My son is still in Public School. He’s been doing pretty good at his work. As far as I know. I make sure that he does it but I’m sorry, I’m not checking it.
Homeschooling my daughter fully, takes up most of my time. I’m coming up with her lessons and checking her work as well as making sure that she does it along with her chores.
We’ve been reading The Secret Garden and working through it with a packet I bought from Teachers Pay Teachers. Prior to this, the final week of school, we’ve been mostly reviewing through a workbook I ordered. I haven’t put a lot of pressure on her, I just want to see where she is. I want to see what the issues actually are and how she works. I’m also trying to find out the ways that she learns the best.
This week we are just finishing The Secret Garden and the packet.
My sons work is just an activity Bingo (one activity a day) and a survey about the time at home. They want to know what was good and bad and what might have been done better regarding the NTI (Non-traditional Instruction) days.
I’ll just go ahead and say what I’ll be sending in.
Everyone just did the best they could.
How the hell do you even plan for a pandemic as a teacher?
What do I think could’ve been done differently?
I really have no idea, maybe just hold on to your loved ones for dear life? Breathe? Do your best to follow the safety guidelines?
Maybe I’ll suggest mental health activities in the case of another plague like pandemic.
I know that in these kinds of circumstances it’s good to try and create some kind of normalcy but I think we all learned over the past few weeks (wait, it’s months!? now isn’t it?) is that normal might not be the best thing to return to.
I think that we’re all just doing the best we can and really that’s all you can ask.
I didn’t pull my daughter out of school because the NTI days were too much to deal with. I mean when my computer took a crap on me three days into the first week and she had six classes of google classroom to attempt to log into a do work from and then zoom meetings….yeah it was a lot. But as I’ve already posted before, I pulled my daughter because we were having lots of issues BEFORE the Covid-19/Corona/Plague hit, it was just the final straw.
Yes, I had kids when I was pretty young, and I’ve always been mature for my age, but I’m also a hesitant dreamer.
I take years to make decisions. I have a hard time opening up to others and it’s taken me a really long time to feel comfortable in my own skin. To be honest, that part of me is still a work in progress.
I remember in Elementary school having a teacher who would put the desks in such a way that everyone was sort of paired up with someone else and every so often she would change the pairings. Sometimes she’d ask us to tell her something about the person we’d been sitting next to for the past month or so.
The comment from my desk partner was usually the same: “Kacie reads a lot.”
Occasionally it was: “Kacie writes a lot, but she won’t let me read it.”
It was true. I was a complete Gollum (small deformed possessive creature from Lord of the Rings for non-nerds) when it came to my “precious” notebooks, and I’ve never been anywhere without a book, at the very least nearby in my car, but I haven’t written, really written just to write in a long time.
Recently, though, I’ve made progress in my fiction writing. It’s something that I thought for a while that I wasn’t going to be able to do anymore. I just couldn’t get anything to go farther than a small summary. I’m still doing it all old school though, handwritten notebooks, and I haven’t put anything in a computerized format. But hopefully soon…
The hubs made the comment today that our lives haven’t really changed much since this whole mess started. I agreed, because I’ve been saying this for a while but like most husbands he probably hasn’t heard me.
The trees and flowers are blooming and the chickens are growing. It’s been a great season to be in the woods. Of course to me it’s never not a good time to be in the woods.
Today I watched two hawks and a bald eagle fly over us (chickens are completely protected if you were wondering) and I thought about how I will never want to live with nearby neighbors ever again.
I know there have been a lot of people upset about the country being shut down but I notice a lot of people who seem to be doing better than they have in a long time. People who seem to have come to the same conclusion that the hubs and I have since moving out to the middle of nowhere.
There’s just something that comes from living in connection with the seasons and nature and away from the push and pull of the majority of society that makes you question just what exactly is a necessity and what is a luxury.
I’ve seen a lot of people with the same look in their eyes that I have when I go into public. That wild eyed confused look.
I’ve been questioning a lot of things since way before Corona The Virus.
Like why does anyone NEED a brand new car? Why does anyone NEED brand name clothes? Why do we wear makeup? Why do I HAVE to wear a bra?
I’ve seen a lot of others that have started questioning these things too. Realizing what is needed to get through life and what we’ve been told we need to get through life are almost always two different things.
