Happy Mother’s May (not a typo), graduation, end of school, Memorial Day and all the other things! Celebrating probably looked very different for you this year, but I hope you still did.
The social distancing routine continues at Sparks manor, with one improvement. We now host yard parties for my daughter and her friends and ours as well. With chairs set at least 6 feet apart and everyone bringing their own food and beverage, we feel safe and also more sane! If you haven’t already, give this a try. I LOVE this kind of hospitality. I don’t have to cook or clean! My husband and I did work hard initially cleaning up the yards, but they desperately needed a sprucing anyway.
Allie, my beautiful but broken-legged daughter graduated from a splint to a boot this month. She still can’t put weight on it and struggled to hear that she will wear it for at least 9 more weeks. But she can take the boot off, making baths easier.
On Mother’s Day our church held a drive in service at our local football stadium. We stayed in our cars and tuned into a radio station to hear the praise music and sermon. After lunch we drove the hour and a half to my parents’ home to see them and my grandfather for the first time since all this mess started. We refrained from hugging and somehow kept Shelby, our special needs daughter from it (not an easy task – it’s her favorite.)
My husband Chuck got his first quarantine haircut – from my 15 year old. I did not take offense that he trusted her more than me with this task. There was a direct correlation to her confidence and my lack there of. He did exhibit some rising anxiety during the process, but she did a great job! He doesn’t need a hat or anything!
Shelby began Rec therapy again, which gives me a much needed couple of hours with a quiet house – even if I’m not alone in it. It also allows me a break from exercising her for one day a week. Yay! A break in routine. Anything different, please! I taught my first class in weeks. Online for the senior adults from the Rec of Grapevine. It felt good to get back, even if only in a small way. Check my Facebook page for links to the live Yoga Lite classes on Tuesdays at 1:00pm.
For family entertainment we turned to Star Wars Monopoly. Not my choice. But we laughed at my bad luck and it kept us busy. I tried to cajole them into playing until I had lost ALL of my money and property, but we gave out a little shy of that. We also introduced Allie to Dirty Dancing. Don’t judge. It was the stuff of my teen years and has an amazing soundtrack. We also rewatched The Greatest Showman. I think that was my fourth time. I just love a good musical and Hollywood falls short of making many new ones. And for more good movie songs, we belted along to both Disney Sing-Alongs. Our Amazon Alexa entertained us with two more games – Song Quiz and Mr. Robot (the later not an actual game, but something Jimmy Fallon made up).
The hubs and I consumed quite a few more shows and movies than we could convince our teen to join in. Green Book, On the Basis of Sex (about Ruth Bader Ginsberg), The Martian, and The Post (with Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep) were all excellent. I would rate Second Act (with Jennifer Lopez) and The Jane Austen Book Club as OK. We sampled the new Hulu series The Great about Russia’s Catherine the Great and found it a little too distasteful for our palate, but we love National Geographic’s The 80’s: The Decade that Made Us. Talk about nostalgia! We even got out our high school letter jackets after sitting through a couple. And promptly put them back away. Little Fires Everywhere left us slack-jawed and a little speechless. In the words of my friend Terri, it’s coo-coo-catchoo! I would still love to talk to someone else about it.
In more literary pursuits, I actually finished a couple of the books I mentioned last month and began My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie. It’s been on my to-read list for a couple of years and I finally quit letting other things get in the way. These authors also wrote one of my very favorite books, America’s First Daughter: A Novel. If you like history even a little, I highly recommend them. I also set off with some self-discovery and hopefully healing with Stephen Arterburn’s Lose it for Life.
What made your May a little better? Drop a comment below with your movies, shows, books or activities. I love hearing from you. And as parts of the world start to slowly open up, I pray you remain safe and sane! And to close; I love you, I thank you, and I hope June treats you well.
And now for this week’s featured post!
Body Image and Intimacy: 3 Effects it Has On Your Marriage sadly resonated with me because I struggle with negative thoughts about myself when I’m with my husband. Angie from keepingthetiethatbinds.com both reminded me that I’m not alone and encouraged me not to simply accept this. Click here to read the post and give her some comment love for linking up with us!
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Heather Hart & Valerie Riese
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Lauren Sparks
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When I wrote the monthly muster for March, I can’t honestly say I thought we would be in much the same place at the end of April. The natives are restless, the days are long, the world seems so much different while moment to moment feels the same. Groundhog day if you will. And yet I am very aware of how many reasons I have to be thankful. I’m also aware that, though we have all lost something to coronavirus, our sufferings run the gamut from missing our friends and semi-regular Target runs to financial strain and loss of a loved one. Lady Gaga (who I wouldn’t under normal circumstances quote here), said it well in explaining to Jimmy Fallon that she takes issue with the phrase “We’re all in this together.” (I’m guilty. I wrote it in my month end post for March.) Gaga said, “While I think the sentiment is nice, I also think that the fight that I’m in — or that you’re in, right? — is very different than the fight of a woman that is in, perhaps, an abusive relationship and has a child and lost her job and can’t feed her kid and can’t feed herself and also can’t get the help that she needs because she’s in a violent situation,”.
My fifteen year old broke her leg so she could see her friends more. I only wish I was kidding. She trucked down the wooden stairs one night in socks with a ukulele in one hand and a song book in another. There was tumbling and screaming and a trip to the emergency room to x-ray 2 broken bones. That $30 ukulele remains unscathed, though! Surgery to place 9 screws and a plate followed. Her sweet friends are coming often to sit in a lawn chair in our flower bed and visit with her through the window of our guest/ recovery room. So thankful for their thoughtfulness to help distract my girl from the pain.