A Few Things

Hello, Friends. How are you? How was your week? It’s a birthday week at our house. Flora June turned 10 yesterday, and Betty turns 14 tomorrow — plus we’ve got Mother’s Day on Sunday — so lots of stay-at-home celebrating around these parts.

Have your kids had birthdays during quarantine? These are the first ones for our family and of course it feels strange. Typically we would do a few traditional things with the family (breakfast in bed, light candles, open presents, etc.), and then do something fun with friends and cousins — a party, or bringing a treat to school, or going out to dinner, or maybe going on an adventure. Obviously the celebrations are really low-key this year, but we’re hoping the girls feel celebrated and loved.

For Mother’s Day, I asked the kids to make me cinnamon rolls. : ) I plan to sleep in, eat those cinnamon rolls, and if the weather is good, maybe we’ll go for walk out in the countryside. I know Mother’s Day can feel absolutely fraught for so many people, so I hope you’ll be gentle with yourselves this weekend.

One other interesting thing I wanted to note: Flora June will return to school on a modified schedule starting Monday. Half her class will be attending Monday and Thursday, and half the class will be attending on Tuesday and Friday. (They have Wednesdays off with or without quarantine.) On the days they aren’t in the classroom, they’ll continue with digital assignments. But Betty and Oscar don’t start again on Monday — I’m still unclear on if/when they will return to school. And like you, I’m very curious to see how all of this works out.

Ready for a link list? Here are a few things I’ve wanted to share:

Father and son charged in the killing of black Georgia jogger, Ahmaud Arbery. This is a good first step, but we need to remember: this is not justice. Not yet.

-“It’s not that women leaders are doing better. It’s just that strongmen are doing worse.”

A different sort of marathon — Beau Miles completed one mile per hour for a whole day while doing a whole bunch of other things.

Canada banned the sale of assault weapons less than 2 weeks after its deadliest mass shooting killed 22 people. The ban affects 1,500+ models including AR-15s.

-Comparing Yourself To The Perfect Instagram Mother (She Doesn’t Exist).

The DOJ dropping the charges on Flynn is so discouraging and depressing. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to investigators. The evidence against him is overwhelming.

-My sister-in-law, Liz, has been hosting an Art With Edie series on IGTV and it’s so adorable! Simple, cute, easy projects for little ones.

-The accuracy of weather forecasting relies on data collected by commercial airliners, which aren’t flying in great numbers these days.

-As far as her birthday presents went, I think Flora June was most excited about the Geode Cracking Kit. (Make a mental note if you know any 10 year olds.)

Jeffrey Epstein had his own office at Harvard and visited dozens of times in the years after he was released from his 2008 prison sentence — visits that continued until 2018.

-Oscar completed the first season of his podcast, Existential Teenager. For this project he was completely self-taught and self-motivated and I’m super proud of him. It’s great! (And the episodes are short if you want to give it a try.)

Here are a few tweets I saved for you:

An effective poster.

-Ben Blair is the homeschool hero at our house, but this tweet still made me laugh.

https://twitter.com/samdolnick/status/1258187368319901696

Remember Flappy Bird?

-I agree with the Rabbi.

Everything feels different.

-Yes please to wide testing! It’s not too late to test, trace, isolate, and save lives.

-A thread discussing the fact that “we don’t know the full scope of what COVID does. We have learned it causes lung lesions in even the asymptomatic, strokes, death, changes in fertility, hyperinflammatory shock, and almost certainly other serious issues.”

-Hahaha. Note those dates.

-So much corruption and injustice.

-The responses to this tweet are amazing. I need to ask my kids what our version of “Billy Dinner” is .

I hope you have a satisfying weekend. Happy Mother’s Day to all who are celebrating. I’ll meet you back here on Monday. I miss you already.

kisses,
Gabrielle

17 thoughts on “A Few Things”

  1. Ha! The thread about weird family food names/customs is cracking me up. My mom says “nutrapoison” instead of “nutrasweet” like it’s the actual word, and has for years and years, because she hates the idea of fake sugar. Just last week at a neighborhood (socially-distant) yard hang she used it in conversation with the neighbors, “I can’t believe some people put nutrapoison in their tea!…” and I had to interrupt and make sure they knew what the heck she was talking about. Oh man, lol.

    1. My dad has always called soy sauce “bug juice”, and it is a standard condiment on our dinner table- it always got an uncomfortable giggle out of friends. He also calls croutons “dead bread” as a way of expressing his hatred of them. Dad jokes 100%

  2. I will be interested to see how the modified return to school goes. A lot of districts in the US are considering similar solutions.

