The Mrs. Yoy Blog: The Quarantine Coronacles

Day 65. I first want to say Happy Birthday to my best friend who would have been 44 today. I found a funny email exchange we had with each other back when we both first had our babies and had zero clue as to what we were doing.   DOES THIS THING COME WITH AN OWNER'S MANUAL? The buildup has been immense, but this was the actual last day of school here in Cobb. Big E had his final Zoom call with his class. His teacher put together a video of them with baby pictures mixed in with their current pictures and I stood over Big E's shoulder and watched and silently cried.  I left to grab a tissue and returned to watch the whole 5th grade video with photos of them starting as babies in Kindergarten and now as 5th graders. Again, I stood over Big E's shoulder and silently cried. He turned to look at me. I tried to play it cool. YOU CAN LEAVE NOW. Normally that would have hurt my feelings, but I'm so raw from everything, that I just numbly walked away to clean up ...

Day 64. Things have been spooky quiet around here. Mr. Yoy drove Little E to Orlando on Saturday to spend some quality time with his Grandpop. Big E went along for the drive. Do you know what this meant, folks? I HAD 36 HOURS ALONE IN MY HOUSE. I REPEAT. ALONE. IN. MY. HOUSE. It took this break for me to finally feel how tightly wound I've been. The stress, slowly seeping into my bones, my soul over the past eight (nine?) weeks briefly left my body. I took a bath. I went for a long walk with a friend. I had a driveway hang with some friends from my Israel trip. I ate what I wanted, when I wanted. I read UNTAMED by Glennon. I slept. Really slept. I thanked Mr. Yoy for giving me this gift. Because it was such a gift. Mr. Yoy and Big E arrived back on Sunday night. Halfway through their drive, they found a golden doodle breeder and tried to convince me that this was what our family needed. I took a look at our blind, deaf, toothless poodle and knew that a puppy would be the ki...

Day 59. We are at the digital learning finish line.  No one was murdered. But words were said and feelings were hurt and hopefully we can now go forward into the unknown of the nothingness of the upcoming summer, and forget all about the struggles of digital learning. Thursday was a good day in the Yoyser household. I logged onto a Zoom call about the Neflix show, Unorthodox, hosted by my friend and her cohorts at the AJFF. She interviewed on the of the actors and the director. I might need to rewatch the show now. If you haven't had a chance to read Deborah Feldman's book, Unorthodox, do it. Now. I came out of my zoom call to find all my buddies waiting for me on the counter: empty bags of food and empty wrappers. I'm going to miss these guys when my kids finally leave the house and move their trail of destruction elsewhere. Sometimes I think it's the same bag of goldfish that keeps showing up in different places... Big E finally decided to begin wor...

Day 58. Today was a big day. I had to go to the Yoyser's school to pick up their stuff that they left behind in March. Back when we were all complaining that they'd be out until after Spring Break. Oh. The horror. Back when we joked that if they weren't back in school by my birthday, I'd be disappointed. Oh. THE. HORROR. Back when if you'd have told me that I would spend the next 60 days straight with my children, without CycleBar, without my mani/pedis, without my bra, I would have laugh/cried. OH. THE. HORROR. We were allowed back in, in very small groups with strict instructions. Wear a mask. Grab their bagged items, their yearbooks, and get the heck out. Everything was one way. I did have a chance to see their Principal one last time, as she is being transferred to another school. I wanted to hug her and thank her for all she has done for my boys over the past five years, but that wasn't going to happen. So behind my masked face, I tried to pour all of m...

Day 57. We have entered our final week of digital learning. On one hand, I'm relieved. I will no longer have massive battles with my children over doing 20 minutes of Moby Max on a daily basis. I will miss all the cleaver, loving phrases they shout at me and all the amazing excuses as to why they are unable to do their work. Now. Or Ever. On the other hand, now we have the whole day wide open. Our new digital learning free schedule will be as follows: 9AM WAKE UP 9:01AM-10:00PM WATCH TV, PLAY NINTENDO SWITCH, PLAY COMPUTER GAMES** 10:00PM-11:00PM TOSS AND TURN DUE TO INABILITY TO FALL ASLEEP BECAUSE OF SCRAMBLED BRAIN 11:00PM-9AM HAVE NIGHTMARES ABOUT ANIMAL CROSSING AND SUPER MARIO BROTHERS 9AM REPEAT **SNACKING INTERSPERSED THROUGHOUT DAY. NO MEALS SERVED. ONLY CRACKERS Mr. Yoy has been working from home this week. Little E likes to work in the same room with him. There is a significant drop in back-talking when Mr. Yoy is around and this seems to be the only way I c...