It feels like our day to day existence has become less of a game of Monopoly and more an afternoon puzzle.
We’re not trying to force ourselves to fit into someone else’s picture, we’re using what we have to make our own. I’ve seen so many people expressing their creative sides, helping others, getting more in tune with nature, and connecting with family.
I’m also finally watching the original Roswell. I wanted to watch it when I was younger and it first came out but I didn’t have that channel.
Like I said, I’m a late bloomer.
(*note* I’m not blind and I do realize that there are so many suffering right now as well as others working exhaustingly hard but I can only write from my own perspective, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.)
I have to check at least three or four times a day what day it is. Is it Monday? Is it Friday?
Who knows or even cares anymore?
Time seems to have become non-existent. Sometimes it’s as if Mother Nature is finally disciplining her children.
“Slow the F**k down.” she seems to say.
I am sad that I can’t see the few people that I enjoyed seeing everyday but overall my life hasn’t changed much.
Then again sometimes it feels as though it is completely different.
I am currently quarantined in a 3 bedroom single wide trailer with two kids, an aging and grouchy pitbull, a spoilt (neutered) male cat, and two female cats in heat.
The two cats in heat have become of considerable annoyance. They are adorable black beauties. Sookie, the quiet tiny thing who usually sits in corners and watches, now rolls in the floor like Linda Blaire in The Exorcist, before peeing on the rug.
Pearl, the cat who resembles some Egyptian painting of a cat and is usually loving is loud and extra loving. She also poops beside the litter box instead of in it. But I don’t thing that has anything to do with being in heat.
I don’t know when I will be able to get them spayed, because nothing is open right now for anything that isn’t an emergency.
I am currently open for suggestions on how to make a spay sound like a medical emergency.
Their fitful cries for male companionship have attracted a few male contenders though we are down to one.
Mr. Darcy showed his handsome self up on our doorstep not long after this incredible fun phase of cat ownership began.
The Handsome Mr. Darcy often begs for belly rubs by dropping down right in front of you.
He is a handsome gentleman who, unlike the others before him, doesn’t spray our porch or my flowers. He enjoys belly rubs and pets and has become another pet around here.
We feed him, though he seems to be incredibly well feed for a cat that has obviously been without a home other than the woods for a while. Though he has won the right of “suitor” over the other possible “suitor” cats, he is losing the battle against vermin.
Thankfully, I’ve been able to treat him with flea and tick meds as well as ear drops for mites in his ears. I’ve sprayed his self inflicted wounds with antiseptic spray and he actually allows me to do all of this without much of a fight.
Unlike the spoilt inside cats who have to be rolled in a towel into a “Caturrito” in order to apply flea and tick medication or really anything they need.
But with Darcy outside the girls must remain inside completely.
The chickens are getting bigger.
Lucille Ball, always the last one in the nest at night
Poe, the black beauty. One of the two sweetest.
“If you’re not here to feed us please close the damn door!”
The kids never ending appetites mean that they are too which means they’ll probably outgrow all of their shoes and clothes in the next month.
A few days before things got really crazy with total home lock down style quarantine, my sister and I went grave walking.
This is our story…(dramatic duh duh!)
I didn’t realize that going to cemeteries for family fun wasn’t a normal thing to do until I was older. Almost thirty really.
I switched my minor to English at the end of my first semester and it was all because of one class.
The Archaeology and Literature of Death.
I saw the flyer for the class posted outside of my US History class. Back when I was still hoping to be a middle school social studies teacher. (Surprise! I am one now!)
I HAD to be in this class. It discussed graveyards and tombstones as the archaeology part. Supernatural belief as the literature element.
It was my favorite class of all the classes I took in college. Like if somehow all my classes had been this kind of a mesh I would have my doctorate by this point.
We read Dracula and Mama Day (by Gloria Naylor, incredible fucking novel BTW), then we went to the local cemetery. I was 100% the most obviously excited person.
The Geo majors said that I should take more classes if I was interested in graves and dead things so much. I would’ve, but as we all know, college ain’t cheap.
My parents took us to cemeteries more than they ever took us to a park. Sometimes we’d stop at a relatives grave for the required moment of awkward silence before we’d all spread out among the stones.
