Here & There, 1.29.2022.

This week’s biggest win was that I finally started recovering from Covid! It felt like a huge weight to have the throbbing headaches lift, because I was starting to worry they’d never go away.

I feel like a broken record, but man, having coworkers you like makes life so much better, doesn’t it? I’m grateful to have such a kind & supportive crew around me as the stress of pandemic teaching continues.

Other things on this week’s good list: Beautifully clear winter days & Minnesota delights like pond hockey games (pictured above). Sean’s stability in hard situations. Hilarious 4th grade opinion essays on hard hitting topics like why cake is way better than pie. Finally feeling well enough to exercise a bit, and this show that makes indoor elliptical or treadmill workouts tolerable. Phone calls with friends, always. Packing for a warm weekend in Palm Springs!

Here are a few links that stuck with me from this week:

• I loved Hannah Brencher’s piece on a “vow of stability”. Committing to being where you are and giving up the perpetual search for something better sounds like a peaceful way to view life.

• As someone who has a low tolerance for alcohol & also spends half my life avoiding migraines, I don’t drink as much as many other people my age. I could always find fun non-alcoholic options on nights I didn’t feel like drinking in San Francisco, but honestly haven’t been out that much since we moved to Minnesota (thanks, pandemic). I bookmarked this Star Tribune list of alcohol-free cocktails in the Twin Cities. The only one I’ve tried so far is Hola Arepa’s Dos cocktail (delicious!) but I’m excited to try more soon.

• Helpful meal planning ideas!

• “The fun part doesn’t come later. Now is the fun part.” 

• This article on the vast scope of pandemic grief resonated with me. We’ve lost so many things, big and small, over the last few years.

  • “In the scheme of things that people have lost to the pandemic, a book tour is way out there on the “So what?” end of the spectrum, close to trivia nights at the corner bar and your Pomeranian’s weekly appointments at the groomer, very far from jobs and child care and health and family members.

    But the spectrum itself is part of what has made the pandemic so emotionally challenging. The coronavirus has killed almost a million people in this country and more than five and a half million worldwide, while simultaneously taking a staggering range of other things from us as well — everything from a small business to a sense of smell, physical contact to mental health, Friday evenings with friends to smiling at strangers on a crowded subway car. How are we supposed to live with not only such a quantity but such a range of loss?”

• On a related note, I read Pauline Boss’ book on ambiguous loss during the pandemic this week. It gave me the framework to view some of the undefined griefs I’ve had during this time, especially around wedding planning. When I envisioned planning a wedding, I never imagined it’d happen under the shadow of a global pandemic, you know?

• “It's more that I am low on hope. It’s not just the coronavirus-of-it-all, but that the hopelessness is pounding at us from many different angles, personal and political, global and local.” Not a mom, but very much enjoyed this newsletter. 

• Catherine Price’s Power of Fun is on my list to read in February, and this chronicle of a “fun-tervention” she inspired made me excited to dig into it. If you’d also like to join Catherine Price’s February fun-tervention, sign up here.

• I don’t know what is right about masks anymore, but I do know that I ask my students to repeat themselves approximately 7 million times a day.

Here & There, 1.22.2022

Tuesday was my first day back teaching after getting Covid, and most of this week passed in a tired blur. I’m apparently not contagious anymore, but I still had throbbing congestion headaches that plagued me all week. I came home exhausted and ready for a nap each afternoon.

And yet, I still found so many things for this week’s good list. First, the food: In bursts of energy between headaches, I made these cookies and a soup loosely inspired by this recipe, but topped with lots of cheese and tortilla chips. Both were hits. We also had arepas from here one night, and Sean made an oxtail ragu with gnocchi another night. My sweet coworker brought me lasagna for lunch on Friday. Lots of delicious food!

Other things on this week’s good list: More pretty winter walks in falling snow. This delightful puzzle. One of my best friends booking flights to come visit in February! A helpful phone call with a friendly realtor. Going to a union rally for my own union for the very first time. This eye mask that blocks out the light better than anything I’ve used before. Looking forward to next week’s trip (rescheduled from when I got Covid) to Palm Springs!

Baking is clearly at the front of my mind right now! Here are a few sweet treat links from this week:

• Sean made the chocolate mousse from this cookbook to bring to a family dinner on Friday, and I happily ate all the leftovers we brought home. It’s insanely delicious and also happens to be gluten-free. When I’ve made this mousse in the past, I’ve splurged on Vahlrona chocolate for it, but Sean decided to make it at the last minute this time. He just used one of the Trader Joe’s Pound Plus dark chocolate bars we always keep in the pantry, and it was still so good.

• “You don’t have to be a fancy baker to bake a fancy cake.” Such a sensible Midwestern approach to baking!

• Zoe Francois’ Brown Butter Genoise Sponge Cake is high up on my “to bake” list, as is this much more complicated cake.

• I am here for any and all deep dives into brownie origins.

