Well, sometimes quarantine means it’s finally the time to get a puppy. This is Francine. She’s an extremely good dog.

It goes on. Life at home just rolls one day into the next. Some yoga, a walk, some gardening. Work some, watch some shows, bake some bread. It would be nice if I weren’t paralyzed by the fear of what’s coming for so many people.

I’m not so worried for myself. I’m worried about how badly we’ve botched this already, and the people who will suffer most because the casually cruelest and greediest people in the world are in charge of how we handled it. It’s a daily horror to read the news and see that it is, in fact, exactly as bad as we knew something like this would be.

Meanwhile I’ve taught my kids to play Clue. We’ve explored our neighborhood. We made rice krispy treats. We laugh. It’s hard to juxtapose these two realities on top of one another.

Today we worked and did some yoga and went for our daily walk, where we saw lots of wonderful flowers because it’s a perfect time of year for that. And we dug in the garden and planted peas and finished prepping another bed and pulled blackberries. Our neighbors were out working in their garden and I peeked over the fence like Wilson to say hi and catch up.

We told the kids they weren’t going back to school until at least the end of April. Jasper says it’s terrific; Fiona is very sad not to see her friends. She got an email from her teacher and was excited to reply to it. We got another email from the district that they are working on distancing learning plans. We’ll end up with some kind of structured assignments in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, we’ll keep working and doing yoga and walking and taking good care of each other. Oh, and cooking. Tonight I made hash from the St Paddy’s Day corned beef. Delicious.

Second day, same as the first, essentially. We took a walk at lunchtime. We planted some seeds for the garden in the afternoon. We tried to make our own fun. Adults tried to focus on work but even at work we all have the same questions and the vaguely shell-shocked atmosphere. I cooked corned beef and cabbage and soda bread like it’s a holiday and not a quarantine. We played Firefly Clue before the kids’ bedtime.

Today they announced that Oregon schools will not reopen until at least April 28. I have maintained since this started that if they closed, schools wouldn’t reopen this school year, but I’m surprised how shocked I was to hear the news. It felt… like a long sentence. Two weeks was never really in the cards, but I thought we’d have longer to pretend and believe maybe things were going back to normal. Now… I just think about my kids and how now, 4th and 2nd grades will be, at best, the year we never finished school because of the pandemic. At best. At best.

You know the deal, pandemic edition

Social distancing is officially in effect here. We shopped earlier so we are prepared to basically shelter in place if it comes to that, we spent some time this weekend making a daily planner so we all have things to do (to keep the kids busy while we try to work and keep us all out of mischief and madness), and now here we are. The first few days have gone really well. Fiona has insisted that daily yoga is mandatory, so we’ve been doing family yoga in the mornings. We are all taking plenty of vitamins and I’m cooking from the fullest fridge we’ve ever had barring the day before Thanksgiving, I think. Today we’ve gotten some work done, gone for a nice walk in the sunshine, and soon we’ll go putter in the garden for a bit. 

I’m feeling a need to write about it a little, even though I’ve booted myself off Facebook and Twitter for mental health reasons (I was so anxious all the time, I was panicking constantly and it’s no way to live) so I figured I could just revive this old thing rather than trying anything new. So, if you are somehow still following… hi! I hug you, virtually and from a safe distance and with gloves on.

Dept. of Shameless Self-Promotion

violetimpudence:

An author who is very close to me … extremely close to me … who might, in fact, be sharing the same body with me, has just published a book on Amazon and it is quite good (opinion not guaranteed unbiased) and you should read it if you like urban fantasy with a generous side of mythology and just the very slightest dusting of horror. Maybe a tiny bit of romance too. Could be.

How To Go To Hell in 10,000 Easy Steps

Valerie wants to sell her soul. But it seems like Hell doesn’t want it, which is a real disappointment.

Actually, Hell is having some serious problems, and it looks like Valerie is going to get ensnared in them whether she likes it or not. Along the way, she’ll meet a lot of colorful and interesting people, most of whom are immortal, many of whom aren’t very nice, some of whom would like to see her dead.

She’ll also experience some truly horrifying things because, no matter how nice some of the people in it are, when it comes right down to it, Hell just isn’t a very pleasant place. 

Available in both ink and pixel formats!

i-hate-vegans:

If you publicly and unreservedly condemn the actions of Nazis in Charlottesville and elsewhere, including everything from quiet hate speech to vehicular terrorism, can you please reblog this post.

I think a few friends, a few followers, every Jew who happens across this post and my own heart could do with knowing that there are more of you out there than there are of them

(via eclecticpjf)