Living Unabridged

Hello link loving friends!

Hope you are all still keeping on through these strange times. We've kept up with our quarantine routine fairly well, although there were a few days when I just did not have the motivation to "do school" with the youngest kids. So they played snap circuits and explored outside and built elaborate things with Legos and pored over nature books and wrote their own French dictionaries (copied from an Usborne book).

In other words, the kids are fine and yes, they're still learning. (And in other news, the iBoy is SEVEN now. Which is just unbelievable!)

My own emotions have been all over the place. I like to examine feelings and / or emotions dispassionately and label them accurately. But sometimes they're such a mix of tangled circumstances and thoughts it takes a while.

But that makes it sound worse than it is. Because most days flow along while we make new memories and make the best of everything else.

Anyway, all that to say, if you've experienced something similar, you are not alone.

Now, for the links!

Coronavirus Related

• The Coronavirus in America: The Year Ahead by Donald McNeil, Jr in The New York Times.
• The Supermarket After the Pandemic by Ian Bogost in The Atlantic. Some interesting grocery history included here.
• Don't Mistake Your Comfort for God's Goodness by Danea Zeigle in Relevant.
• Encouraging: Stray Thoughts from Isolation by Barbara Lee Harper.
• There's a typo in the first tweet that should be 1918, not 2018, but otherwise, it's an interesting thread: The Anti-Mask League of 1919 by Tim Mak. (And yes, I've been wearing a mask if I have to go to the store for anything. Not because I'm sick and not because I think a cloth mask will protect me like a proper n95 mask might, but because it needs to be normalized. Anecdotally, most people in my local store yesterday were wearing masks.)
• This is fascinating to read but, obviously, devastating for those directly affected: The Crash of the $8.5 Billion Global Flower Trade.
• The World is Running Out of Yeast for Literally No Good Reason from Wired. Makes me thankful we bought yeast in bulk a while back!
• Another industry story: Post-Pandemic Hollywood from Variety. Anyone think movie theaters might become a thing of the past? (I'm not predicting that, just wondering.)
• McSweeneys is usually good for a smile: Emails from My Children's School before 8AM (Just FYI: yes I AM thankful to be pre-virus homeschooler, not least because I cannot imagine trying to coordinate this situation for six kids).

Mostly Non-Corona

• The Best Coffee Makers to Keep You Caffeinated While Working from Home. This caught my eye because my husband owns nearly all of these methods. Plus he uses one more method they don't mention, which is making "cold brew" coffee in a mason jar. In other words, come what may, we'll have coffee to drink as long as I can get beans or grounds.
• If You're Trying to Decide What Food to Grow Yourself, Here are 8 Places to Start by Tamar Haspel. We're growing a few small things but some of my kids are agitating for a garden. I have a black thumb (and do not enjoy being outside, like, at all) but even I enjoy homegrown tomatoes.
• I posted a link about 1970s style recently. Now we'll move forward a decade: The Story Behind That 80's Look We Love to Hate from Messy Nessy Chic. Memories!
• Andrew Peterson is always worth reading, even when I don't completely agree with him: The Lost Art of Listening: Ubiquity and Scarcity. Yes, it's good to listen to albums from start to finish. But radio stations have been picking and choosing musical winners since radio stations were a thing. And what about mix-tapes? (Somewhere in my garage is a case full of my husbands & my cassette tapes. Some of which I recorded off the radio back in the 90's. So I don't think Spotify changed our relationship with music, it just made it easier to do what we were already doing. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.)
• Sequels by different authors make me very nervous but I'm still curious about this: There's an Eighth Chronicle of Narnia.
• Why Giving Kids Experiences Instead of Things Will Always Be Better by Liz Russell at Let Grow. I agree with this, but quarantine has also shown me which toys / things get a lot of play. I'll share some of those at the end of this post.
• Fascinating: How Did the Tube Lines Get Their Names? from City Metric. Makes me "other-home-sick" even though I don't particularly enjoy the tube.
• I've already seen most of these, but it's still a good list: Quaint English Village Murder Mystery TV Shows with a Million Seasons, for Your Binge Watching Pleasure During These Hard Times.

Now, as promised, a list:

Toys That Are Getting My Kids Through Quarantine

(yes, these are affiliate links)

• Legos. Always and forever. You can never have too many (according to my husband and children). Start with a basic set when your kids are small and before you know it you will have thousands of the things.
• Snap Circuits. We started with this Classic set. It's pricey, but worth it. We've added to it over the years. There are smaller, less pricey options you could try first.
• Play-Doh. Obviously, you can make dough at home. But you might not want to use your flour supply on that right now. Anyway, the joy of this is in the accessories. We have a bin full of rollers, cutting tools, cookie cutters, etc. that we've collected over time. I'm not a huge fan of this but it makes the list because it kept the four youngest busy for hours one day last week.
• Paper Dolls. Now, I linked to one Little House set, but this works best if you (the mom) have collected a lot of various sets over the years. But if you haven't, go ahead and start now. Our two middle girls (13 & 9) stay busy with these for entire afternoons.
• Wooden Train Tracks. We started with a basic figure 8 set when our oldest was little. Now we have enough to take over the living room and branch down the hallway. Honestly, the kids will ignore these for a while and then they'll go through a phase of playing them for days on end. The fun is in the "special" pieces like bridges and tunnels. I don't know how long these will be a favorite but my seven year old son did praise my "track building skills" the other day so I'll probably keep some on hand forever so I can demonstrate said skills for my grandchildren...

We have lots of other toys (too many!) but those are the things that I've seen out the most in the past six weeks. Along with all the random arts & craft supplies, of course.

So, we move into May. We're hopeful we might actually get to see some friends in person this month and we've got lots of birthdays and special things to celebrate.

Stay well, friends!