EvY at HomE

Let's go way back to my journey with aloneness. I am the oldest of 5 children and was raised with noise and people around me constantly. I had created ways to get lost in my own world by staying up in my room on weekends when my sister was with her dad to journal and just enjoy my own company. When we were married pre-kids, I had loads of alone time when Matt would work. Then the kids were born and I was never alone. Ever. Definitely never on trips. I mean, yes, I would travel alone for work but I wasn't exactly on my own there. I'd either be sharing a room or house with a co-worker and work and dine with co-workers until the end of the day and only a few hours alone at night. Location shoots for production is exhausting. You're on call all day and night and there's nothing restful about it.  For much of 2020 (even pre-pandemic) the concepts of rest, solitude, and silence became paramount to my mental health. Our marriage counselor suggested I try "doing one th...

Well it happened. Alice did a full year of 1st grade from a computer. I can't talk about it too much, it's too sad. The person who really did all the heavy lifting around here other than our little lady was Matt who handled her daily Zoom log ons (I mean, Alice could navigate the whole website and app but Matt would remind her to log on and off all day), the meals for everyone, and making sure she did all her assignments and would upload them to Google classroom. It was a daily battle of wills and motivation and frustration. It's not the way a kid should have done school but she was safe and she reads and does some basic math. What more can we ask for? Two major additions around here for the house have really elevated the already adorable backyard situation. One is a hammock chair that everyone in the family enjoys.  And the other is a... fire pit! Huge hit around here. It adds so much ambiance and we've done some double dates, some dates just us and something about sit...