The Virus Diaries: Goals
Yesterday the news broke that the state governments of the ACT (that’s me) and Victoria are closing down schools this week (effectively over-ruling the Prime Minister who is still prioritising the economy over safety).
Millions of kids rejoiced. Millions of parents trembled in their stylish yet affordable boots.
Three seconds later the internet was flooded with cries of praise for teachers everywhere.
Meanwhile, at home, Chris informed me that I apparently once said, “Not now, my husband is coming” in my sleep.
For the record, Chris Evans and I were REHEARSING. JUST REHEARSING. I swear. We are professionals.
In other news, TJ had a shower yesterday (that’s not the news part). During said shower, he blew a raspberry on the shower glass. I told him not to let his face touch the glass. So he licked it. So I said NOT to let his FACE touch the GLASS. So he spat on it. So I said NO SPITTING and that’s when he mooned me. Buttcheeks pressed right up against that glass.
Then he sang his latest version of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”:
In the eyeball, the creepy eyeball, the eyeball sleeps toniiiight!
Hush my eyeball, my creepy eyeball, the eyeball eats you toniiiiight!
In case you haven’t heard the original:
Here’s a pic of TJ pushing me on the hammock. As you can see, he is actively trying to tip me out of it. Little punk.
It’s good to have goals.
My daily goal is to make sure the kids eat three meals (and fruit), and shower each day, with some kind of schoolwork happening for each kid on each weekday (even if it’s a drawing activity—great for hand-eye coordination—or playing with lego, or whatever). For myself, to shower and blog each day and to keep enough spoons that I can be nice to my family even when they’re annoying.
I wrote about my writing goals yesterday. Then I finished dealing with the comments on “The Floating City” and decided to aim to add 1000 words to each of the final chapters. I added over 500 to Chapter Eleven yesterday, which I’m extremely proud of. It’s a relief to do some of my ‘real’ work for a change. I feel much more myself (and I promptly had a manic episode and stayed up, full of ideas, until 4am).
I also aim to convince my extremely cautious cat Zipper to one day jump into the hammock with me. She has put her paws up on the side of the hammock three times in the last six months (only ever when it was just me and her in the yard), so I know she’s thought about it. But for the most part she reacts to my entreaties (“Zipper? Zip Zip? Prrowr?”) with a Dignified Indifference.
I also aim to try and achieve the following gardening tasks:
a) To propagate the purple-leaved bush out the front of our house. It looks good and weeds don’t grow under it, so I plan to eventually have it cover most of our weed-prone front garden. So far I’ve had two cuttings in water for several weeks. They didn’t grow roots but they didn’t die either, so today I stuck them in some dirt. We’ll see how they go.
b) To keep my basil plant alive. The stalks are so fragile I’ve destroyed many basil plants due to either rinsing the leaves or just adding water too hastily. It’s also very touchy about direct sunlight, and will immediately die if it’s put in a window (let alone outside). This one has a few half-brown leaves but still looks pretty good. Have I finally cracked the code to keeping basil from dying? We’ll see. . .
c) To grow potatoes. NOT because Australia is going to run out of potatoes, but because everyone needs a postapocalyptic hobby. First I gotta clear some of those weeds, though (and by “I” I obviously mean “Chris”). At the moment our front garden is perilously close to being a lawn.
I COULD aim to have a tidy house, but that’s too far out of the realm of possibility.
And I definitely aim to have proper air conditioning before winter, but that’s a very difficult task and I don’t yet have a solid plan (other than “wait for some disability support cash” which is by no means guaranteed even if it’s our only plausible option right now). At least we have a (very loud and clanking) portable air conditioner now, so combined with milder temperatures I have a chance at regaining a little health (maybe).
This week, I have a goal to do an EPIC and GENIUS obstacle course for my kids (I think I mentioned I had a manic episode last night). More on that later!
Resource of the day:
A hypothetical home schooling timetable (which I definitely don’t follow):
Recommended donation of the day:
Give me money. I’d love some. My PayPal is fellissimo@hotmail.com
Recommended personal action of the day:
Hide all your kids’ noise-making toys.
Recommended Hoarding item of the day:
DVDs (they have novelty value, and you can still watch them if the worst happens and Netflix crashes)
Felicity Banks 
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