A day in the life of a quarantine zone

I'm going STIR-CRAZY!

You know, most days I think I'm doing okay at this whole mothering thing. My children are fairly happy, well-adjusted little gems who are kind to each other and to others. They use their manners 80% of the time and they are generally a joy for myself and others to be around.

We are going on day 11 of virtual quarantine with very little contact from the outside world, however, and it's beginning to look like Lord of the Flies in my house. My mothering instincts have all but withered away, and all of us are running very low on patience. Okay, me especially!

See, a week ago Friday we drove back from a wonderful vacation in Washington. Because we spent a week in Washington Rob had some work to do Saturday so he spent a good chunk of the day out of the house. Then we all drove to Corvallis to track down some books that Rob needed for Convergence, and he spent nearly every waking minute that he wasn't at work with his nose in these books because he needed to have them finished by Wednesday.

To spare you the boring details, between meetings, studying and nearly 3 full days (and nights) at school Rob has been home a grand-total of, well, not very much lately. This wouldn't normally be a huge problem because it only typically happens this way in short stages. For the most part he's around often and a very integral part of our daily lives... that's why it takes a toll on us when he's not.

This has only been exacerbated by a night full of vomiting, the on-set of pink eye, and days and days worth of icky colds. There's something about fighting a 3 year-old every 4 hours to put drops in his eyes as he's screaming at the top of his lungs, "I don't like that, I don't like that, I don't like that!" while trying to hold down his hands with my feet, his head between my knees and my hands trying to pry those tight little eyes open enough to put drops in them that puts us off to a bad start. It usually takes me about 20 seconds to do Leeann's drops and 4-5 minutes to do Titus's if that gives you any idea how much of a struggle it is!

And, to top it all off, I'm an extrovert. This means that my batteries are naturally charged by being around others. My batteries are dead.

Anyway, all of this is to help you understand why I'm definitely out of the running for mother of the week this week. After being up for only 20 minutes this morning I officially decided that I needed to leave my house... without my children. The only problem is, we're still under quarantine and there's no where that I can take my children that doesn't put others at risk. I woke up to Titus with a pair of scissors in his hands and a poopy diaper. While I was changing him he and Leeann were fighting over who-knows what and then they started fighting over something else and I told them to put those things in time-out... which they both started arguing with. Seriously, 20 minutes into my morning I was ready to crawl under a rock.

Instead, I gave them breakfast and told them they could color and now I'm here... blogging... my only connection to the outside world in times of quarantine! Oh, now they're yelling at each other from downstairs. Fun.

So, there you have it. Confessions from a true mom. One tired, frustrated, irritated, weary, worn-out, real-life mom.