Category Archives: Pandemic

About Halfway

Posted on by

July 1 marks the halfway point of the year. And this year in particular, The Year the Virus Stole My Job/Graduation/Sanity/Fill-In-The-Blank, is one that many of us just wish we could Do Over.

But the toothpaste is already squeezed out of the tube and there ain’t no way to get it back in, short of toothpaste tube surgery. That sounds messy, sticky and without guaranteed results. Might as well regroup and figure out a new container or use for the toothpaste.

I am a person who likes to make resolutions at the beginning of the year (yes, I’m one of THOSE people), but I also know that without periodic review and re-engagement, I can lose focus. An auspicious date like July 1 – not just Canada Day (yay!), but 6 months from and to January 1 – is a perfect time to re-resolute.

I have kept a journal for many years now and I noticed a pattern a few years back – I often return to the same resolutions year after year. Most resolutions for me are not One-and-Done or else they wouldn’t be a recurring phenomenon. Maybe it would be better to call them Intentions. Or even Reminders. Re-Minding is all about getting your mind right again.

These are a few of the things I see as good things to remind myself.

Drink more water. Such an inane resolution really, but for me, I need to remind myself to not just drink my black water (a.k.a. My Beloved Coffee) but to intersperse my cups of java with cups of the clear stuff.

Quit eating crap. Well, not so much of it anyway. I don’t subscribe to an austere diet – although a reset like The Whole 30 once in a while doesn’t hurt. But coming through COVID-19, a.k.a. The Great Global Baking Challenge, it’s good to get back to soups and salads for lunch. And thankfully, fresh garden produce is just around the corner for extra incentive and general yumminess.

Move. Everyday. The older I get, the more thankful I am for the ability to move my body. Some days I do hard stuff like my boot camp class. Some days I just go for a walk or vacuum the house. I set timers to make myself get up from my desk and stretch, look out the window, refocus my eyes, get a glass of water. And I try everyday to go outside, which seems to require and inspire movement in and of itself. For an Indoorsy Girl, this is a miracle and a revelation that I can enjoy being outside (almost) everyday.

Keep in Touch. Along with Indoorsy Girl, I am also Introvert Girl. However, introversion is not the same as Doesn’t Need People. The pandemic introduced me to the Walk-And-Talk – talking to a friend on my cell while we both walked in our respective locations. Normally, I don’t like talking on the phone, but since this was the best option available, it became Okay. And even though I had some of my family around me 24-7 for the intense six weeks of quarantine, I was reminded how much I miss actually seeing people, talking to them in person, hugging them. Most of the hugging is still on hold but I do make sure that I break up my working-at-home-weekdays with at least one In-Person-Friend-Date. It’s always good.

Start Something. Keep Going. Finish Something. I always have some project I’m working on. In the past it has been more hobby-related like scrapbooking or organizing (anything, I like organizing ANYTHING). These days, I’m trying to focus on writing. I have one project I want to finish by the end of the year, one I want to keep going on and one I want to launch. Deadlines (as my husband reminds me) are a good thing. They keep you honest and help you GET STUFF DONE. If it’s important, you need to set aside the time to do it. And for me, my writing projects, are IMPORTANT. And if I keep doing the small and simple stuff above, it will give me the energy and the sanity to stick to my bigger intentions.

What’s on your Redeem-the-Rest-of-2020 list?

About The Big Wave

Posted on by

Before I ever understood anything about Pulitzers or Nobel Prizes, I read the slim book The Big Wave by Pearl S. Buck, who incidentally clocked in with both of those honors. So, it is no small thing when a writer of such caliber chooses to write for children, which, despite the heavy content, this book is written for. That being said, I think adults can always benefit from reading good children’s stories.

Kino, the son of a farmer, lives near a Japanese fishing village where his best friend Jiya works with his fisherman father. Tragedy visits when a tsunami wipes out the village even though The Old Gentleman who lives in a castle up the mountain offers refuge at the first signs of danger. Jiya alone, sent by his father, manages to get up the mountain in time and then watches with Kino as the terrible ocean wipes the beach clean.

Years later, Jiya decides to return to the beach, to help rebuild the village and to become a fisherman like his father. Kino is baffled with Jiya’s decision and The Old Gentleman derides those who have started the rebuilding. He warns them that he will never again offer refuge in his castle, what he claims is the only safe place.