Here are a few other links I liked from this week:

• Even as someone who is not a parent, I found this article on less anxious parenting so interesting. One quote that stuck with me:

  • “The rise of parenting is a lot like what happened to food,” the developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik writes. People used to raise kids the way they made kugel or meatballs: in accordance with the traditions of their culture, picking and choosing from the slight variations they observed among their cousins, grandmothers, aunts, and uncles. “What was once a matter of experience has become a matter of expertise,” Gopnik continues.

• I firmly believe that hybrid teaching is impossible & we need to stop asking teachers to do 2 jobs at the same time. I chose my current position specifically because the union I’m in now negotiated a contract that specifically states teachers cannot be required to instruct students online & IRL at the same time. This seems so obvious to me that I can’t believe we need research to support this opinion, but now we have it:

  • “Every teacher in our study was clear that being asked to teach in a blended-hybrid manner was the worst way to be asked to teach,” said Lora Bartlett, an associate professor of education at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “This is not whining about working hard at all. It’s a professional assessment of a flawed model. We’re saying it’s hard for teachers to meet the needs of students.” 

    Bartlett compared this sort of dual teaching to driving a car on a highway while simultaneously playing a race-car video game on a screen.  “You can’t play a video game about driving and drive in real life,” she said. “It’s completely absurd.” Read more here.

• Very much related to the above research on hybrid teaching, Scenario 1 from this McSweeney’s piece made me literally laugh out loud:

  • There are ten students at home (Zoomies) and ten students in person (Roomies). You have been drinking steadily since 2020 and can’t stop crying. You’re also in-person, double-masked, and weigh fifteen pounds more than you did when this all started.

    • Describe the tech you’ll utilize to ensure all students are engaged learners.

    • What are some ways you can form a connection between Roomies and Zoomies so that all students feel heard?

    • How can you ensure that all students are following the lesson you were asked to cobble together last night using old Kleenex and tears of years gone by?

• I don’t live in San Francisco anymore, but I still find something interesting in every single one of Soleil Ho’s newsletters. This week’s made me want to try this approach to cooking mushrooms.

• I could benefit from this “too many open tabs” support group.

• “Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen.”

• This frozen potato freeway situation feels hilariously Minnesotan.

• I don’t have time to order this before we head to Palm Springs next week, but isn’t this caftan dreamy? On my wishlist for sure!

Here & There, 1.15.2022

Well, Omicron got me this week. My school re-opened on January 3rd with no testing or precautions, so I honestly wasn’t even surprised when my throat started to hurt last Saturday. It felt inevitable. I’ve been really sick this week, way worse than I expected considering I’m vaccinated, boosted, and relatively young & healthy.

Maybe I’ll write about it more at some other point, maybe not. For now, all I have to say is that I remain furious at how little our society values children and the people who teach them. It’s exhausting & it feels like no one cares.

Anyway, despite feeling very sick this week, there were still lots of good things. Grilled cheese and chicken noodle soup deliveries. Amazingly helpful coworkers. An ice roller to help with the headaches. A fun puzzle for when I had the energy to stand. A delightful new-to-me mystery series. A few short, wintry walks with Sean as I started to feel better. Waking up on Friday morning to a beautiful falling snow & not needing to go anywhere.

*I was bored during quarantine, so I logged into Instagram for the first time in quite a while this week. The first few links are from there, just FYI!

A few links from here & there this week:

• I got lots of conflicting advice around my Covid quarantine, and this is pretty much how it felt.

• “We’ve got to stop working for free. We’ve got to stop giving them our free labor because we’re upholding a system that is not sustainable.” Adrienne was talking in her Instagram stories this week about how she’s not going in 2 hours early anymore to prep for her school day because she’s tired of working for free, and it really resonated with me. I can’t figure out how to link to the exact story, but she’s a rad teacher in Chicago that you should follow!

• Along the same lines, this advice to “let it fail” struck a chord with me. The current education system feels too broken to cling to any longer. I also stand by this sentiment.

• Moving on from education, I love the idea of a yearly or monthly “Did It” list. It seems like a fun way to reflect and celebrate all that happened!

• In the midst of feeling very sick, and also feeling incredibly frustrated to still be sick after more than a week, this podcast episode on “How to Listen to Your Body” was just what I needed to hear.

• This Atlantic article, about how technology has increased our availability and decreased the appropriate amount of time to take to respond to someone, was so interesting. I’ve been thinking about this quote (emphasis my own) for a while:

  • “Ellie Harmon, a senior instructor at Portland State University, pointed out to me that technology isn’t in and of itself stressful—other people’s expectations are. She came to understand this while studying how hikers on the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail engaged with their phones. When she was on the trail for her research project, despite there being more cell service than she expected, she said she experienced a “perfect disconnection,” where “the obligations to others just dropped away.””

• We used to do a version of this two-basket system for kitchen towels in our San Francisco apartment, but we just sort of stopped doing it when we moved. Not for any particular reason, but I think we ended up using those baskets to store other things, and thus haven’t had any real system for kitchen laundry since. This was a good reminder to bring that system back!

