Links To Videos For When You Can't Talk To The Children Anymore.

It is noon.  I have successfully done half a science lesson with two children who, I guarantee,  absorbed less than 10% of what I said because they couldn't keep their mouths closed to save their lives.  I think...maybe I was cut out for cloistered religious life and I missed my calling.  Here are a bunch of YouTube links we've recently watched...

This guy refined pure gold and silver from old jewelry and it looked very cool.

Ants eating a slice of banana.

And as a follow-up, ants eating a puddle of honey!

This guy hatched an emu egg in an incubator in his closet!  (Fyi- includes a dissection of a fertilized dead egg)

This girl completes the 'Wreck This Journal' books, and then flips through them.

The longest Rube Goldberg machine in the world turns on a Christmas tree.

Time lapse of what happens if you crack open an egg and then just leave it for a few weeks.

How to make clay from dirt.

Water mites swimming in a pond water sample.

Mantis versus spider, versus another, bigger mantis.  This did not end well for the smaller mantis.

Can a chicken raise a duck?

Viennese wild hamsters living in a graveyard.

Eleven incredibly fat racoons stuck in a porch.

A guy who owns a giant duck.

Turning a roll of tinfoil into a solid aluminum ball.

What if you put 1000 expanding dinosaurs in a bathtub?

What if you microwaved an avocado?  Or an egg?  Or a watermelon? 

A very odd British man put a GPS tracker on his cat for 24 hours just to see where it went.

Woodturning a burl into a coffee mug.

All, Nothing, Allnothing, Nothingall, Something in between, everyone is wrong, and why I'm almost certainly not doing this correctly.

Today an acquaintance posted something on social media explaining, yet again, why social distancing...blah blah blah.  Gotcha.  You know what I'm going to say, anyway.

It's proven, it's scientific, I've already talked about why it is likely really hard for everyone and how we can't get miffy when people talk about it being hard because our entire society is built on social interaction, but this article touched a nerve for me because of it's slightly patronizing and dismissive tone. 

You know why this is getting harder and harder for people?  Because of the complete disconnect between all this scoldy finger-wagging and the reality of life.  Jerks excepted (because there are always going to be jerks) people understand at this point that social distancing is the thing we are doing.  The jerks are not reading a shared article online and saying "golly, sounds legit, maybe I shouldn't be a jerk!" because they don't care about the articles.  So the articles are preaching to the choir at this stage in the game, not instructing, just preaching.  And making people hysterical.

Now the reality of life is that you can't not ever ever connect with people.  Can't.  You are going to have to be around people.  There is going to be some connection, at a store, on a sidewalk, when your window is down in the car and you stop at a red light and another car with their window down pulls beside you.  When your cat gets in a fight with another cat and you and your neighbor both go for them at the same time.  When you have to call the plumber because you have to call the blessed plumber, darn it. When elderly Mrs. Smith falls and you rush over to help her up. When that appointment can't not happen.  A million reasons.

Here's the alternative.  No one sees anyone else at all, ever, under any circumstances.  No exceptions.  Now, that will mean no one works at all, or all workers are quarantined with their co-workers.  No one will be allowed to leave their homes at all because property boundaries could lead to people talking over fences or through hedges and that breaks the 'rules'.  There can be no travel at all, obviously, no walking dogs, no grocery trips.  Whatever food you have, you have.  No leaving something on someone's porch, no waving at grandchildren through the window, no exceptions.

Oh, but, that's unreasonable!  This person's job is an essential job so they must be allowed to go to work and obviously they can't be forbidden from going home...

I live in an apartment!  Where is my dog supposed to go to the bathroom if I can't go outside??

But...I don't have food!! I need to go to the store!!!!

It's a medical emergency!  I'm having a baby, someone broke a leg, my medicine is gone and I need more...

A million reasons, a million exceptions.  Yes, of course you can go outside.  Yes, of course no one is asking you to starve.  Yes, go to the hospital with your broken leg or crowning baby, for the love of Pete.

But then, don't hug people, stand apart from people, wash your hands, stop the spread turns again into 'no you cannot visit your friend if you sit on your trunks twelve feet from each other and talk in a parking lot' 'no you cannot talk to your neighbor when you're on separate porches' Danger! Danger!

If it's that dangerous, you say, if I cannot speak to my friend from several yards away because I could inadvertently spread the virus, then wouldn't it also stand to reason that the person who walks past me in the grocery store shouldn't be allowed in the same aisle?  Should we even be allowed to go outside at the same time? 

No, no, that's too extreme!  Be reasonable. Except also be slightly hysterical.  Except don't be that because it causes panic.  And around we go.

And that's another reason why people are having a hard time.

Disgruntled

The introvert / extrovert thing has missed something in all of this social isolation blah.

Your energy-acquiring preferences have almost nothing to do with why social isolation /quarantine situations are challenging.  I'm actually getting a little annoyed at all the comments I see about how easy all of this is for homeschoolers, or introverted people, or bookworms,  or (insert some group of 'others') because this is all just false advertising.

To start with, the labels of introvert/extrovert apply to how we feel energized and renewed and inspired - is it through contact with others or time apart?

I would call myself an introvert - and I am having a hard time with all of this, and here's why.