Jiya answers him:

“Your castle is not safe either…If the earth shakes hard enough, your castle will crumble, too. There is no refuge for us who live on these islands. We are brave because we must be.”

In some ways, this pandemic has felt like The Big Wave – sweeping, arbitrary and devastating. Many people have died and our way of life has changed in somewhat drastic ways. It’s easy to feel like it will never be the same again. It’s easy to be afraid of The Big Wave, of The Next Wave.

In a podcast I recently listened to, Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame) talks with Jen Hatmaker about this feeling of shock that people have – like they’re suddenly out of control, when in fact they were never in control. As Liz puts it, “The world is doing what our world does. The world is just being itself…and it’s doing it perfectly. Because what the world does is change every second…And that’s what it’s always done.”

I take great comfort in those words, which to me paradoxically echo those in Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing new under the sun.” The world does what the world does – as it always has. We were never in control. But we can be brave because we must be.

And though it feels like things may never be the same, we won’t go backward. We aren’t meant for that. We are meant to go back to the beach and build again. And to treasure what we have, if only for this day.

About Me and Books

Posted on by

There’s a lot of talk about minimalism and tiny houses these days. Generally, I figure that most people who choose to live in a tiny house probably don’t have much stuff to begin with. Or they’re just not that materialistic. They’re outdoorsy, probably, and live in warm climates. They entertain only small parties, if any, because they only own 2 plates and 2 forks and one knife. And they seem to have a romantic idea about sleeping on plywood beds in treehouse style loft bedrooms conducive to hitting your head if you suddenly sit up.

I’ve watched a few of those shows and frankly, it just looks too much like camping to me. Tiny bathrooms where you can sit on the toilet to shower (not a high-value efficiency for me), steps that hide dog dishes (because tiny house people always have room for the largest dogs), shoe storage that doubles as art installations – all these things look nice – in theory. For reals, I’d like to see the stats on how long before these tiny house owners put their digs up for sale on Kijiji.

Maybe the only ones that pique my interest are the tiny-house-book-lovers. You know, people who basically build themselves a self-sufficient closet to hold all their best friends – er, favorite books. Books as art installations? That I understand.

However, as a bookishly nerdy person whose favorite activities all center around words, I don’t have as many books as you might think. Oh sure, I have plenty, more than the average book-bear probably. But I actually don’t have a problem with getting rid of books if – IF – they no longer serve me.

I think my purging prowess started when we moved for the fourth time in the first seven years of being married and I lifted a box heavy with university textbooks that had not been unpacked from the previous move. What purpose did it serve me to save my Microbiology textbook from my ill-fated first year of nursing school? When would I need to urgently look up how a virus evolves the life span of a paramecium? And given constant scientific research and updating, how could I ever know if my textbook would stay “right”? And finally, I never really read it in the first place. Microbiology, Biology, Zoology – all the science-y textbooks – are long gone. And I never missed them.

I started my theory of decluttering before the internet became a THING – when copious amounts of unreliable information were available on the Google – in mere seconds. Way back then, my first criterion for letting go of a book was: Can I find this at the library? Oh, sure, it’s nice to have something around sometime just because you like a subject. Case in point: I never did let go of my Art History textbook from 1988 and I still look things up in it. Because I’m interested in art, especially old art, for which there’s not a lot of new research being dug up, archaeologically speaking. And, in my opinion, an art history textbook makes a nicer coffee table book than Physics, a textbook I also never read but which additionally gives me the heebie-jeebies.

This brings up my second criterion, which was to honestly ask myself: will I ever actually read this – again or for the first time? When I first started homeschooling my boys, I supplemented our bookshelves by haunting garage sales and second-hand stores. I bought anything and everything that looked educational, classic or fun. The result was bookshelves overflowing with many, many unread books. While it served us well to have lots to choose from, I was again confronted with this problem when staging a house to sell. Rather than box up the bulk and shove it under the stairs, I purged again – this time, asking myself the hard questions like: Will I ever read The Count of Monte Cristo or Mein Kampf or HTML for Dummies? Yeah, no.

But that’s me. Physics and HTML might be your perfect bookshelf fodder. And maybe at one time, it was for me, too. On a podcast that I listened to this morning about this subject, the guest talked about letting go of the things that are “no longer you” – which is sometimes hard to do. But she also said that she trusted herself to remember what was important. The result is a lot more room in your brain to focus on what’s here and now. And maybe a lot more room on your bookshelves.