• I’m not sure where it came from, but I got an itch to try making homemade candy bars this week. This is kind of random, because I don’t even like store-bought candy bars that much, but here we are. I’ve been eyeing this Nanaimo bar recipe (NYT Cooking) and also these homemade Twix bars.

• Priya Krishna’s new YouTube series “On the Job” for NYT Cooking looks so good! I love her emphasis on labor in the food industry. Can’t wait to watch!

• “Any exercise in any setting likely should help us cope better this winter, the researchers said.” This study on how cross country skiers were less likely to develop anxiety was interesting, and a good reminder to prioritize movement during my adjustment to winter.

• Speaking of cross country skiing, I have this list of Twin Cities parks for cross-country skiing bookmarked. Sean cross country skis regularly, but since I haven’t cross country skied in… at least a decade? Maybe longer? I think we’ll start at Como Park first so I can rent skis to see how I like it.

Here & There, 1.8.2022

I cannot believe another year has passed. The pandemic rages on, we are all still exhausted, but somehow, we are now in 2022. I don’t know if it’s the pandemic or burnout or just the massive amount of change that has happened this year, but my sense of time is feeling especially warped right now. I cannot remember what happened when, how long ago that trip was, how old that friend’s baby is now. I have more or less stopped using social media at this point, but I still want to remember my own life, to document special moments as they happen, and I think writing here more often might be a good way to do it.

In no particular order, here are a few things on my mind right now:

1. My school reopened amid Omicron this week, we are wildly understaffed, and it is exactly as exhausting as you’re reading about in the news. I am so tired.

2. This is my first January in Minnesota in more than a decade, and the sub-zero temperatures have felt brutal. This week, I learned that I’m supposed to take my 4th grade class outside for recess if the windchill is -10 or warmer. Quite the change from California life!

3. Good things from this week: The cozy feeling of making chili on Sunday afternoon. Walking on a frozen lake with my parents. Coworkers to commiserate with. Delivering Rose Patisserie croissants to brighten up a friend’s day. Working on the crossword puzzle in bed with Sean. A super helpful meeting with my kind U of MN advisor. Popping over to my grandma’s house for a last minute Chinese food feast with my aunt and uncle. Trader Joe’s Maple Espresso tea. Phone calls with friends while working on puzzles. A few good winter runs, thanks to 20+ degree temperatures, good gear, and plowed paths.

4. This week felt so hard & tiring, but when I went to list out good things above, so many came into my head. Isn’t it funny how our brains can focus on the hard stuff and ignore how much good also happened?

A few links from here & there around the internet this week:

1. "There is no enemy here but the pandemic." Education related news coverage made me incredibly frustrated this week. This situation is incredibly hard, and I’m tired of teachers being everyone’s favorite scapegoat. It’s exhausting.

2. I don’t use Twitter anymore, but I saw this graphic on Gabrielle Blair’s latest newsletter. As a 4th grade teacher who spends the bulk of the school day in one room with the same students, I have been thinking about it ever since. Can we start funding N95 masks for students and teachers?

3. McSweeney’s satire on education coverage during the pandemic has been spot on. This one, “A Note of Reassurance from Your School District Regarding Our Updated Omicron Policies”, was almost too accurate to be funny, and this one “Here’s Why You’re Wrong for Supporting Either In-Person or Virtual School”, feels like a good summary of what frustrated me about education news this week.

4. In the world outside school chaos, this New Yorker piece on love amidst sorrow and proposal soup was lovely.

5. “Capitalism leaves many people and communities behind.” I didn't necessarily agree with the end conclusion of this Atlantic piece, but I found it interesting to read about how even MBA students are becoming disillusioned with capitalism.

6. A friend recommended this sheet-pan surf and turf, so now I want to try it!

7. “We can’t be on the defense and just wait for misinformation to spread.” Love this profile of Azza Gadir, an immunologist with a 97 percent success rate for convincing people to get vaccinated against Covid-19.

8. My mom found a bundt cake pan she’d never used and gave it to me. As someone who’s lived in city apartments without space for superfluous pans, I’ve never made a bundt cake before. I’m thinking I might try this buttermilk marble cake in it first!

9. This was a genuinely inspiring year-end wrap up. Cheers to quitting things that aren’t working, and making decisions based on who you are right now, you know?

10. I’m still figuring out works for me when it comes to winter gear, but these grey Sperry duck boots have been a recent success. They keep my feet dry in the snow, are easy to pull on and off, and are somehow comfortable enough to wear all day teaching. Did I wear them everyday this week? Sure did! They’re on sale for $60 now, so check them out if you also need boots!

A tip for when you can't fall asleep.

Early on in the pandemic, probably sometime in April, I started to have a terrible time falling asleep. If my memory is right, it was in that time period where I was starting to realize that I might not get back into my classroom that school year. I was worried about my students, miserable from the frustrations of remote teaching, and feeling very far away from my family.

I tried all sorts of things to get myself to sleep. I put screens away earlier, meditated, took evening showers to wind down, and even tried CBD. But no matter what, when I actually turned the lights out and tried to sleep, my chattering mind would come roaring back to life, not wanting to let me rest when there was so much in the world to worry about!

