Good Thing Friday (82)
September 11, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I finally made time to go return a couple purchases to Michael’s. We usually only do curbside pickup for shopping but we had to go inside for the returns. I wanted to be surprised the lines were so long but I can’t be and I felt a touch guilty about that because I was briefly part of that problem. I’d purchased several organizer boxes for our small things early last month and threw in a stack of paint pads for JB. The paint pads are terrible! They were no better than printer paper and I don’t see the point of buying that thickness of paper for painting. The paint will soak right through. So they all went back and then of course JB begged to look around the store. We were masked, armed with sanitizer, had an ironclad rule that they could not touch anything which they’re pretty good about doing and strictly enforced a six foot rule while included not going down any aisle with any people in it, so it seemed like we could reasonably safely do this thing for a little while and be ok.
The colors and crafts were unexpectedly hard to resist, I think I forget how much I enjoy looking at crafting supplies, and we ended staying longer than intended looking at everything. Just before we could escape safely, I was sucked into the washi tape clearance bin, ten cents a roll!, so PiC and I selected a double handful, and I allowed JB to pick one item of their choice under $2. At the register I remembered that I had a $5 reward to use which covered all but the tax. It felt frivolous but, going into our sixth month of near total isolation, I have to remember that once in a while we need a little creative stimulation outside our homes and we’ve been especially sensorily deprived these past few weeks because the air quality from the wildfires make it unsafe to be outdoors where we’d normally be soaking up nature.
2. With thanks to Hawaii Planner for the initial idea, I found this banana peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal bars recipe and I made GF-sugar-free batch for me, and a regular non-GF with regular sugar and chocolate chips version for our friends.
3. For once, a long weekend didn’t feel like punishment and torture, either from a work or a family perspective! I ended up having to do some work to create space later in the next week BUT the actual official holiday was nice to have. I love working in even more isolation that is usual with remote work – it’s my favorite thing to knock out my inbox when no one is online to answer. š
Challenges this week: We are adding back a set of lessons for JB so that’s more logistics and planning and preparing. It should be worthwhile but it’s definitely a lot of work on my part to get it in order.
And of course, in order: pandemic, CA is on fire, air quality is absolutely terrible, health stuff going on, dear friend is very ill and we can’t see him, other dear friends are going through very hard times and I don’t have any more bandwidth to think of ways to help them. Seamus is currently getting PiC up in the middle of almost every night which is pretty miserable for his rest and my aching self continues to ache.
4. We discovered that JB can have a fully engaged, without real monitoring, playdate on Zoom with their babyhood bestie. Their parents have now declared that they will be borrowing our child for future Zoom playdates, no need for us to be around š Which is fine with us, they have missed their friend so much. And when California stops burning, we can attempt distanced and masked trail rides for them.
:: It’s my birthmonth and I’d like to want a special treat but I just want a bag of donuts. But I don’t think sugar free gluten free low carb donuts worth eating can be found. Any other ideas?