These days, I try to “preview” books before I ever buy them – meaning I use the library again, a lot. There’s nothing worse than spending $30 on a book that you open up and say, “Oh no.” Of course, COVID-19 has made using the library a little different (hurry up, Phase Two!) but in the meantime, I’m shopping my own shelves for reading material. Because I still have books I have to read. And plenty more to give away.

About What I Learned While Homeschooling

Posted on by

Along with all the other inherent stresses imbued in a global pandemic, parents right now are finding themselves thrust into a scenario they never wished upon themselves or their children – schooling their kids at home. It’s not for the feint of heart, taking responsibility for the education of your kids, but then neither is parenting. Having kids is probably not what you ever thought it was gonna be: it’s way harder and way better.

About twenty years ago, Rick and I made the decision that we would willingly take on schooling our kids at home. There was no virus threatening our safety, just three little boys testing our sanity. It’s actually a little amusing to me right now that the government is telling parents they need to do this, because it wasn’t always a sanctioned choice. I never was a vigilante-homeschooling mom, insisting that everyone should do it. But I did always maintain that it was an option, like public school or private school were other schooling choices out there. And for us, at the time, it was the right one.

That’s the way you have to look at parenting in retrospect, whether giving grace to yourself or your parents: you do your best with what you know at the time.

I admit that I’m relieved that my kids are graduated and responsible for whatever the heck they want to learn now. And COVID-19, with all it’s social distancing challenges, has really put parents schooling their children at home to the test: no playgrounds at “recess”, no fraternizing in the hallways except with your enemies (oops, I mean siblings), no sports, no clubs, not a lot of anything to let off steam except screens and backyards.

It was a different time and a different place, but for what it’s worth, here’s what I learned while homeschooling my boys – with the perspective of being past it all.

One of the best things I heard at a homeschooling conference once was that educating your kids was like creating a hammock for them. You need to make sure they have the basics to support them – through the next level, through regular life – but there’s always gonna be a lot of holes. If kids only get the basics – like the original trifecta of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, that’s a pretty good hammock. It will hold up. And there’s no way you can ever fill all the holes anyways.

Secondly, what you “routinize” is what your kids will get used to and what they will also do, for better or for worse. Whether it’s schooling at home or working remotely, you get more done if you stick to a routine. Plus, more beds get made, teeth get brushed, fish get fed and books get read. It takes a lot of muscle to build a habit but then after awhile, it just becomes the new normal.

Thirdly, you can’t predict what your kids will remember. While I went off the deep end teaching my boys lots of history and reading them great stories, they don’t remember a lot of the specifics. Frankly, neither do I. It’s pretty scattershot, really. But we did give them learning “hooks”, meaning that if they encounter an idea or some history or a person that we learned about in school, they have a place to hang that knowledge and build upon it. You can’t always remember stuff from first encounters. And now that they are in their twenties with their own Google machines in their hands all the time, they can look it up. (So can I.)

Fourthly, they will remember what was fun and unusual, and mostly, that’s the stuff that families are made of, not school. There were lots of things my boys do remember because we enjoyed them: nature hikes, reading all the Harry Potter books as a family, theatre performances, road trips, music lessons (well, maybe not the lessons, but the knowing how to play afterwards), holiday traditions, sleepovers at Gramma’s house, backyard hockey rinks and road hockey in the summer, crazy youth group events, house renovations. (Oh, wait, maybe that last one was just fun for Rick and me.) And if you think about it, what you remember about school when you were a kid was probably less about what you learned and more about what you did and who you did it with and especially if you had fun.

I’m willing to bet that the COVID-19 classes of 2020 won’t remember a heck a lot of what they learned “in school” this year. Which is not to say that it’s a futile exercise: schoolwork teaches your kids how to learn and it builds their repertoire and frankly, it just keeps them a little busy. But it’s pretty much a guarantee that they will remember all the weirdness, and hopefully a little bit of the wonderfulness, that a quarantine can offer. I mean, you’re in it now: might as well make lemonade out of them lemons. And while you’re at it, your kids can learn math and experiment with taste buds and have (lemonade) drinking contests and then they can wash the damn dishes. Which is also a good skill they probably won’t learn in regular school.