What finally did the trick?

I popped my AirPods in, set the sleep timer on my library’s audiobook player, and began listening to audiobooks at bedtime. There was enough of a distraction to pull my mind out of its anxious spiral, and I purposely chose calm, cozy books to listen to at bedtime. It sort of made me feel like a little kid being put to bed, but it worked.

I was doing this a lot in the spring, but then I eventually got into a better routine and started sleeping better. (For what it’s worth, waking up at the same time each morning & making it a priority to move my body every single day made a huge difference in how I slept.) I hadn’t needed to put myself to bed via audiobook for a long time, probably months, until this week.

Last night, I could not fall asleep. I don’t know what it was, but I was tossing & turning long past midnight, in a way that hadn’t happened since those early pandemic days. After meditating only made me more agitated, and I was worried my fidgeting would wake Sean, I finally remembered the audiobook trick. It worked like a charm!

Delights!

A friend and I have been texting each other photos of delightful things lately. She sent me a snowman she spotted in Central Park on her run yesterday, and it brought me so much joy. The whole act of spotting & sharing delight, inspired by an activity from Catherine Price’s Fun Squad, has been joyful!

To keep them all in one place, here are a few things that have been bringing me delight lately.

The flowers bloom so early here in Northern California. It feels like a miracle to me, like spring comes in February each year. The tree right outside our apartment bloomed this week, and watching its progress has been a delight.

Grandma M.E. got her first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine! She is 91 but still lives in her own home, so the process for getting her a vaccine appointment were complicated and confusing. It’s been a huge relief for my family that she’ll soon be fully inoculated.

This 10-layer honey cake was a fun project! Sean got me the 20th Century Cafe Cookbook for Christmas, and I finally attempted making this cake last week. It was delicious, and actually not as hard as I thought it was going to be. I’m already scheming to make it again!

Wine outside! We were planning on picking up our February wine club shipment last weekend anyway, because we’re really not that far from Sonoma. Outdoor dining & wine tasting ended up re-opening in California just a few days before we went. We did our complimentary tasting and snacked on a cheese board and a late picnic lunch in the sunshine. Delight!

Here & There, #4!

A few things I’ve found, here & there around the internet, that I liked this week… Keeping things light this week, because that is what feels

• I can’t remember how I ended up subscribing to the “A Piece of Cake” newsletter, but I’m not mad about it and am considering this red velvet bread as an option for Valentine’s Day care packages. 

• Heart-shaped macarons are another thing I’m considering baking for Valentine’s Day, and I fell down a baking YouTube rabbit hole. Wouldn’t it be fun to make something like this or this? 

• “Active imaginations start with active lives.” This feels true to my experience!

• This New Yorker piece on wedding registries made me laugh out loud. 

• This purple tie-dye sweatshirt  was an impulse purchase during my Target trip this weekend. It’s soft and joyful, and I’m slightly concerned that I’m never going to be able to dress professionally for work again? But whatever, it’s fun. 

• I can personally vouch that these cookies are a good thing to whip up after cold, grumpy days.

What's saving your life right now?

In the clutter of my inbox last week, I stumbled across a newsletter asking me: What’s saving your life right now? 

I’ve been thinking about it ever since. That question feels pressing right now, when things still feel grim and heavy. What’s getting you through? Can you find the good things? Can you hold onto them? 

In the post linked above, Anne says, “Our lives reflect what we persistently think about.” I’ve been thinking about attention lately, about where I want mine to go, about what I want to focus on.

Here are a few things on my short list right now:  

1. Getting outside for a walk, every single day.

2. Park hangs with friends. Feeling especially grateful to be in California with our mild weather these days!

3. Baking, ranging from elaborate projects like the 10-layer Russian honey cake I made last week to these insanely simple (but delicious) lava cakes that can be mixed up in less time than our oven takes to preheat.

4. Opening the fancy wine on a Tuesday, just because.

5. Bits of routine, where I can find it. Waking up about the same time each day, working on a puzzle each weekend, calling my grandma each week. I’m holding tight to small things that give structure to this strange time, and it’s helping.

How about you? What’s saving your life right now? We’ve got to find the good things where we can.

5 "Feel-Good" Fiction recommendations!

A friend texted me a reading-related SOS the other day. “Help!” she said, “I’ve been reading too many heavy books & need something light. What should I read next?”

Feel-good fiction has been one of my main pandemic coping mechanisms, so I felt like I had an overwhelming number of options to suggest to her. I know that some people have been having a hard time focusing on reading, but I’ve just been gravitating to books that I can tell will have a happy ending.

In no particular order, here are 5 feel-good books I can personally vouch for:

1. One to Watch. If you’ve ever, at any point in your life, watched one of the Bachelor franchise shows, this rom-com adjacent book is worth a read. The writing is smart and snappy, and it pulled me out of a reading slump this summer.

2. Destination Wedding. This book was a true delight! It involves an outrageously extravagant Indian wedding, a heroine searching for her place in the world, and a cast of lovably quirky characters. I loved the author’s writing style and now have her first book on my TBR list.

