And now it's May

The weeks go by, the weeks go by, and now it's May, but we're not very merry. And I love May. May is our reward for surviving the winter, and gloomy March, and iffy April. This view of the year derives from my 9 years in Michigan, where March was a dreadful brown gloomy month and April was an improvement, but May! May was when spring exploded with beauty. The lilacs! And at the end of the month, the peonies! All of Ann Arbor came alive in May, you could just hear it humming.

Boulder doesn't do May like Ann Arbor did May. In the Rocky Mountains, plants are a little more subtle, a little more cautious. It's a drier land, you aren't going to get that voluptuousness that you get back East. But it's a lovely time, though you can still get snow. I noticed on our Thursday walk that most of the lilacs in the neighborhood must have frozen during the back-to-back 17-inch snows. We are lucky that our lilac blooms so late. It is just starting to put out little green leaves and seems to be fine.

My traditional day for buying flowers and vegetables to plant is Mother's Day, but even that is a bit risky out here. According to an article in the newspaper yesterday, last year we had snow on May 9th and May 21st. I looked back at my blog to read about it. I wrote a post on May 8th -- Rocket Boy had just left for St. Louis and was facing the possibility of rain, snow, and tornadoes on his trip. And there's a post on May 27th with a picture of the May 20th/21st snow. I had already planted my flowers, so I covered them with tarps that night and they did OK.

So I look at my empty pots and I think I'd better wait. Mother's Day is May 10th this year, next Sunday. The weather forecast shows nice weather for the week ahead, mostly 70s, a little cooler next weekend. I don't trust it. "Slight chance of thunderstorms" one day can change to "70% chance of snow" a few days later.

I don't know if the place where I usually buy flowers is even open this year. Colorado is opening up, but Boulder County is moving more slowly and I don't know if nurseries are considered "essential." I'll wait.

This wasn't a great week for school, after a couple of pretty good weeks. Kid B missed an important video call for his language arts class on Tuesday because he didn't read his email and the teacher didn't mention the call on Schoology, and I got really pissed off at him and said I wasn't going to help anyone that day (this was on Wednesday, when we discovered he'd missed the call). Not my finest hour. I was embarrassed that I hadn't been able to keep him on track, cross with the teacher for being so secretive about the information, frustrated with how behind he's getting in that class. "If you won't put any effort into your schoolwork, I'm not going to spoon-feed you," I said, or something really mature like that. It didn't help that I wasn't feeling good -- from Tuesday to Thursday I had a terrible taste in my mouth, another COVID-19 symptom that didn't go anywhere. By Friday morning I was OK again, just tired.

Kid A, who got caught in the crossfire, actually handled it better than Kid B, and did some of his work by himself. But Kid B spent Wednesday watching YouTube videos. This meant that on Friday (the other day when they have periods 2, 4, and 6) "we" had to do a lot of catch-up work. Helpfully, the language arts teacher had accidentally removed her weekly instructions from Schoology, and by the time we emailed her about it and she put the instructions back up, Kid B was emotionally DONE for the week and refused to do anything else. He basically skipped language arts last week, missed at least three assignments, and I know this is all going to come down on me somehow.

So I've gone into bad mom mode, which is always very destructive for me. Bad mom, can't get her kids to do their schoolwork. Bad mom, doesn't want to cook dinner or bake. Bad mom, lets the clean laundry sit in the laundry basket for two days before putting it away. Bad mom, hasn't vacuumed in months. Bad mom, can't keep up with the dishes. The photo shows the dishwasher full of clean dishes that I haven't put away yet, dirty dishes above them waiting for the clean dishes to be put away so that they can go in the dishwasher, and over in the sink, a bunch of handwashing that's been waiting for me to do something about it for days. Bad mom.

I did manage to get Easter put away, last night, so that takes care of one thing that was bothering me. But there are always more things, more things to do, more things I haven't done, more things to feel guilty about. Bad mom.

Yesterday (Saturday) I suddenly felt very sleepy and lay down to take a nap around 2:30 pm. The front door was open (the storm door was closed) and I was very lightly asleep, still somewhat aware of what was going on in the house. I dreamed that the storm door opened and someone came in the house, walked down the hall. It was Rocket Boy! He'd flown in from St. Louis as a surprise. I jumped out of bed, went to him, tried to express how happy I was to see him but for some reason I couldn't make a sound. He seemed young, like how he looked when I first met him almost 20 years ago. I hugged him silently, overwhelmed with joy. And then I opened my eyes -- and I was in bed, alone, and it was all a dream.

And then I worried, because the dream was so vivid, it seemed almost like it might be a visitation from someone who had just died. I tried to call him, but it went to voicemail. Not until nearly 8 pm did he call back, at which point I was pretty nervous. But he was fine. It turned out that while I was having that dream, he was at Urgent Care having a COVID-19 test. I don't know what that means. I was just really glad he was OK.

So now we have the first full week of May. I'm going to try to make it a good week, since school is almost over (the 21st is the last day). No getting mad at preteen children who don't check their email. Just git 'er done. I'll try to get us outside every day, enjoy what's in bloom even if the lilacs didn't make it this year.

Last year at this time we were getting ready for the twins' "graduation" from elementary school. I can't bear to think of this year's class -- they don't get that wonderful ceremony, with baby pictures projected on the screen behind them as each kid reads a short piece about their memories of elementary school. I'm so sad for them.

First, today, I'll deal with all those dishes. Then I might think about dinner. Rocket Boy is going to do a Skype call later this afternoon and help Kid B make gravy, which we will eat on stuffing (which I must make). I nixed spaetzle, because it's such a pain, I don't cook meat (except bacon, once in a while), and the kids don't like mashed potatoes, so stuffing was all we could think of to eat with gravy. Why gravy, you may ask. Well, Rocket Boy keeps trying to think of things he can do over Skype to connect with the kids. He was working on some electronics kits with them, but the kids' computer was fried by a brief power outage we had a couple weeks ago, and they can't do it on their school-issued Chromebooks, and none of us feel comfortable using RB's Ubuntu laptop he left behind, and... Anyway, then he thought of cooking over Skype, and gravy seemed like an easy place to start. We make gravy with a mix, so it's not too complicated.

I'm not sure the twins actually like stuffing. Hope they do, otherwise I'm going to have a lot of stuffing to eat this week. I also should make something else to go with the stuffing -- I'm thinking our traditional Thanksgiving spinach dish. What a weird dinner. Oh well.

I think the main thing is to try not to be too hard on myself, not get into all that "bad mom" business. It's a bottomless pit. I've been doing a fine job during the lockdown, even if I haven't cleaned out all our closets and cooked gourmet meals. Anyway, it's not about me. Criticizing myself as the worst mom in the world takes my attention away from all the people who really are suffering and who need help. At the very least, even if I can't help them, those people could benefit from me not diverting someone else's attention with my self-pity. OK, with that in mind, I'll go forth and try to have a decent week. Hope you all do too.