Empty alcohol bottles are pretty common grave decor. Maybe it’s a southern thing. Or just a redneck thing.
It was like some weird family scavenger hunt: Who could find the weirdest tombstone? Who could find the coveted grave-with-a-photograph on it? Who could find the oldest?
It was never announced it just always happened.
We’d shout dates and weird names across an open field full of dead people beneath our feet like we were calling out scores at a sports event.
I hadn’t thought about this for a long time. I hadn’t been to any cemeteries recently. Then we were told to find activities where few people could be found and everyone was at least six feet apart, and a light bulb flashed above my head.
A memory sparked.
My sister was game. It’d been a few years since we’d done this. We discussed the oddity of our family on the drive. The fact that our father believes in Bigfoot and our Mother had an extensive library on both the supernatural and true crime. All of which we had total access to.
I headed off to elementary school with an extensive knowledge on The Bermuda Triangle, The Jersey Devil, The Bell Witch, and Jack The Ripper. I also had pretty good knowledge of the layout of nearly every grave yard within a 100 mile radius.
This particular day, my sister and I headed for an old family cemetery that required about fifteen turns onto roads that look more like driveways.
This cemetery has a lot of graves that are just rocks put into the ground. There is no name and it is not a headstone it looks like someone found the biggest rock they could nearby and just shoved it into the ground. Two of my favorite graves in this cemetery are like this, without names, but the rocks are put into the ground so that they look like triangles. It seems to adds a little something.
The second grave yard was a hot spot of local lore. A good portion of that lore coming from my father who lead one too many hay rides that always ended up having a mechanical malfunction right in front of the cemetery. The tractor or truck would just “die”, and there we would all be, a wagon full of cousins and church kids, in the pitch black looking out into a wooded area filled with tombstones.
“It’s the witch!” dad would declare, and once there were a few screams (and at least one boy making obviously nervous jokes) the tractor/truck would suddenly start to work, and off we would go into the night.
We spent a few hours wandering through old stones. Trying to find the most interesting. Trying to find the oldest. I took pictures and she read off dates and sometimes causes of death.
I started reading this book I bought last year at the local thrift shop. Then I stopped reading it because it just got too real. I’ll probably start back up again when I reach the stage of Quarantine that one starts finding everything hilarious.
If I wasn’t The Hermitess before, I definitely am now. I chose the name for the blog because I felt that it fit me, a woman who was choosing to work at home in the middle of the woods, and trying to deal with extreme anxiety that made it really difficult to be around other people.
I also just like the word (discovered in a thesaurus search because all the other good words for loner were taken).
I was preparing for a day like the days in which we now find ourselves. Planning out my garden, my husband busy building a generator that could power a small trailer park, thinking up all kinds of ways to save and go as far off grid as we could comfortably stand.
I was trying to get out more. I was trying to figure out how to properly communicate with others in a way that didn’t send me to my car to have a panic attack.
You’d think that a person who’s always had issues with the outside world wouldn’t be feeling the effects of this virus in relation to social interaction. But I am.
There’s a big difference in staying home with the knowledge that the outside world is, you know, out there, and staying home because the “out there” isn’t really there anymore.
My anxiety has been bouncing through the roof at random a lot lately, I won’t lie.
I’m torn between the need to get away from my house and do something (anything!) different and curling up into a ball under the covers in my room and not leaving until this is all over. The second is the safest option, it’s also my go to position for intense depression. Am I depressed or being safe? Does one have to choose anymore?
I’ve kept up appearances pretty well with the kids. I think I am anyway. Of course they know what’s going on but they don’t know that we’re all (the grown ups who are supposed to take care of everything) freaking out really bad.
*Note: I’m not arguing with anyone because NO ONE knows what’s going on anymore.
I haven’t done Jack Shit of substance in quite a few days now if I’m being really honest. Which is what I said I wanted to do with this blog. The honest part, not Jack Shit.
I’ve been painting with the kids and watching the baby chicks and trying to do anything that distracts while isn’t a violation of any of the new regulations that are being put in place (very necessarily I know). I’ve also been reading, (I tried to read The Plague by Albert Camus but I need a distraction not a parallel to the current events page) and trying really hard to get into the head space to write (but that’s not been very easy).
I really had no idea how perfect this planner was going to be.