Firstly - I am never alone now, and I think a lot of introverts can agree with me on this one.  If you are renewed by solitary pursuits, and you have exactly zero minutes during the day when you are apart from your family,  this does not make for a peaceful time.  Not that I had hours to myself daily before,  but I certainly had more time than this.

Secondly - I had a life previously that involved activities I love, and all of that is gone.  Just because I'm an introvert doesn't mean I never left my house or dreaded every activity!   I can't browse my favorite second hand bookstore.  I can't take my children to the library.  I can't go into a grocery store to pick out food to cook.  I can't go for an evening walk with a friend or meet someone for coffee.  I can't go to church.

Thirdly - I've never met an extrovert who wanted to never ever be alone, ever.  Who always wanted to be with others.  And likewise I have never met an introvert who wanted to live their lives completely removed from all outside human contact.  And if I did meet a person in one of those extremes I would assume they suffered from an illness because that is not a normal human response.    Even the most extroverted person wants some time alone.  Even the serious introverts of the world would still like some interaction with others.

This is hard for many people,  which is completely fine because it is supposed to be difficult to spend extended time away from your loved ones, your friends,  your favourite activities and joys in life.  The fact that this is hard means you've been doing life well up to now!  You've made connections and put down roots!  That's a healthy thing.

I just wish that it could stop being an 'us and them' thing. Extroverts aren't seeing their people and introverts aren't seeing their people either.  Introverts aren't getting their time alone and extroverts also aren't getting their time alone.   This is a sucky time for everyone.   Be kind.

Reading Notes - March, 2020

*Edit* My friends,  I had no idea what my March was going to look like.  My reading was all over the place but I did stick with my Lenten sacrifice and did not buy any new books.  And I was tempted.

This Reading Notes is going to take an odd bent for me, because it is Lent, and for Lent this year...I am not buying any books for myself.  I'm reading only what I ALREADY HAVE.  Don't weep too much for me, this needs doing.  So I present to you the things I read in March, all of which I bought in the past intending to read and never did.  Including the books I've started and finished this month in order to clear the backlog and generally become a better and holier person all around.

(I'm kidding.   This is as holy as I'm likely to become.)

Here are the ones I've started and never finished until now!  I'm quite proud of myself:

Eames was interesting and a good balance of background fact/Christie biography and narration of his own travel.  Well done, glad I read it.

Dillard was like eating an incredibly rich, decadent black forest cake.  I loved it, but I could only take small bites at a time.  My head is still spinning and I want to read it again and again just...just to try and peel back more layers.  I have a feeling it could be a different book each time I did.  I also feel my lack of Thoreau.

Ferguson was, you know, he was fine.  It was fine.  Honestly it sort of blended into my brain and I've forgotten most of it now.  Meh.  It was okay.

Still haven't finished this one but made more headway. ..

Smith was very much a missed opportunity.  The author could have produced a fascinating look at the secrets lying under England and instead chose to essentially provide a tour-guide synopsis of locations seemingly very well-known (I didn't know of them, mind you, but he mentions lots of books about them and finds guides for them easily and some of the caves have affiliated clubs,  for heaven's sake) and generally pretty straight forward to reach.  An underground art installation?  A well-known royal tunnel?  A submerged town???  Sheesh.

And I made it through several books that had been loitering on my shelves for some time now:

In my quest to read everything by Miss Read, I managed to finish Summer At Fairacre literally moments before dropping it in the bath.  If that isn't a metaphor for our times I don't know what is.

I'm also working through everything written by L.M. Montgomery,  so managed to add a few more titles of hers to the 'read' pile as well:

I really liked The Chronicles of Avonlea, which I wasn't convinced would be the case.  I've read Mongomery's short stories before in The Doctor's Sweetheart and found them trite and uninspired and sometimes very odd, but this collection was charming!

On the other hand, Kilmeny of the Orchard is my least favorite Mongomery book to date.  It was creepy.  The characters were entirely one dimensional and very poorly thought out.  The story was weak, and relied almost entirely on coincidence to make it work at all.  Ah, how handy to have a 'foreigner' to blame things on!  Well it's convenient that we have a famous throat doctor just hanging around when we need a famous throat doctor, isn't it!  She's beautiful AND she plays the violin?   You don't say!

Started but haven't finished this one either. ..

Good gravy but this was a simplistic bit of writing.  I'm sure I've heard of this book for ages and always thought I should read it because clearly it resonated with so many people but...wow.  That being said, I'm not much for the 'see your entire world illustrated in the curve on a conch shell' style of over-romanticized writing, but there are reams of devoted fans on Amazon for it - scrolling through the reviews I wonder if we were even reading the same book.

Gifts in the time of the Coronavirus

My 9yo recently became my 10yo.  Because we can't go into any stores, I had to do my shopping entirely online.  Here's what he got!

My goal was 'lots of little,  relatively inexpensive things that make it festive'.

And now my 7yo is about to become my 8yo, and again, it looks like I'm stuck ordering everything online.  So I'm following the same philosophy,  and here is what I'm ordering for her:

Fingers crossed the 5yo-soon-to-6yo can be shopped for in a store, but we're managing!