Home, after all, is where they first learned to walk and talk and cut their own hair somehow with child-safe scissors. Maybe they can cut yours now until we get our hair salons back. It could be fun. Just sayin.

About The Martian

Posted on by

So I read another book last week. (Cue the horns.)

There’s actually a lot of book reading going on in my house these COVID-19 days. Gil reads regularly, like me, but Rick has definitely upped his game, probably due in part to hearing Gil and me talking about our books all the time.

Gil and I have been having an ongoing conversation about the merits of the Fantasy genre. He schools me about low fantasy (or “low-nerd”) and high fantasy (“high-nerd”, obviously). I insist I don’t like fantasy literature (remember my book club debacle?) and then he points out all the fantasy books I have read (and loved): Harry Potter, Narnia…ummm…yup, I think that’s it. There are only so many unicorns I can handle.

Those favorites would make me a low nerd.

But every once in a while, I up my nerd game and read some science fiction, like this week’s choice, The Martian. It’s actually pretty rare that I read an novel after I have already seen the movie, but my reading guru, Anne Bogel of Modern Mrs. Darcy, insisted it was a brilliant read whether you were a high nerd, low nerd or none of the above. I had really enjoyed the movie, so I had to wonder, what more could the book offer me?

As it turns out, plenty. Like how to survive single-handedly ON MARS – a good skill for anyone’s toolbox. Well, okay, maybe not applicable to most people. But the cool thing about author Andy Weir is that he makes it seem absolutely plausible that it could be done by an ordinary astronaut like Mark Watney (who looks exactly like Matt Damon, so that does tip the balance a little.) His title character is funny, irreverent, oddly optimistic, forgiving, intelligent and most important for being stranded on Mars, he can fix pretty much anything. And his problem-solving skills are killer.

What draws me to a book like this? Well, for one, the science is actually pretty interesting. Weir makes it read like a Reader’s Digest and not a Chilton’s car repair manual. And while I don’t actually like doing science, I do like knowing about it. Weir had real-live astronauts read his book and give it a thumbs up. If it’s good enough for Canadian Chris Hadfield, it’s good enough for me. I do like books that teach me something.

At times, I actually forgot that I was reading a novel. Hmm, interesting. That underscores another winning factor for me – a book that transports me. In this case, metaphorically to Mars. And, very convincingly, with its descriptions of freezing temperatures and lonely days eating freeze-dried snacks – not unlike COVID-19 until spring decided to show up. And also, whether it’s sci-fi or fantasy or whatever, it has to be believable – not in the “I-believe-in-unicorns” sense but in the “If someone got stranded on Mars, this is exactly how we would spend a couple billion dollars getting him back.” Sometimes, I actually believe Mark Watney lived. In the future. It’s THAT convincing.

A book gets bonus points if it can make me LOL, which this one did, several times. Author Andy is apparently pretty funny because the wisecracks are pretty much what he would say in the same situation, he demurs in the interview at the back of this book. I mean, if I want to not laugh, I can borrow a Chilton manual from my father-in-law.

One caveat: the f-bombs abound right from the first sentence. I find it makes the writing effective. But if it bothers you, you can pretend that Weir is British. Almost everything can be forgiven in the right accent.

About Island 5243

Posted on by
www.justoutsidetheboxcartoon.com

For some reason, this famous quote from my brother’s high school yearbook is resonating with me right now: “Ho hum. Another boring day on the island of Tiki-Tiki. “

I’m not stranded alone so I haven’t had to personify a basketball in order to keep me company. Not that all those balls, pucks or other head-shaped sports accoutrement are being kept otherwise busy these days. This is a sore spot with a couple of my island mates. Some days I’m not so sure they wouldn’t vote me off the island if they could vote Connor McDavid on.

One strategy when you find yourself in a trying situation is called reframing. As in saying, “I’m not stressed – I’m excited” to explain your escalating heart rate at the thought of one more day on your particular island. So for the purposes of this blog post, let’s try it. Let’s pretend we are returning back to the land of high school and obscure yearbook quotes to see if tips for surviving high school might be helpful for surviving quarantine.

First, unless you’re actually in high school at this time and are bemoaning the fact that your life has been hijacked by a virus that is 120 nanometers in diameter, there should be instant relief when you realize you’re not in high school anymore. You’re welcome.

