Quick Takes: COVID Birthdays, Food, and Cleaning for Mental Health

 Hello Readers!

I'm back!  Two blog posts in a week; lucky you ;-}  I thought I would throw together some quick takes to sort of sweep up the blogging bits that I feel should get recorded, from lately.  Here we go!

—1—

When I was listing my 2020 losses in my last post, one big one that I failed to mention is decision fatigue. 2020 and COVID have brought, for us all, a new level of complication to almost every single decision in life. It’s my child’s birthday— do we hold an outdoor celebration with a couple of friends, masked? Would that be more fun than holding it on Zoom, or just make everybody miserable? Is this place that we want to visit open? What kind of restrictions or rules do they have in place? Will we have to make a reservation ahead of time? My Instacart shopper didn’t include this item that I desperately need— is it safe to go to the grocery store in person to get it? Should we travel for the holidays? You know how it is— the list goes on and on and on and on. No wonder all of our brains are operating at less than capacity. Things we used to just do without thinking about it now take an excruciating amount of thought and planning. I think that level of mental exhaustion certainly doesn’t help with any emotional turmoil that may be coming from other losses I mentioned in that last post. I’m more than ready for things to be a bit more simple. My brain needs a break. Can I get an amen???

I think it was kind of an extra punch in the gut, after a year fraught with stressful decision making, to have to agonize over the decision of whether to travel and see my family for the holidays, and then ultimately decide to stay home. That’s probably why I couldn’t shake the sadness for days after we made the call. So, yeah. A really big loss, that one.

—2—

I'm pretty sure there has been some stress eating... I mean, holiday indulging... going on.  I have so many food pictures on my phone.  It's okay to allow yourself a little comfort food in such times, is it not?

This is a picture from several days after Christmas when I was still eating turkey dinner and loving it.  I mean, when you go to the trouble to make a meal like this, ya gotta prolong the enjoyment, right?  M, N and I had this for pretty much every meal in the days following Christmas, and as a result our leftovers were finished within about three days.  I think that's a record.

When you have extra tomatoes and spinach to use up, you pair them with poached eggs, ham, toast and Hollandaise... for several days in a row.  Obviously.

Homemade gingerbread cake, which I meant to make on Christmas day as our dessert, but then we were all so stuffed from turkey dinner and we had tons of Christmas cookies around so we decided we didn't need it and I was happy to be lazy.  I finally got around to making it a week later, which worked out well because it was just at the time when we had run out of other sweets.  Man, that homemade whipped cream tho...

---3---

I'm putting this spinach spaghetti squash in a separate take because, unlike the foods mentioned in take 2, this one is healthy.  Ish.  Can anything with heavy cream in the recipe be considered healthy?  Well......  it's low carb!!!  And plenty of veg.  I am a HUGE fan of all of Jen's spaghetti squash recipes (I think I have made almost all of them!); in fact, just a few days ago I made the buffalo chicken one and finished the leftovers tonight.  I always have absolutely no trouble consuming an entire half a squash when I make these "bowls", but this time I actually looked at the serving size and it's supposed to be half that amount.  Um... oopsie.

---4---

As you can tell by the puzzle pieces in the background of the squash above, we have been into them lately.  We got a couple of good ones for Christmas and they provided some fun times in the last few weeks!  300-400 pieces seems to be our sweet spot... with only one real table surface in our tiny house, we need something we can finish and put away with a day or two.

Go us!  Only one piece got lost!

---5---

C had the fabulous idea of doing a Disney Hercules toga party for her birthday.  With COVID numbers so high right now I decided early on that we wouldn't invite anyone, but we still tried to take all her ideas and run with them, so she could feel properly celebrated.

M was Zeus so I made an attempt at Hera.

All the sisters got her super thoughtful gifts.  Even little J had an idea that she whispered into my ear when she knew I was going out to Target one day, and C loved her choice so much.

C's costume was Meg... I think she got it right!

Pin the tail on Pegasus!

Breaking our Hades pinata in the basement!

Post-party coloring sesh, enjoying pinata candy while C built her new Lego set.

This was Mommy's dinner after all the hard work and party prep.  Cheese, crackers, shrimp cocktail, wine?  Yes please!  Best day ever.

---6---

The day after the party, I was feeling really behind-- I hadn't planned any homeschool for the next week, we had very little groceries in the house, and absolutely everything was a complete mess.  Luckily, I have an amazing husband who made a two-week meal plan and ordered the groceries for me online, so that I could spend that entire Sunday after the birthday party just planning out about 3 weeks of homeschool.  Into that homeschool plan I built a day off from academic work the following day, so the girls could just help me clean the entire house.

This is the "after" picture-- I had completely cleaned out the entire fridge (it had been covered in stickiness and crumbs for ages and was driving me nuts) and then M's grocery order arrived and we were able to fully stock our sparkling clean fridge.

Look at those sparkling shelves.  Let me just say that having a clean fridge (and a clean shower-- I had both after that day) do absolute wonders for one's mental health.  I think once things get dirty again next month I might just take another day off from homeschool and have the girls help me clean again.  SO totally worth it.  I have been in such a good mood this week, and I think I can at least partially attribute that to looking at clean things all around me.  So nice that the girls are of an age to really help-- they sorted all our papers, cleaned out their homeschool crates, cleaned their rooms and swept under their beds, washed their bedding, and re-made their beds clean, all with zero complaining.  Hallelujah.

---7---

I don't know if it was all McDonalds or just our local one, but this week was free coffee and cinnamon rolls for teachers.  So, when I came upstairs after working out early this morning, M had a little surprise for me!

Miss J ate a significant portion of mine, which was fine because it was huge.  But what a treat after a long week, to be surprised by a sweet husband?  Such a great start to the day.  I do love my coffee, as you know.  Silver linings, right??

That's it for now!  Happy weekend, everyone :)

For more quick takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!