3. The Switch. This story starts with an overworked twenty-something swapping lives with her darling grandmother, and it was charming & redemptive & wonderful. I got an ARC for this and read it in early quarantine, and it was just what I needed then. If you haven’t already read Beth O’Leary’s first book, The Flatshare, you should add that to your feel-good fiction pile as well!

4. Party of Two. I didn’t think I liked the official “romance” genre until I read Jasmine Guillory. Her writing is fun and quick. The characters in her books feel relatable and like people you want to root for. Party of Two is her most recent book. I feel more modern than the romance paperbacks with dramatic covers that seem to fill little free libraries.

5. Beach Read. I went into this book not knowing anything about it and was surprised by how much I loved it. I suggest you do the same! This book has more heart and depth than you’d guess from the title and the cover.

I’m just starting to play around with Bookshop, but you can see even more of my fun, feel-good fiction recommendations here.

Here & There, #3!

I read less news and more of my favorite newsletters this week, and I think my head felt clearer for it. Here are a few of my favorites from here & there around the internet lately…

• I love Anne Helen Peterson’s newsletter, and her recent piece about vaccine appointments was particularly good. “What’s the secret to getting an appointment? It’s the same secret to navigating any American system: have a tech-savvy English-speaking person in your life with ample times on their hands.”

• I generally think the whole “cities are dead” narrative is a bit dramatic, but this Atlantic article is the first place I’ve heard the term “Zillow tourism” and I’m glad to have a name for the strange pandemic hobby I’ve picked up.

• Sarah Bessey is a good soul, and I loved her newsletter this week about the goodness of making things.

• “We could have given restaurants tax breaks or rent relief. We could have paid restaurants to pay their workers to stay home. We could have socialized healthcare. There are so many things we, as the richest nation on earth, could have done besides telling people it’s their fault if their favorite taco shop goes under.” I’m sad for restaurants and restaurants workers right now, and furious that our government isn’t doing more to help them.

• Let’s end this week’s links on a high note. Do you remember that Bernie Sanders meme from Inauguration Day? Slate interviewed the teacher who knit those mittens he's wearing in that photo, and now I want to be friends with her. When they asked her about the offers she’s getting to to sell those mittens, she said, “I can see that if I wanted to drop everything and pursue that path, I could do it, but who knows how long that would last? The path that I’m already on brings me a tremendous amount of joy and I think that’s the greatest symbol of success, right? This little blip of fame is sweet, and it’ll pass, and then my regular life will just be what it already is, which is kind of nice.” Isn’t that lovely? Read the whole interview here.

Here & There, #2.

A few things I’ve found, here & there around the internet, that I liked this week…

• “I think the connection of success to busyness is dangerous.” I already requested Jen Gotch’s book at the library!

• I adore Joy the Baker (her Sunday lists especially) and loved her week of outfits on Cup of Jo this week: Like, links to men’s dress shirts from Walmart were included? She’s the best. 

• The LA Times has been killing it lately. I loved their complete guide to staying sane, which apparently only takes 13 steps and their list of 16 meaty book series to dive into while staying at home.

• Everyday, if you can, ask the people you’re quarantined with: “How are you doing? What do you need? How can I help?” We’ve been at home a longgg time, and clear communication is going to be what pulls us through this!

• In the Ruby newsletter this week, my friend Peggy recommend Lynda Barry’s writing prompts as a way to get back into journaling during this time. I’m planning to try the Four minute diary and 7 and a half minutes worth of writing this week.

• Our grocery store was out of cauliflower (this are strange times to grocery shop in) but I want to try this whole roasted cauliflower with salsa verde the next time I can track down cauliflower.

Sourdough Madness.

This week, I have become utterly consumed by my new responsibilities as the caretaker of a sourdough starter. I didn’t realize I was basically adopting a pet when my friend dropped off some starter for us.

I’ve been going down internet rabbit holes, reading page after page of conflicting opinions about the best sourdough start feeding schedules and approaches, the recipes that make the best bread, the mistakes sourdough newbies must watch out for. As a person who does not tend towards pastimes that require precision, this has been mildly stressful and definitely time-consuming. It probably doesn’t help that my focus is particularly low right now (gee thanks, coronavirus anxiety) so everything feels more complicated.

I knew I was in deep when I found myself watching sourdough YouTube videos while unloading the dishwasher this morning. But, here we are! Right now, as I type this, after much fretting and approximately 3 trillion read throughs of an alarmingly scienfitic recipe, my sourdough bread is now sitting on our counter, a work in progress, at this exact moment.

It’s been folded twice, and there are still two more folds in its future yet tonight, an overnight resting period to let it rise, a whole process awaiting me tomorrow morning where I will wake up early to divide and proof the dough before finally, hopefully, bake it into something that is at least somewhat edible. Who knows?

…..

Update from 24 hours later: There were a few glitches, and I have notes for how to improve the bread next time… but a bread like substance successfully came out of our oven tonight! It actually tastes pretty good, just didn’t rise as much as I’d have liked.