I’ve always loved being at home. I’ve never been the type of person to prefer a social gathering to time alone. My mother can tell you lots of hilarious (to her) stories of me asking when my sleepover guest(s) would be leaving (usually not long after we woke up) because I really wanted to be alone. Looking back I can see I was tired of being the person it felt like I was required to be in the presence of guests.
It’s funny, sort of, because since I cracked and went full blown anxious-me I can’t even figure out how to be social-me anymore. I’m just this weird blubbering anxious mess all the time and I never have to deal with someone discovering the real me because I’m too crazy to be anything but crazy. 100% what you see is what you get now.
Anyway.
The kids are home all the time now. Which isn’t horrible (I’ve never had the anxiety issues with my family the way I do with anyone outside my family) but it’s also exhausting. There is no space, there is no privacy. For so many people this quarantine means being away from all the people and for me it’s bringing the people into my safe space. There used to be designated times for this stuff.
Spring Break was not the most exciting we’ve ever had, but it was nice to just do nothing without the looming threat of packet work and online work. We could just binge watch the same television shows we’ve been watching for the last ten years.
It’s hard not to sink back into that routine. It was a nice place to be while the world seems to burn down around us.
I guess, I’m just lost. But who the hell isn’t right now?
It’s nearly midnight and I’m finally able to write.
The past few nights I’ve spent my usual writing time trying to plan out the next days educational adventures for double trouble (my two kids). I look for things that they can do while waiting to switch out on the computer and make sure that my son has everything in order for his school packet.
I’d be lying if I said that total homeschool is going so much easier for my daughter because I’m spending the time right now reviewing and finding out what she knows and the best ways that she learns. We’ve found all sorts of educational things online that she’s enjoying, for the most part. We did butt heads over a science unit that I found that was not just videos but interactive activities. She seemed interested at first but then lost interest and became frustrated. She didn’t want to do it and didn’t understand why I was making her. I told her that we weren’t always going to be doing fun things and that sometimes school would be doing stuff that she didn’t really want to do but that that was just a part of life. Once things calmed down I realized that the reason that she was so upset with the program was that she was used to being rushed along because in school she has only so much time for each task. When she realized that she could slow down and take her time understanding things and trying things out she calmed down quite a bit.
I’m also learning a lot myself and I hope that the teachers are discovering the same thing I am: we all need a break.
Trying to force this quarantine life to match life pre-Corona isn’t working.
I’m glad that next week is Spring Break and there won’t be the extra pressure to try and fit this new square life back into the pretty round hole it used fit in.
It’s all a jumbled mess, because there is also this feeling that everything is fine and that what’s wrong is something simple and will soon be easily fixed. Then you go out to try and get something that you need and Ta-Da! The world is magically different.
I’ve spent the a very large amount of time hiding out in the greenhouse again this week. My flowers and vegetables are coming along good though.
I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about people being out when they shouldn’t be and I agree that there is a definite lack of seriousness to the whole mess, but I have to say that I’ve caught myself perusing the shelves at the store just like everything was normal and dandy. Of course someone turns the corner with a mask and gloves and the eyes of a panicked maniac on the hunt for lysol and the realization that things aren’t really normal at the moment comes flooding back.
I don’t bring the kids inside the store anymore and they are getting stir crazy. They can’t grasp the reality of the situation any better than anyone else. We’ve taken lots of walks into the woods behind the house.
I’ve bought a few nonessentials. I’ll admit it. They very were calculated non essentials which I planned my essential shopping trip around.
That’s the way life is now.
Like I said before. I’m Ma Ingalls now. My monthly shopping trip (I try but it’s more like weekly) is very carefully planned out with the quickest route around the store while the kids sit outside in the buggy/car waiting.
It’s been a little over a week now since all of this COVID-19 stuff got downright scary. Since social distancing become a part of the common vernacular. It seems like months. Damn.
Better safe than sorry…plenty of vitamin c and coffee
I mean it’s always been serious, but we went from an action movie where that one single action hero has to stop the crazy people from letting the scary virus loose on a completely ignorant public to the flashback scenes in an apocalyptic horror movie. Then you smear on the terrible political bureaucratic baloney that has only gotten worse since this whole thing started and there you have the Nightmare Of 2020.