Day 53.  Greetings from Georgia, the state too busy to hate. {cough} After reading all of the articles about Ahmaud Arbery's cold-blooded, racist-inspired murder, I decided to get my butt out of bed and join the #runwithmaud movement. Except I didn't run. My bladder is mad at me for birthing two babies. I walked. And thought about Ahmaud and his family. Killed for being who he was. I do not accept that this is where we are in 2020. How are there people like this still living in our country? In my state? How can you live your life with that amount of hate eating at your soul? I will never understand.  I thought about my adopted home state. There is no hate crime law on the books, not for not trying. It speaks volumes about who is running our state. Today. Yes, TODAY. It finally passed the house (96-64). Maybe this will be the catalyst for finally seeing some change in passing this law.  Out on my walk, I noticed an absurd amount of Canadian geese on chim...

Day 51 Today I'm celebrating 31 years since my Bat Mitzvah. Nothing says 80s Bat Mitzvah like the perfect combo of big hair, Tone Loc, and my grandma's Mah Jong group. I tried to dig up a picture, because my TWO dresses were nothing short of amazing. The day begun with Big E refusing to do any schoolwork...yet. He did have a 9AM zoom call with his class, but after that strenuous screen time, he was burnt out. I was feeling frustrated by his unwillingness to participate in school, so we played a game of Wall Scrabble. He could work on his vocabulary and I could work on beating his a**. I play a LOT of Words with Friends. This kid didn't stand a chance. HOW I PASSIVE AGGRESSIVELY WORK OUT MY FRUSTRATION. HE ENDED UP QUITTING. After my dominating performance, he was ready to do some math. And it was one of my favorites....GRAPHING COORDINATES. Nerd alert, I know, but I love this stuff. LOOK AT ALL THOSE COORDINATES TO GRAPH! For lunch, Big E asked me to w...

Day 50. In honor of our 50th day in quarantine, I had the boys dress up as middle-aged, semi-balding, mid-level managers who hate their jobs, wives, and kids. The days are flying by and I feel like I'm living inside of Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  I have been in this house with my kids for a mere 50 days and also fifteen years have passed. I've been told it's a Tuesday. Taco Tuesday. Cinco de Mayo...whatever y'all celebrate. In honor of this esteemed holiday, I microwaved a plate of chips, cheese, and days old ground beef and served it to my kids. Voila! TODAY'S DR. YOU TUBE'S LECTURE, THE MEXICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.  I, in turn, ate a plate of vegetables, as I'm trying to whittle off this quarantine weight. Now that we are no longer required to shelter in place, people besides my neighbors will get to see just how much crap I've been ingesting. Homeschool has been decaying week by week. Either my kids are getting more efficient o...

Day 45. I had four zoom * calls. (*Mr. Yoy came in while I was writing and asked me to change this to Zoom Platform calls so as not to make their trademark generic). I saw so many friends and supportive faces today.  Tonight's blog is dedicated to them. For helping me connect with other adults and chip away at my isolation. I'm using a tool I learned from them to present this blog: A ROCK, A STICK, AND A LEAF. A ROCK What am I rocking right now? Hmmm...naps, sneaking out for walks, and Zoom Platform calls. I plum wore myself out talking on calls all day and I snuck in a 15 minute nap around 4:30PM. It was perfect. Little E and I rolled downstairs around 6PM to fix dinner. Big E was camped out on the couch watching YouTube videos. Apparently, he wasn't thrilled that we had "invaded his space." What happened next was a 45 minute meltdown over sharing space on our massive leather couch. Big E politely asked Little E to go into the other r...

44. Like my age, take note balloon lady! I had such a great birthday, really I did. So thanks to all my friends and family that made it so. But today, today was back to the grind. I snuck out for an early morning walk before the rains came. This was especially challenging because we stayed up (this part might be a little debatable) until after 1AM finishing Ozark. I am so intrigued by this quiet evil nerdy genius. And Mr. Yoy and I were dying to find out just how many lives this man could destroy. Spoiler alert: it's everyone's. I came in from my walk just as Big E was finishing up his class's zoom call. I went to the bathroom and noticed this guy in my bathtub. I'm pretty sure this is some sort of 2020 omen that Hannibal Lecter is going to roll up into East Cobb and eat all our faces off. I mean, things at this point couldn't get any worse... Silence of the Lambs ruined moths for me forever.  We ordered in sushi and poke for lunch. The boys ...

Day 42. Tomorrow is my birthday. Back in March, I pleaded with the universe to have these kids back in school by my birthday. It would be the greatest gift I ever received, with the exception of my minivan.  Now that my new reality has made itself at home, I know how foolish and laughable my request seemed. I've moved onto bigger and better things....like sleep away camp. I'm pretty sure that the worst birthday present I'll ever receive is coming via an email on Friday, May 1st. And it rhymes with "shlamps manceled".  We had a slow start to the school week. I rolled out of bed around 11. After I had squeezed in just a few more minutes of Ozark. We've got three episodes left, and me, not watching the rest today, while Mr. Yoy is at work has been a massive exercise in self-control and marriage trust.  We didn't actually start schoolwork until after lunch. Lunch continues to devolve into total garbage. Mr. Yoy bought these beauties during one...