Next, let’s take a look at what stands out most from my three years that I took Home Economics: the day that we made an entree called “Sweet and Sour Wieners”. This could be an important quarantine skill, replacing a perfectly good protein with hot dogs and using up some of the canned pineapple you discovered in your pantry when you decided to Marie Kondo your way through the house last week. Cheap and “creative” and a hit with the kids, to boot.

Also, remember all those Social Studies or Physics lessons delivered in monotone by well-meaning teachers? And how you developed the skill of the artful nap? Eyes open, mind shut, total bliss. Don’t tell my island-mates but sometimes I use this trick when they’re talking about all the sports that aren’t happening. Just sayin’.

Of course, when you were in high school, you would never be caught dead wearing the same outfit two days in a row. Maybe it’s time to dress up the sweat pants with some legwarmers which were also found in the Marie Kondo debacle that has left you co-sleeping with the entire contents of your closet. Perhaps wearing all those items could slowly shift the pile to the laundry hamper instead. A little bit each day is all it takes to get a big job done.

Remember the smell of an adolescent gym class? Try “goin’ natural” for a day. This technique is particularly helpful if you find that you just can’t get any “alone time” anymore. Of course, the hazard is that you can’t stand the smell of yourself either. Thankfully, bathroom doors have locks and you can maybe sneak away for a ridiculously long shower, another tried-and-true highschooler habit.

Maybe you could try making a COVID-19-book. (I won’t hazard using the term YEARbook. Oh, please, no.) Write bios of everyone in the house along with their quarantine ambitions. Take pictures of your activities: snacking, Netflix, crying, closet-cleaning, couch trampoline-ing. Have a family vote: most likely to clean the kitchen, most likely to leave half empty water glasses everywhere, best new series chooser, longest shower-er. You get the drift.

Finally, plan your graduation and beyond. Thankfully, high school didn’t last forever (it only felt like it) and neither will this quarantine (it only feels like it.) Plan to have a banquet (at a restaurant), get dressed up (in non-sweat pant attire) and stay out all night partying at the gravel pit. Well, maybe not that last part, but you get the idea!

In the immortal words of Dr. Suess: “Oh, the places you’ll go!”

About the Art of a Pandemic

Posted on by

The strangest things happen in a pandemic. People start busting out their dusty guitars and forgotten flutes. They step out onto balconies and perform their best Pavarotti imitation. All of a sudden, we’re noticing all these little free concerts going on everywhere in the world.

Part of the noticing is that we have the time to notice right now. Scrolling through our feeds, reading the articles that we get linked to, maybe even stepping out onto our front steps and balconies, we see people engaged in art like never before.

But is it so strange? So unusual? Maybe art is the thing that goes unnoticed during our regularly scheduled lives but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. However, I do propose that art IS happening more during these times of enforced leisure, downtime and boredom. This week I read about the connection between the Bubonic Plague and William Shakespeare. His most prolific periods? When the Plague was acting up and his acting troop had to go into quarantine.

Boredom can be a good thing if the by-product is impromptu balcony concerts. But that’s not the only thing that’s happening. Parents who are schooling at home find they are relying on those keep-em-busy-tricks they used when their kids were preschoolers: art supplies, play dough, coloring pages downloaded off the internet, dress-up clothes, blankets over tables and living rooms transformed into stages. And maybe some parents are joining in right now and finding they are able to forget themselves – and the pandemic – for a little while as the coloring page or the living room karaoke engages them.

Okay, maybe coloring pictures of superheroes and singing along to the soundtrack of Frozen 2 for the umpteeth time is not your jam. But how about that jam? There’s a lot of cooking going on right now – making homemade jam is probably one of them as freezers are being plumbed of their last summer’s stores. And the reason there’s no flour and no yeast on the shelves? It’s not just their daily bread people are making, they’re making art.

No, it’s not, you say. That’s just food. But why can’t it be food and art? Creativity begins with the head and the heart but it is executed by the hands. And even if it’s just the soothingly rhythmic chore of chopping up vegetables for soup or spicing up your mac-n-cheese with some dill and fancy mustard and putting in a pretty bowl, you are, in your own way, making your Pandemic world a more tolerable and maybe even a more beautiful place. And like comfort food, art soothes as anxiety works its way out through the hands and relief pours back into the head and heart.