I went from a woman just beginning to gather her shit up (I DID NOT HAVE IT TOGETHER YET DAMN IT) to a housewife from the 1870’s raising her kids on the prairies.
I grew up obsessed with the Little House books and everything Laura Ingalls Wilder. Gawd, I wanted to be Laura. I had the hair and the buck teeth and my Grandma bought me a bonnet. Laura had so much fun running around in the wild. Instead I’m Ma. Ma isn’t fun.
Like Ma I’m trying to find the will to live in the small things. The small things being that unlike Ma I have electricity, running water, and can vote while wearing pants.
I love being home with the kids. I really do. I even planned on home schooling next school year. But I wasn’t 100% ready yet, like I said before, and in the other few posts on this blog, I was just starting to gather my shit.
If you have read any of this blog than you know that I’ve been practicing social distancing before it became cool. I’ve been trying to live at home like a hermit because my social anxiety reached a breaking point. I also really like being alone. I don’t mind working, I just can’t handle people. Not because I don’t want to, because I actually do, I just can’t and I really can’t 100% figure out why. It’s a really complex situation. I am a really complex situation.
The best places to learn about social distancing are in books written by women who lived a really long time ago and lived in the middle of the woods. Honestly just become an old witch.
This is really what I’m doing. Growing herbs and plants, taking care of a whole smattering of animals, and giving nonsensical advice to complete strangers.
My old crone advice is this:
The key to social distancing is really take some time to get to know yourself. If you can’t handle being alone with you then how do you expect the rest of us to be around you. Sheesh.
I sent in the letter of intent to completely home school my daughter today. It had been sitting in my Google docs for a while now. I’d gone back and forth on the idea and then I thought that we would maybe start next year, if my daughters grades hadn’t improved. Then COVID-19 hit and we’re home trying to figure out how to do all this online stuff. She’s crying, I’m frustrated, and I just had to say that enough is enough.
The current education system doesn’t work for my daughter. It just doesn’t. I feel the need to make this clear from the beginning though, I don’t blame the teachers. Most of my daughters teachers have been hard working, incredible people that I hope to use as my guideposts from here on out. My daughter has been lucky enough to have gotten to know some of the most amazing people during her time in the public education system. Lunch ladies, guidance counselors, principals, aides, assistants, art instructors, librarians, and so much more. These people aren’t just teachers to my child, they are like family members that she loves, still to this day, wholeheartedly.
The world is changing though. We all seem to want to believe that after just two more weeks (and two more weeks and two more weeks and so on and so on) everything will go back to normal. But the hard cold truth is, the world from here on out is going to be vastly different. Better or worse, we don’t really know yet. We do know that the world we’ve been preparing our children for isn’t the world they are going to have to learn to live in from here on.
I wake up afraid. I won’t lie. Every day there is something new and it feels worse than the news from the day before. I try to put my phone away. I try to pretend nothing is wrong for the sake of my kids but let’s be real: our kids know something big is up.
My kids don’t seem to be afraid in the same way that I am though. They just seem to accept it. Then again, these are kids who prepare for active shooters the way we prepared for tornadoes and fires, and they’ve been doing it their whole lives.
It makes me sad and a little sick to think about it. But it’s true.
As I said before, I’m not blaming teachers. You can only do what you can do, and you have to do it with what little you can get. I’ve worked in childcare, and it taught me that my patience is not what I thought it was. I could never ever manage the education of 20 plus children. Nope, never.
The best that public education can do is a one size fits most plan, and that is an incredible weight to carry, but the one size fits most plan isn’t working for us anymore. If I’m being honest, it never has. I’ve watched my brave, loving kind-hearted, beautiful child become a withdrawn, sad, stressed out kid over the years. She calls herself stupid, and says that she just can’t learn. I didn’t raise my child to think this way about herself.
Every year we have to have the parent teacher conference where I plead for any and all assistance that my child can get. I do everything that I’m asked to do, but every year we have to start back at the beginning. She fights tooth and nail to make the same grades as her friends but never seems to, and it’s killed her self esteem.
So, now we’re home bound, and in the middle of a pandemic. I know that technically everyone is being homeschooled right now and I’ve looked into the schools Non-traditional plans. I’m sure that under the circumstances this is an incredible feat. No, scratch that, I know it is. You guys were not expecting this and you are doing the very best you can while trying to take care of your own families.
