Life Lately

I started writing this section mid-month.

Then President Biden took office and I deleted everything I’d written here.

There’s been a shift—can you feel it?—in the very air we breathe.

It would have been a switch no matter what, but then January 6th happened and we, as a nation, held our collective breath. The inauguration was a balm to our weary souls. And I don’t want to minimize anything here, but please let me fangirl for a moment on my favorite inauguration moments.

• Michelle Obama. We are not worthy.

• Amanda Gorman. We should all be reciting her poem in liturgy every single morning.

• J.Lo slipping “let’s get loud” into America the Beautiful.

• Lady Gaga’s Hunger Games realness.

• Ella Emhoff’s coat is everything I want in a coat.

• Joe Biden’s speech was perfect.

• Swearing in Madam Vice President. Just…yes.

• Give me all the Bernie memes. God bless the internet.

Okay, thank you for indulging me. I’m afraid my “Around the Internet” section is going to be rather a ping-ponging of emotions. But isn’t that what we’ve lived, not just in the past year, but in the past few weeks? We were starved for the beauty, the dignity, and the pageantry of a presidential inauguration. To think it had been stormed by a mob wearing tactical gear and toting weapons, and it was transformed exactly two weeks later through the magic of bunting and flags and capital-F Fashion for all the world to see.

Joe Biden spoke, over and over again, of unity. Donald Trump’s inaugural address, in his own words, spoke of “American carnage.” So stop telling me Trump didn’t stoke the fires of rage in this country. Stop telling me he isn’t responsible for what unfolded at our Capitol on January 6th. Stop telling me the sky is magenta when we look out our windows and see it is a clear, bright blue. As Trevor Noah said, “Miss me with that bullshit.”

Phew. Ping-ponging, I know. I also know this: that I have been waking up this last week with an ease that’s been missing the past four-plus years.

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Take Action

This is a time where I’m regretting including a “take action” section. Oof, less action, more hibernation, please.

Though hibernation, in some sense, is the point right now. We’re entering a new phase of the pandemic where variations have sprung up and we’re still catching up with what, exactly, that means. On the other half of the split-screen, people are getting vaccinated and it will never not make me happy.

I know I’m not alone when I say that I am so freaking over it. I can see and feel the weariness around me. I want to have friends inside my house. I want to leave my kids with a babysitter and go eat in an actual, real-live restaurant. I want to be able to say “yes” when the kids ask for the 483rd time, “Can we go to Great Wolf Lodge/the indoor playground/to visit our cousins?” But we’re also so freaking close. So, take this as your reminder to set the example. Please wear your mask. Please keep your outings short and only to the essentials. And please don’t socialize with people for extended periods of time in indoor spaces.

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Around the Internet

• Ezra Klein called this “an extraordinary first draft of history” and there are really no other words to describe it.

• “In short, January 6 not only could have been much worse—it was much worse than was initially apparent. Sometimes real-time coverage of news events leans toward the sensational and overstates what happened. But because reporters were unprepared for the violence, and because of the fog of war (and tear gas), the horror of this event has emerged slowly. Many people were able to see the stakes on January 6, but it was much harder to see how close a larger catastrophe was to occurring, much less how much harm was actually done.”

• What To Tell Your Child Who Has Found You In The Kitchen With A Glass of Water Suspended Between Counter and Mouth As You Watch Live Footage of the News

• Dave Ramsey has always given me the creeps. This is all exactly zero percent surprising to me.

• Because you know I can’t let it go without talking more about the fashion.

• “When we live in temporary permanence, it doesn’t make sense to buy a rocking chair or a bedside bassinet or deck out a nursery. It doesn’t make sense to spring for the fancy convertible car seat or to give the walls a fresh coat of paint. There’s the always-present possibility we’ll be leaving soon. Why waste the money now when we can use it in the U.S.? But as time marches forward and the calendar flips to another month and then another, we find ourselves wishing for that rocking chair, blaming the baby’s lack of sleep on its absence. It may seem like a silly thing to grieve over, but it highlights the things we’ve had to give up over the last four years.”

• “That it is possible for Joe Biden and his team to release a plan this straightforward is the most damning indictment of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response imaginable.”

• “If we don’t get control of this—if we don’t reestablish an ethic of respect for facts—nothing else will be solved.”

• About a kitchen table and so much more.

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Eating

• This curry is everything I want in a curry. I’ve made it twice in two weeks. It’s fantastic and while you might need to double it to have leftovers, it’s even better the next day. My foodie kid literally licked his plate clean and the other two sauce-averse children even dared to try the chicken. 10/10 highly recommend.

• I made these tacos the other night and Tyson said, “Each bite is a perfect bite of taco.” If that’s not enough of a recommendation, I don’t know what is. (Note: not sure if my head of cauliflower was small or I just prefer a different cauliflower-to-beans ratio, but I only used about half a can of black beans.)

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Fun Things

• After several years of trying to get into a home yoga routine that works for me, I’ve found my groove with the Down Dog app. In the past few weeks, I’ve only missed a handful of days. I previously tried to scroll YouTube to find just what I wanted in terms of class, length, sequence type, etc., which was frustrating 9/10 times. I can choose all of the above with a few simple clicks in the app. I can choose a 15-minute class set to spiritual music with a full flow and focus on my lower back in less than 10 seconds.

• I got the Olive and June manicure set for my birthday and it’s worth every ounce of hype. It’s all packaged up in a fabulous box and it makes me so happy.

• This sweatsuit was my birthday gift to myself and it also makes me so very happy. In fact, I just did 10 minutes of yoga while wearing the sweatsuit after giving myself a manicure earlier today so I’ve basically just hit the trifecta of fun things bliss.

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On a personal note, the kids went back to school. Like, back-back. (Our district is still distance learning except for Pre-K—2nd grade, who went back full-time on the 19th.) And despite recently writing about routines and rhythms, I’ve yet to find mine. I keep telling myself we’re only a week or so in; of course, I don’t know what I’m doing yet. Just like I didn’t know what we were doing with hybrid and I never did find my groove with distance learning…it takes time.

Hear this: I’m thrilled for them to be back. My extroverted, please-fill-my-inexhaustible-socialization-bucket-up Nolan is a different person lately. Caden and Brooklyn are no longer trying to learn through screens for five-plus hours a day. AND ALSO: it’s weird. It’s weird because this has emphatically NOT been our life since March 12th of last year. It’s weird because I have some time and space to breathe each week but my body and brain are still operating in scarcity mode as far as Time Without the Kids is concerned. It’s weird because I don’t know how tightly I can hold on to this new schedule.

It’s weird because we’re on the brink of a new month and to think of everything this last month contained: insurrection, an inauguration, Bernie memes, turning 34, and also now GameStop, I guess? It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that we’re a single month into 2021. Here’s to being on the brink of a new month and all the weirdness it will hold.