The cool thing I have found about art and creativity in general, is that it begets other art. And not just in the same form. I am not musical. I play no instruments – save for drumming pencils on the backs of couches. And although I am fond of singing loudly in my car – alone – I care not to step on any balcony and sing for the public. (Think: cat concert.) But I have found that there is a funny thing that goes on when I am able to listen and watch live music being performed, especially if it is my own children playing and singing. It makes me want to write.

Huh, weird.

I first recognized this phenomenon a couple of years ago when I watched my then 5-year-old niece Penny sing a solo at her year end music concert. Although at times very shy, Penny did not shy of the microphone. She confidently sang her selection and – here’s what I really loved – tapped her toe the whole time in perfect syncopation to her accompaniment. I felt a restlessness inside of me, but not a longing to get up on stage and sing. It was the need to express my own art, even if it was just recording for posterity in my journal how watching Penny sing made me feel.

Feelings. Expressions. Outbursts. They’re probably pretty common right now as we are finding our corners in the house too cramped right now. Or we’re feeling hemmed in by our limits: no work to go to, no classes, no “fun” shopping, no playgrounds. There has to be a constructive way to express our energy, our frustrations, our personalities. Maybe: art?

I don’t want to look back at this time and think I wasted it – because time in all its iterations is a gift. But art does not have to be productive to do its work. It doesn’t even have to be permanent – think sidewalk chalk drawings or all the balcony concerts that aren’t being recorded – for it to BE ART. Art can even look unsuccessful in the eyes of the world but it can be transformative and transcending to its practitioner.

One of the origins of the word art? To be. Maybe it’s more important than we even realize. We need to do art in order to be.

Maybe it’s time to dust off the violin, the Skilsaw, the pasta machine, the 1970s macrame kit, the sewing machine, the paint, the great Canadian novel, the seed packages, the microphone, the website, the podcast idea, the Photoshop program, and because it’s almost Easter – the paska and hot cross bun recipes.

Go do art. Go be. Go!

About the Pandemic Life

Posted on by

What day is it? Is it still 2020? Is that spring out there or a thermonuclear thaw? Did Elon Musk go to outer space and bring home a virus souvenir? Did Sarah Palin really show up on The Masked Singer? Am I dreaming or did somebody just tell the whole world to #stayhome?

This thing is actually pretty weird for me and not for the reasons you may think. I love being at home, I love being able to work from home. When this first went down, I did a fist-bump with myself and thought, “I got this.” I mean, if I got a day to #stayhome #allday pre-March 2020, I was thrilled. I am, do not forget, an introvert.

But I find myself strangely moody that I’m suddenly without the freedom to just go.

What is that thing inside human beings that says don’t tell me what to do even if I want exactly what you are suggesting? And also, there’s that spooky admonition: Be careful what you wish for…

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to be so figure-out-able. Like when I take some quiz from a magazine and think my answers are so avant-garde, so against the tide of the rest of humanity? And then I flip to the answer page, tally up my score and find that I am incredibly average, one of the herd, just a human being after all.

And so I find myself analyzing myself: what is it I’m really missing?

Well, contrary to my introvert-self, I miss people. Sure, I have Rick and Gil and Simon in the house with me. And bonus: I actually like all of them. And I text and I talk and I read a lot, which to me is like someone usually way smarter talking to me. But I am missing the impromptu chats around town and at work or even the usual kind of shopping at Co-op here in town where you have to budget twice as much time as you think because People Gonna Talk To You.

Not no more. Earlier this week, as I shopped for a few things, everyone was leaning away as we passed by one another in the aisles. It wasn’t nice. It was sad.

And I find myself asking the question: How long is this gonna last?

Cue the crickets. Because nobody really knows. Smart people on the news say annoying things like: It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Well, that helps. Not. Because Newsflash: Smart people sometimes don’t have answers. And in this case, if they do have answers, they’re probably not that smart.

*Sigh.*

There’s a part of me that knows it’s gonna be (sort of) okay, that it will be over eventually and we’ll all look back and say: whoa, that was something. But I don’t want to just look ahead to when it’s over because that could be wishing a lot of time away. And it’s never a good thing to do that.

So I will remember that I’m human and I will just do the next thing and be thankful for the time, no matter how hard it is to watch it go by.