It’s just not for us. I want this time with my children to not be unnecessarily stressful. I don’t want my daughter crying at my kitchen table that she is stupid, or watch her anxiety give me wild flashbacks to my own terrible teen years. These are all side effects of a lot of things that have being going on for a while now, but this crazy time we’re living in just made me realize that I don’t want my daughter to spend any more time hating learning or feeling like she can’t.
Just a few of the books we’ve collected over the past few months.
I promise that we are still learning. We are reading every day. She’s learning math and we are learning about soooo much science! I’ve had both kids write down what they really wanted to learn about and they made really great lists. Astronomy, gardening, animals, geography, history, and so much more. We’re really excited to get started.
If the past few weeks have taught me anything it is this:
Life is fragile and time is precious. It’s always been true but this constant fear and this sudden change has really put things in perspective. I don’t think many of us can really say that we were always living the way that we should or prioritizing the right things. I know I wasn’t.
I just want to make sure that teachers, all of you who have been apart of my daughters life know, that we will continue to fight for you and all that you do.
My husband has become quite the connoisseur of junk over the past few years. I know that he has always been the type to make something out of nothing, I’ve seen his past work in pictures, but the past few years he’s started to outdo himself. Creating something from things he finds on the side of the road, or in the woods, or things we no longer use ourselves has become so commonplace that I’ve decided to start posting about it in a series called Junk Builds.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t get a lot of before and during photos, because I was helping hold the thing together while the hubs drilled and nailed. I’ll be even more honest and admit that this is in no way Pinterest perfect. It isn’t fancy or feature anything beautiful at the moment but it is getting the job done and it didn’t cost us more than $30 all together.
The PVC pipes were from another project that ended up being a small hoop house that we used last year to cover the salad garden that I grew in the blue swimming pool pictured above. The hubs has gathered quite a collection of pallets from work and other places for free, which we used to not only bring the greenhouse up but we split them up to use for anything else requiring extra structure. The door was from a dog pen that someone no longer wanted and gave to us. Part of the pen was bent and had to be disposed of and this particular door has a broken latch but as you can see by the table and stone in front of the door, this girl can make do.
I’m not posting this as some “Isn’t this absolutely amazing” get-attention-to- our-building-skills post. I’m hoping that maybe this half-assed greenhouse that my husband and I (mostly my husband) put together in a day inspires more people to not let money stop them from making things they want or need. I’ve heard so many people say that they can’t do or make something because they can’t afford this or that but this was made from things we found and had laying around. The only thing purchased was the plastic we wrapped around it.
I’m so happy that I don’t have to try to start seeds in the house where my cats enjoy knocking them over or picking the small leaves off. I also don’t have piles of gardening stuff all over my small porch. It’s not the prettiest greenhouse or the best. There is still work to be done but for now it fulfills a need that I had and that’s what matters. Stop worrying so much about how things will look and worry more about function!
I started to post a rant I’ve been working on, explaining all the reasons why I haven’t been blogging. Then I re-edited it and started to go off on another rant about how tired I am of having to excuse my existence or prove my worth in dollar signs while actually going on and on trying to prove my worth in dollar signs.
But I want this blog to be about me learning from my bullshit and not repeating it. (Side note: Might one day put all crazy rant drafts into a file titled “Holy Shit She’s Crazy” for fun reads when I’m more sane and can laugh at myself and not be slightly afraid)
So, I’ve been busy. And I’m not trying to prove anything here, to tell the truth these past few weeks have not been financially profitable. It’s been one of those, “gotta spend money to make money” kinda months.
My husband and I built a greenhouse this weekend!
Le Greenhouse
Well he built it and I held a few things and swung a hammer a few times and put some of the tools up. He won’t let me do more than that. Not in any way sexist, in fact he prefers the help of our twelve year old daughter, because, as they BOTH tell me, “You should back away, you always end up hurt.”
We also got CHICKENS!
Baby Dinos
Yes, more fluffy tiny dinosaurs. FINALLY!!
I can’t decide who’s more excited, me or the dog. Or the cats.
Spring is definitely here, or very, very near and my seasonal depression can finally STFU. Hooray.
A Hermitess 