Just some pictures of me being a mom

I am finding this whole quarantine thing really hard, like everyone. The hardest part for me is not working. I always want to be working. I took two weeks off when I had Will, and I just could not wait to get back to work. So being forced by law to not work is so hard. I still spend at least a few hours a day "working" (calling patients, cleaning the clinic, talking to staff who are laid off), but I am not making a paycheque, and I feel so helpless. I want to be out there with an N-95 mask on fixing things. It's so hard accepting that I am helping the most by being at home, where the days slip by, and we make cookies and do crafts and go for a walk, and have a few meltdowns, and cry a couple times. So I am just going to blog about whatever I feel like. So today I have a few blurry pictures of me in my other role. 

Some things that maybe I will blog about in the coming weeks that we are stuck at home helping to flatten the Covid-19 curve:

- before and afters of our house
- being an interracial family
- an update on the boy's allergies
- my recent trip to Ottawa with my university friends
- my teeny (capsule?) wardrobe

Trying to be greener/thoughts in self isolation

Jon and I have been working hard to be more environmentally friendly lately. These are some things we are doing:

(this picture is unrelated and blurry and messy. but. i love it)

- Hanging our clothes to dry. We have had a little foldable drying rack for at least 12 years, and used it off and on for workout clothes and sweaters. But for the last 6 months or so, we have been drying all our clothes on it. We have central heating, so everything dries fast. I actually love the 5 minutes it takes to hang the clothes. It feels monotonous and relaxing to me. And I’m usually listening to a podcast with my Bluetooth headphones while doing laundry, so it’s actually super enjoyable. Our power company sends us updates on how we are doing with power use, and since making this one single change, we have a great score on power use.

- No new clothes. I am almost done my second year of no new clothes. We make lots of exceptions like shoes, socks, swimsuits. I also got a few pieces (lululemon sweats) from my family for Christmas. But mostly, I feel done with new clothes. Also, Jon and I share clothes sometimes. the shirt in the above photo is both of ours.

- Recycling. Of course, we have always done this, but we are trying to be even better. We brought in a recycling bin at work for all those drink bottles in the staff room. And our town has just started a pilot program for recycling glass. So that’s huge for kombucha lovers like us.

- Buying only comsumables for gifts. I started this last year, and it is not hard at all. I just can't add to the plastic people have in their homes. All the parents I know have so many plastic toys in their homes, and are always trying to get rid of them. So I just can't give plastic toys as gifts anymore. So for birthday parties we now do markers and a gift card to the bookstore. Definitely kids are less excited about opening our gifts. But I don't care. And for my girlfriends and family I try to do skincare or bath bombs from Lush or wine.

- Library books. We love books so much over here. But after I read a book (and Jon sometimes reads it too), I pass it on, and I don't know what happens to it. So reading library books makes more sense.

For some reason, for me, all this stuff seems even more important now, in the time of coronavirus. I want to be more minimal now. I want our house to be easier to clean. I want less stuff coming in to it. Also, being home with the boys for 14 days straight now has shown me what stuff they are interested in playing with. For my boys, its lego and duplo, and craft stuff. Alllll the white paper and markers and tape and scissors. And board games. The toy box filled with plastic toys? Not getting much action. Jon and I are in a more financially worrisome position than we ever have been thanks to coronavirus, and I just want us to be buying less stuff and have less debt. So that's where I'm at right now.

Three years of owning our own practice/Covid-19 life

This month marks three years since we bought our business. I would never have guessed in a million years that we would be at such a weird place in life, where we are not supposed to leave our house or get within 6 feet of anyone. And we aren't allowed to work. Our job creates aerosols that can be basically deadly at this point in the Covid-19 situation. The aerosols are suspended in the room for many hours, and since not all people who carry the virus are symptomatic, almost all the treatment we do could spread the virus to many people without us knowing it.

So now our entire staff of 12 people are laid off, and I walk around with what feels like a heavy weight in my chest.

These are some things I am so grateful for:

- Jon and I drive old cars, so we have no car payments.
- We live in a regular-sized house with a regular-sized mortgage payment that we qualified to defer for 3 months with the Covid-19 relief the banks are offering.
- No one in our family takes any medications, so we don't have to worry about seeing our doctor and our pharmacist right now.
- Our house is really comfortable. We just redid our bathrooms (they finished on March 13th, the day before Jon and I started self-isolating), so taking a shower is so nice.
- Our manager, who is laid off and self isolating, talks to me on the phone every day and has been explaining to me about basic clinic stuff like how to turn the server on. I feel like I am learning a whole other side of our business right now.
- Jon and I have both been doing lots of cooking and baking and we are eating really well. For example, today I cooked dried chickpeas in the instant pot, and made this with them. Then Jon used the rest for a chickpea curry recipe that we had for supper with rice. Then I roasted a ton of almonds, which we made almond butter with. And then I used that to make fat bombs. For lunch we had overnight bread with avocado. And Jon made morning glory muffins for breakfast.
- Love is Blind. We are so into it. Jon and I are devoted bachelor franchise watchers, and we are finding Love is Blind so refreshing. We like that it talks about what these couples are going to deal with in the real world, and we really love that the home visits are to their real homes, instead of the pretend homes that they use on a lot of the home visits in the bachelor.
- And of course we are super grateful for FaceTime with family.

I guess this wasn't really a reflection on what three years as business owners has been. Maybe at year four or five we will be looking back on the Covid-19 phase of life as a blip. And maybe this will change the way we do dentistry and business forever.

Coronavirus reading

I would have thought there would be more time to read since I am not allowed to work anymore. But the coronavirus situation has me so distracted. My screentime on my phone was over double my normal average last week. And I have to make such a huge effort to concentrate on things other than the state of our business (we laid off our entire staff, and we aren't allowed to see patients right now. We talk to patients on the phone every day and call in prescriptions when needed). Anyway, this is what I read. We are of course done with libraries for a while, and I’m not ordering any more books from chapters (see above re: no income). So I will be dipping into Jon’s books next.

Such a fun age by Kiley Reid. This one isn't pictured because I sent it to my sister right after I read it. I liked it a lot. The book talks about white privilege in a way that I liked. Also it was a Reese Witherspoon book club selection, so there's that.

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. Ok, so this book is actually a children's book, but I read it and loved it. I'm not sure I would read it to/with my six-year-old, but definitely in a few years I would recommend it to my son. I felt like this book was so unique in the way it was written from the point of view of a gorilla. And it's based on a true story, which I always love.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris. This true story was of course really hard to read. I kept imagining the author sitting with the tattooist while he told her his story. I really liked seeing pictures of the main character and his wife at the end of the book. Really good!

The Danish girl by David Ebershoff. The descriptions in this book are pretty detailed, so sometimes I was wondering when something else was going to happen. But overall I liked this book, and as always appreciate that it is based on a true story.