An Email History of Pandemic Life

A history of my pandemic life since schools locked down for us last March, according to emails.

A slice of today

A list of things to remember about this day/time: When dropping the kids off at school, Gabriela ran off without her mask on so I called her to stop. I hopped out of the car to hand it to her. It had a flower print.I sipped on Starbucks hot cocoa mix made with oat milk …

Leaning on my tribe

I could not raise my kids alone. Neither could Nathan and I do it on our own. We lean on our tribe. We have our family, and our neighbors, our church, and our school, and we have their friends from these places plus soccer, dance, and gymnastics. We need people. The isolation and lockdown measures from …

An online tribute to Grandma

The caption on the picture above was written by the photographer. He visited Grandma in 2018 to take pictures for Utah Life Magazine. I wrote the story and it was one of the best writing assignments I've ever been paid for. I wrote Grandma's obituary this week. It was a costly writing assignment for the …

Blessed like Edith

I wrote her obituary today. I had help. I had her help first. I listened to her talk to me, through recordings on my phone, sharing her story of the memories and details she wanted to include. Then, I had a coworker (a writer, and a friend) Lydia help polish it. I then sent it …

Hybrid school year, here we go

A post about today. And Thursday. And a little bit of Friday. Today is Tuesday. That means it's online school day. We don't have online assignments yet. Teachers sent home some papers. Dom and Gabbi did them with Maeli and Sadie. They're the neighbor girls I hired as tutors. It was quiet for a bit. …

Lost Sense of Time

Today is Tuesday. It's hard to keep track. I confuse which days we need to do which Zoom meetings. Last week, we missed a morning gymnastics Zoom. Today, we missed Dom's class Zoom. This is one of my biggest struggles recently: tracking my kids' online appointments. It's an odd problem to have. I keep track …

Earthquakes and pandemics and bears, oh my

There's so much time for thinking these days. Too much. It can spiral. In the wrong way. I haven't had problems with that for a long time, though. I was mentally strong. But the world today is upside down. So I'm going to keep track of it. I haven't used this blog for a long …

Blessed to be like three women who raised me

Today is International Women's Day. I was searching in a box for something from high school and didn't find it. I did, however, find a piece of paper that is nearly 40 years old. This paper is the transcript of the blessing my father gave me when I was not quite two months old. A …

#metoo, dating my hubby, and my #rootedlife

In case you forgot, this year I'm all about some Aztec philosophy. I've been teased by some neighbors about it. I don't mind the teasing. Because I'm rooted, yo. As a refresher, I recently learned about this philosophy, Neltiliztli, which I've hashtagged as living a #rootedlife this year. I even made a nifty little infographic. You're …