  3. We’re about to have our first family birthday during quarantine. It’s a friend-party year (we do them on even birthdays, have a friend/ friend family over for dinner and cake on the other years) and I’m a little bit at a loss for what to do. So far we’ve bought a piñata and lots of candy to fill it, and we’ll do a special breakfast and special dinner.

    A friend in Germany has her kids going back to school and they will be required to wear masks all day. It makes sense but also seems so hard. I hope Flora June will have a good experience.

  4. I’ve been wondering about the link between countries with female leaders doing better handling coronavirus. Couldn’t it be that countries that have their s#*t together enough to elect women to the highest offices are also the ones most likely to act swiftly, rationally, appropriately? It’s not so much that women are better leaders – but if you’re in a country that still asks “are we ready for a woman president?” that’s a worrisome sign

    Totally, separately, I adore those little family “inside” words! At our house, we still call the living room the “couch room” because that’s what my daughter called it as a toddler and somehow it stuck

  5. Birthdays, Mother’s Day, and other celebrations are simply about celebrating the person and showing love. My daughter turned 7 last week, and while I was apprehensive about how she would feel (she loves attention), at the end of the day when I asked her how her birthday was, she said it was “great!”. She picked her three meals that day, her birthday cake was homemade donuts (her choice), she opened presents, I hung a happy bday banner in the kitchen, cousins called her to FaceTime- so overall, she was shown love and she felt that love – she was celebrated.

  6. I am wondering why there has been no mention of the significant charges of Joe Biden while he was a senator. I remember quite the passionate and angry post for Justice Kavanaugh – yet suddenly silence. There seems to be a double standard when someone is republican vs. democrat. I would’ve expected at the very least some comment regarding his inappropriate actions.
    I’m disappointed and frankly upset at how glaringly obvious this double standard is.

    1. Are you joking? I’ve been sharing links about it and discussing it on every platform including this one. Weird that you didn’t bring this up when I linked to this thread last week — written by the founder of the #metoo movement about the Tara Reade story. I’ve consistently called for a full and open investigation, and insisted that Ms. Reade should be able to share her story.

      In addition, I have not shared a single link promoting Biden as a candidate in any way, or claiming his innocence in this regard or in any regard.

      There is no double standard between the Kavanaugh story and the Biden one. Maybe if Biden screams and cries about beer for hours on end?

      But if you’re looking for double standards, please explain why there is endless coverage of the Biden accusation, and zero coverage of the 30+ credible accusations about Trump, including the rape of a 13 year old.

      And then, just for kicks, take some time to explain the 24/7 coverage of Hillary using an unofficial email, but barely a mention of Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Miller, Cohn, Bannon, McFarland, Priebus, and most recently Nikki Haley, doing the same thing.

      Good gracious stop getting your news from Fox and Facebook.

  7. Happy Mother’s Day!

    The “geode kit” links to your SIL’s blog, FYI. But I’m going to go google it and find one for my daughter!

  8. RE: Billy Dinner, my family’s version of this is calling a fleece blanket (we keep a pile in the living room for cosying up on the sofa) a “Brian”. We have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA where it came from, but for some reason, if you want a blanket you ask if someone can “pass [you] a Brian”. BAFFLING.

  9. We call a local park Dead Animal Park because we once saw a big dead fish in the pond, then another time we saw a big dead bloated raccoon in the pond. (I called animal control to come dispose of them.) It’s actually a really lovely park, and I told my friend we were going there to take a walk and she exclaimed, “Is that its real name?!”

  10. On birthdays during this time- I am a Christmas baby, born on Christmas day itself. I have never had a big party or celebrated my birthday with friends (on my actually birthday- don’t worry, I did have parties as a kid, just usually a week or two later). I generally didn’t even get recognition for my birthday at school when I was a kid. Sometimes, my grandparents and an aunt and one or two cousins might join us for Christmas dinner, and after dinner we would enjoy a birthday cake. All that to say, I’ve been a bit perplexed by the sense of missing out on birthdays during this time. I promise I’m not judging those who feel very disappointed by the fact that they can’t celebrate as they normally would- I just truly find it perplexing. Perhaps because my birthday was on Christmas, my siblings’ birthdays were always celebrated as low-key celebrations as well, though they sometimes got to have friends over. I don’t think I realized before now that most people do more (especially for kids’ birthdays)?

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