But, the real hero of today? Sourdough pancakes! Oh my gosh! Where have these been all my life? I mixed up this batter and Sean cooked them in bacon grease. I feel like we reached a new level of quarantine with that Sunday breakfast.

The sourdough bread itself was pretty ugly, so it’s the pancakes pictured up above. We didn’t have any syrup, but apparently Sean’s family used brown sugar instead of syrup on their pancakes when he was growing up. So, we did that. Delicious!

An extrovert in isolation.

As part of one of our stranger grad school assignments, I had to take the official Myers-Briggs personality test. This was years ago now, but I still remember that the results showed that my “extroversion levels” were as high as they measured. Those results weren’t exactly surprising to me. I like people. I get energy from connecting with other humans. This is something I’ve known about myself for a long time, but I think it became easy for me to forget after I became a teacher. There is just SO much human interaction in teaching. Constantly. Not just with the kids, of course, but also with colleagues and parents.

By the end of regular school days, I’m often so tired that all I want is quiet. I put off returning phone calls because I’m always too tired after work to talk to anyone else. Sometimes, after days with lots of meetings or conferences after a full school day, I come home & just lay on my bed in silence. I find it a lot harder to go to social events during the school week, even if they are things I really enjoy, just because I’m often drained from all the human interaction that comes from being an elementary school teacher.

During the school year, it’s easy for me to forget how extroverted I am, since most of that energy goes into my job. But, right now, with basically all of life canceled and my work changed drastically since the shift to distance learning, my extrovert heart is… not doing well.

I MISS HUMANS. I miss humans so much that I wave and smile at everyone we see on our socially distanced neighborhood walks, that I was delighted when Sean wanted to stop for burgers yesterday because it meant we got to interact with a human for 30 seconds while placing our order, that I feel the gap of real human interaction everytime I do yet another video call. It’s just not the same, and that weighs on me in a way I didn’t realize it would.

I’m not quite sure what it was about this week, but this is the week I hit my breaking point. Maybe it was because I was still healing from being sick. Maybe it was because it was spring break, so I didn’t have the norms of my routine & even the distant interactions with my students and coworkers to ground me. Maybe it’s because schools are now officially closed for the year and the last hope of returning to work this spring is officially gone. Maybe it was that it’s been FIVE weeks of this already and any return to “normal” feels hopelessly far away.

Hard day.

I want to be honest. Today was a hard day. Not really for any particular reason, it just was. Quarantine without my regular work routine is honestly maybe harder for me, it’s easier for me to feel lost & aimless without the routines of teaching, even remotely, to keep me anchored.

But, that being said, there were still good moments. We went for a drive through Skyline Forest, staying mostly in the car because my breathing isn’t up to a crazy long hike, but we did walk around a tiny bit. We got In ‘n Out burgers for lunch. Our outdoor patio table came and Sean’s already assembled it. It hurts me less to breathe while walking than it did before. There are good things, but there are also hard things. Things feel scary and overwhelming and out of my control today. Sometimes that’s just the way it is. Hoping tomorrow feels lighter.

The Good List.

The last few days felt… heavy, kind of sad. Today feels a little bit lighter, and I am so grateful for that. Sending you happy thoughts, wherever you are. Here are some things I’m grateful for today…

1. FRESH BREAD! Can we just take a minute to admire the beautiful loaf pictured above? A friend brought over the sweetest care package today that included fresh bread, cookies, sourdough starter, and all the necessary ingredients for us to make more of this bread for weeks to come. The thoughtful gesture basically made my week. Just insanely kind.

2. Sunshine & flowers! It’s been beautiful in San Francisco this week. Sunny & 70s these past few days, which is insanely helpful as we all try to cope with the darkness of the news. I took off the sweatpants I’ve been wearing for the past month (I mean, I washed them, don’t worry… but still) and changed into a jumpsuit! It’s basically as comfortable as sweats, but I was surprised by how much better it made me feel to get “dressed”. I put my hair up and put sunglasses on and walked outside and felt the sun on my cheeks and it all was just delightful. I felt human again!

3. Phone calls. Ok people, I have a confession. I am so tired of Zoom. It feels like a punishment to me. I find it hard to look at the screen for so long, more tiring than normal to try to follow a conversation, and it just kind of reminds me that I wish I were with all these people IRL… and I’m just not. A friend sent me this twitter thread that helped me better understand why Zoom feels so exhausting sometimes. “It’s easier being in each other’s presence, or in each other’s absence, than in the constant presence of each other’s absence.” Interesting, huh? Anyway, I’ve kind of just realized that video calls feel like work to me, but a phone call with someone I love paired with a nice socially distance walk? That’s more my speed for sure, and it helps ease the persistent feeling of loneliness that’s been lurking around this extrovert.

4. Outdoor furniture. Okay, this one is petty AF but I’m not going to apologize because it’s honestly the first thing I’ve looked forward to in a long time. One of the things that made us fall in love with our current apartment was our lovely little balcony, but decorating an apartment is weirdly tiring & we haven’t done much with the outdoor space since we moved in. I lost a lot of steam for home projects when I got sick, but I somehow had just enough energy to order a little outdoor table and chair set online. The table came today, and the chairs are coming soon, and I can’t wait to get a set up where we can spend a little bit more time actually taking advantage of our balcony.

