What Day is This?

The Corona quarantine is making me lose my sense of time.

It is 1:00 in the morning. Believe me, I have tried to get on here and write throughout the day.

I'm currently typing while sitting on the edge of the bed of a child who is so fitful with sleeping that I might as well forget about a good night of sleep, too.

While I was tempted just to forget writing today, I'm doing it now because my fitful child just needs me nearby right now, and like many parents, I gave up good sleep years ago.

I can sleep through noises of all sorts: storms, snoring (the kind that could be measured on the seismic scale), thumps, bangs, booms. But let one of my kids make a peep, and I hear it instantly. A mother's ears are just trained to her own kids.

As an aside, this child mentioned above will not be having Coke for the next 10 years.

Yesterday and today were full of... well, let me just tell you in bullet points, because my mind thinks in bullet points.

• Kara and I cleaned her room from top to bottom. Mr. Pest Control was due to come this morning for his quarterly spray, and I wanted him to have clear access to every corner of the house. Kara loves establishing order, I love the order she creates, we both enjoy the clatter in the vacuum as it ate all the little who-knows-whats of leftover arts and crafts on her floor.

• Mr. Pest Control is on my list of favorite guys. Kal and Kris are always there, but I also have other favorite guys--anyone who solves the problems we have is on my list. Mr. Car Repair, Mr. Plumber, Mr. Tree Guy, Mr. Handyman, Mr. Knows How To Fix It at the hardware store...

• Kal and Kara both have had fairly cheerful attitudes with house and yard work. They both enjoy being a real help to us, making real contributions. We are still working every day on cleaning up trails: food trails, clothing trails, game trails, sporting goods trails, book trails. My guess is that I will be training that until kingdom come.

• I have some upholstery fabric that finally came to maturation in the aging barrel of good intentions. I've had it for 6 years or so to reupholster the dining room chairs. There's a good reason I don't do reupholstering for a living. I hate it. Chair pads are not too hard, though, so I'm digging into that project and just gritting my teeth. I know I should care about pattern placement, but I just don't. I want the job done.

• Speaking of done, I blew through a stack of sewing that had been aging in the good intentions barrel for too long. I am capable of producing museum-quality work, but in this sewing today, done beats perfect. I had to switch off the perfectionism.

• Kara has been wrapped up in one of the blankets I finished today since the moment I snipped off the last thread. I'm happy to see her so happy.

• Kal has been hacking away at the tall stump of a dead, hollow tree in our tree line. It fell over ages ago, long before we bought this house, and it gives him hours of entertainment to whack and hack at it. He'll also go around the strip of woods we have and cut out the small brush. He's handy in the yard when he sets his mind to it.

• I found wet laundry in the dryer. My dryer works just fine; I just forgot to push the start button.

• Today's bike ride was a bit chilly. At least we're into April now. Weather should be warming up over 50F more often. My family in South Carolina has been swimming in their pool already. 88F there. Palm trees. Lemon trees. Lizards and palmetto bugs.

It's been well over ten minutes of writing. Some of that is to make up for yesterday's neglect.

Anyway, my child is peaceful, and I'm going to sleep now.