 hours of sleep the previous night and fought off the evil nap demon courageously and victoriously during the course of the next 19 hours of semi-comatose "awakeness," despite going to bed around 11 pm, I found myself tossing and turning around 1:30 am.

Zsa-man: 
Well, I tossed and turned myself face to face with a specter.
Enter Zsa-zsa, my cute little recently birthday-ed 5 year old.
"Mommy, I had a bad dream."

This seems to be somewhat a theme of the past three nights and I am sure that when I am again coherent enough to remember what a nice mommy is, I will try and see if I can help him deal with bad dreams.  But for the moment, he just started my struggling-to-sleep body into full alertness.

Fortunately, years of dealing with the repercussions of "horrible middle of the night responses" that have given my older children PTSD from waking up the sleeping momma bear have helped condition me to temper my responses.  It has actually been quite a while since I have gotten up angry.  Well, it wasn't the last time this fateful evening.

Staring blearily into the beautiful cow-like brown eyes of my Zsa-man, I found myself grumbling something about: "go potty first then you can snuggle with me."

Fast forward 2-45 minutes and once again I turn over--again, semi-comatose--and am once again startled into full wakefulness by the 5 year old specter haunting the side of my bed. I stifle my grumbling marginally successfully this time as I lovingly pick him up to set him between Quinn and I.
And then I feel the moisture.  My darling little bed-wetter has soaked through his pull-up once again and the process becomes infinitely more complicated.

The evil, sleep-deprived mom monster is beginning to make itself more asserted as I gently extract him from the bed before spreading anything to my own bed and say somewhat gruffly, "You need to change before you can sleep with us.  Back to the bathroom to change."
He and I go across the hall, bearing new jammies and wipes and he sweetly proceeds to dress, apologizing a few times, bless his heart. I assure him groggily that he is a sweet boy as I try to convince myself to keep the bear in the cage, knowing he is sweetly innocent and just needs a little magic mommy snuggle to scare away the nightmares.

We stumble back through the darkness into the night of my very own room and face the bed.

Enter the baby and Q-dawg's moment to "shine":
I face the bed that despite providing no real deep sleep supplies infinite comfort for my pregnant body. I consider the size of Zsa-man's body. I consider the space left by my husband's sweetly intended snuggling approach to beyond the middle of our queen size bed in his sleep.  I consider the space required for my over-large "pioneer stock" pregnant body to lay down. I whisper Quinn's name a couple times to no avail.  I gently push-encourage his body to return to "his side" of the bed. I lay Zsa-man down right next to his father. I squeeze myself sideways onto the remaining strip of luxury bedding.   For five minutes.  I change my position so my head is at the foot of the bed and my overly large tummy has room beneath the space left by Zsa-man's short body.  I am not left to only grumbling over my (possible) little infant son's ability to emanate large waves of heat and the continual block and flow of my allergy induced mucus in my head.  So grateful to be pregnant...just not appreciating the extra heat of having the snuggling inside and without at the moment.

Fast forward two hours--Spooner's turn!
I wake up to heat.  Lots of heat.  Zsa-man has snuggled away from his father and is making his way down to my end of the bed. I bless the Benadryl I took during my last bout of awakeness that allowed me a blessed few more hours of sleep. I hear quiet little kid breathing behind me.  All mothers know this sound.  The sound of a child waiting watchfully over their parent, eagerly awaiting their wakefulness in a semi-quiet state: quiet enough to indicate they are trying to be quiet to let the parent sleep and noisy enough to not allow that slumber.  Apparently, that is not enough for sweet little Spooner as he crawls onto the bed next to me, snuggling.

Going through my head is how sweet this moment should be, how it is truly special that my 7 year old is so tender-hearted and loving...as he gives me little kisses and puts his arm over and back and over and back and over and back off of my shoulder to snuggle.
Then, he gets the blanket.

I begin to feel the temperature escalate exponentially as he gently lays down a blanket over my pretending-to-sleep-overheating body.  Tucking it up under my chin, draping it carefully over my body and even making sure my toes are under, I hear a happy sigh and  whispered, "I love you, Mommy" as he then gets back onto the bed to snuggle against my back again.

That does it.  After a huge moment of self-restraint to savor the pure sweetness of the moment, I heave the blanket off my body, whisper what is the best "thanks" I can offer at this moment of sleep-deprived raging heat to my darling little boy and stumble into the bathroom, whipping the door closed behind me.  Glancing at the clock I see: 5:26 am.  Super.  Grumbling about "no way I am getting any more sleep tonight!" I deal with an awake momma bear.
The shower beckons.

Enter the final player, Chugger-dude:
As I turn the shower on, I remember a conversation I had with my sweet fifteen year old son just a regretfully short hours before as we both prepared for bed.  He commented on how since he started taking cold showers, doing the Polar Bear Plunge on Jan 1st into Lake Ontario hasn't been as hard.

Inspired, I thought about how refreshing that sounded considering my over-warm, heat-generating current condition, pulled on the shower and stepped in.  "This is horrible!" I exclaimed as I struggled to catch my breath.
Yes, he didn't force me in.
Yes, he would have probably encouraged me not to.
But somehow it was a very fitting "end" to my "night" that I should be cursing Chugger-dude, as I had all the other males in my home...

...and all because they are so sweet.