5. Wine! I’m finally starting to physically feel almost normal, normal enough that I’m having a glass of wine as I drink this. Wow. Wine is great. And one of my girlfriends scheduled a wine night (over Zoom, obvi, because duh) for us for this Friday, and as much as I hate Zoom… Wine & friends? You know I’m already looking forward to it. Anything that gives me something to look forward to, you know? I’ll take it.

Status update.

I’ve started texting friends things like, “What’s the level of stir crazy today?” as a strange way of checking in, but also, maybe, because it’s a question I’ve been asking myself all the time.

It’s my spring break over here, which somehow, feels harder than being quarantined while having work to take my mind off things. I’m trying to take this week mostly off, like for real not working, not responding to emails, or anything, because the transition to distance teaching was brutal and exhausting and frustrating. I need to gather up my strength to face it again, especially because the thought of having to do it for the rest of this school year…. well just insert that sobbing emoji over my face, and you’ll have an accurate picture of how I feel about it.

Last week, I had some of the milder symptoms of Covid-19. The shortness of breath, a low fever, sore throat, headaches, fatigue, yada yada. At one point, my breathing got so bad that the advice nurse on the phone sent me into the ER, just so they could check in on me. The good news is that the results of the chest scan and blood tests and whatever else they did all showed that I’m relatively young & healthy. So, that’s good.

The bad news is that, for better or worse, their tests eliminated any possible cause for my symptoms other than a “viral respiratory illness” that sure looks a lot like that one that’s been all over the news. Since I’m relatively low-risk and under 60, and California is so short on tests, they couldn’t give me a Covid-19 test there in the hospital. But they told me to assume I had it & stay inside my house until after the fever had been completely gone for 4 days.

For now, I feel lucky to have had a milder case of whatever virus I had, lucky to be young and relatively healthy otherwise, lucky to have a nice home with lots of natural light and a partner who does such a wonderful job taking care of me, and lucky lucky lucky, all around.

That being said, now that I’m feeling a bit better, my stir crazy levels are at an all time high and I’m realizing how much regular exercise was helping me cope and manage my anxiety around all this. Without that, plus with being on spring break and not having work to keep me busy, things have felt a little sad and lonely lately.

So, that’s my status: A little stir crazy, a little lonely, but definitely lucky. And tomorrow marks five days since my fever went away, so I’m really really glad I’ll be able to go for a walk outside.

Teaching at a distance.

For the first time in a long time, something I wrote is in print!

The transition to teaching 5th graders remotely during a pandemic has been… wild. Like nothing I ever thought I’d be doing in my life. The SF Chronicle asked me a write a little day in the life diary about the transition, and it ran in the Sunday Culture section yesterday. The online version is here, if you’d like to take a peek. There are also photos documenting the embarrassing faces I make while teaching math over Zoom, the only day of quarantine I wore jeans, and the back of Sean’s head as he tries to run away from the socially distanced photographer. 

P.S. Yes, that is obviously a Jenny Lemons avocado shirt. 

Here & There, #1.

This past week, I’ve made a good-faith effort to read less of the news and more of… literally anything else I can get my brain to focus on. For me, this means I read a lot of fluffy “rom-com in print” type of books and also a few other things around the internet. Here are a few links I’d recommend.

1. This story, via Hayley Nahmen’s new newsletter (!!!), made me feel better about our perpetual hunt for TP. 

2. All this time in our apartment has me dreaming big dreams for our balcony. Over the course of some Pinteresting, I stumbled across this Green Wall DIY and have been thinking about it ever since. Should I claim this as my quarantine hobby?

3. This NYT article was reassuring. It’s a relief to know I’m not the only one feeling extra scatterbrained these days!

4. For my fellow teachers, this article has some actually useful tips on managing distance teaching while staying somewhat sane. I’m on spring break this week, and trying my best to take it completely off, but I’ll definitely be trying to find a more reasonable work/life balance when we’re back.

5. “Recipes are very concrete. When we’re unsure about the future, there’s a comfort in the structure and predictability of baking.” San Francisco is always a sourdough town, but this piece on the psychology behind our current obsession with making sourdough at home was lovely. I actually have a friend who offered to share some of her starter with me, so I may jump on this bandwagon myself.

6. I love the idea of a virtual cookbook but haven’t had the energy to organize one just yet. Perhaps soon!

7. “If I had a credo for my book, it would be ‘People First,’” he said. “Too many people worship false gods — wealth, reputation, power — that are not more important than the people in our lives. Relationships are what make our lives worth living.” I’ve been thinking about the themes of this NYT article a lot lately.

8. “I worry quite a bit about what’s being asked of teachers right now. Flooded with resources from well-meaning organizations, the internet now ablaze with helpful hints and tips about online learning, they’re being asked to deliver meaningful instruction overnight to students scattered hither and yon, each with wildly different capacities to fully participate and with different levels of disruption in their lives. Suddenly the demands we had been placing on teachers in ‘normal times’—often criticized for being excessive—seem like a walk in the park.” The concerns from this education newsletter resonated with me. This all is so hard.

9. A few months ago, one of my friends made some pretty cool things using natural dyes. She got the most beautiful colors from beets and turmeric, and I’ve been wanting to try it for myself ever since. I found this post with some useful tips, we already have beets in the house, and I’ve been looking for some quarantined spring break activities… so this might be the week I actually try it!

10. Let’s end with food! I make these spicy chicken pieces all the time. They’re easy & flavorful & great with cauliflower rice or salad or basically whatever you have on hand. I highly recommend!

Helpful distractions.

I’ve been feeling sad and anxious lately. Not anything extraordinary, I think just a pretty regular reaction to all of the strange things happening in our world right now. Even with all of the privileges I have, and there are SO many things that I am grateful for, but that still doesn’t change the fact that sometimes this all just makes me feel…. a little sad. A little worried. A lot anxious. Grateful for al the privileges I have, and yet still on edge. Being a human with feelings is hard sometimes.

Anyway, I’ve been finding pleasant distractions to be useful during this time. Here are a few things that have been helping me:

1. Familiar TV series. I don’t watch a ton of TV, so it actually took until this past week of quarantine for me to start actually watching anything. I would recommend picking a show you like but haven’t watched for years. My family used to be super into Monk, the relatively sweet detective show, back when I was in high school. I haven’t watched it since, but it’s all on Prime Video, and it’s made for some soothing background viewing these past few days. It’s not too emotional, every mystery is neatly solved by the end of each episode, and it’s been a nice companion for these days.

2. Cozy audiobooks. I listen to audiobooks a lot in regular life too, but I’ve found them to be particularly useful right now. I’ve almost completely stopped listening to my regular lineup of podcasts, since many of them are news and/or politics heavy. I just don’t need that kind of stress in my ears as I’m unloading the dishwashe, ya know? Right now, calm is the goal. In that vein, I’ve recently listened to The Bookshop on The Corner, Murder in Black Tie (the latest in the High Society Lady Detective series - delightful cozy mysteries), and the Penelope Kite Mystery series (listened to the first one, starting the second one now). They were all lovely in the audiobook format.

3. Baking. I know I’m not the only one to find comfort from baking, but I couldn’t leave it off this list. It’s soothing to have to follow a recipe exactly, to add one thing to another and watch it turn into something delightful. Plus, of course, then you get to eat the final product, which doesn’t hurt. These crinkle top brownies are pictured up above. Wow, they were delicious.

4. Coloring. I’ve been doing a little bit of random organizing and stumbled across a box of craft supplies! I haven’t broken into the watercolors or embroidery projects just yet, but I have been finding it soothing to color a little bit as I watch an episode of Monk or listen to an audiobook. It gives me something to do with my hands that doesn’t involve technology, and it’s also just… dare I say, fun.

5. Puzzles. Now, let me say, I am NOT a puzzle person. Not at all. I’ve never been particularly good at them. I have vivid childhood memories of my sister being a whiz at putting puzzles together… and my brain just doesn’t work as fast with spatial reasoning things like this. But, my mom included not one but two puzzles in a recent care package, and I have to say, I was surprised by how fun it was. Again, another great activity to pair with a cozy audiobook to keep your hands busy.

What useful distractions have been keeping you sane during quarantine? I’d love to hear!

The Before Times.

One of my students was telling me a story about something that happened “in the before times”. When I asked what she meant by that, she said, “Oh, you know, like when we used to be able to go to school and see our friends and do stuff like that.”

Ah yes, the before times. The phrase resonated with me, as did this photo call from NYT, asking people to submit photos and memories of normal life before the pandemic.

It was honestly hard for me to remember what life was like this before this, so I scrolled back in my photo roll for reminders.

The few weeks before everything shutdown were a bit of a blur for me, particularly busy seasons in both my personal and professional life. Both my parents and Sean’s parents came to visit us within the span of two and a half weeks during the end of February and the beginning of March . They not only visited, but stayed with us, which involved a few extra Ikea trips and Sean assembling a new bed for them. It was of course wonderful to see both sets of parents, but also extra busy, as life with visitors often seems to feel, all during my busiest month at work all year. My school went through our huge accreditation visit right before the pandemic officially hit its peak, so the end of February and the beginning of March were full of way more work on the evenings and weekends as we all prepared for that. And then, somewhere in that whirlwind, Sean planned a sweet weekend getaway for us to Santa Monica. We stayed in a fun hotel, which gave us loads of complimentary champagne and ate at Gjelina and went out for fun cocktails and walked freely among crowds at the Venice Boardwalk. It was relaxing and wonderful and we had no idea that most of those activities would sound dangerous within a week or two. Honestly, we were so disconnected that weekend that I barely took any pictures, barely have anything to document our last little trip, that last little taste of normalcy we had before the world all changed.

It all changed so fast, huh?