Reporting Live from a Gangster’s Paradise

This is Kerri Green, reporting live from the scene of EVERY SINGLE THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME IN THE LAST THREE WEEKS.

Not that I’m losing it,
or that the walls are closing in on me,
or I have thought a few bad words while homeschooling that we don’t say in this house.
But, it’s fine.
I’m fine.
This is all fine.

Also: I am currently closed into the shed.

Granted, it is carpeted, and has twinkle lights, and an overstuffed couch,
but it’s a little shed out in our yard that I’m starting to believe was 100% installed for such a time as this.
A refuge on a day when Mommy needs a real long time-out.

I love my family.
I love them so much.
But I will honestly pull a Brittney Spears 2007 and shave my own head if I hear any of these things in the next 2 hours:
Slurping
Smacking
Knuckle cracking
My second grader’s robotic online math game
Any YouTuber’s voice talking about Minecraft
The coughing up of a hairball
The 300th opening of the fridge

Yesterday was the hardest day yet.
Up until then I had maintained my composure.
When I was told we had to stay in we stayed in.
When I was told I’d have to homeschool,
I gritted my teeth, but I went to pick up books.

Yesterday, though, something switched in me during my second grader’s “Distance learning time”,
and so far there has been no going back.

Maybe it’s the fact that the Distance Learning is not distant enough from ME.
To be honest, it actually feels right up in my grill.

Maybe it was the tears that started before I’d even pressed down my French Press,
or trying to explain to my daughter that the REASON she wasn’t hearing the teacher’s video instruction was because she was so busy moaning that there was no way any person could hear it.

By 10am my smile started to tremble.
By 11am I could hear my own heartbeat,
and I started thinking that maybe Jack Torrence from The Shining was just really misunderstood.

There were a blur of things in the middle,
but all I know is that by the time 3:30 hit,
I found myself on a drive all alone listening to very loud gangster rap, rapping every single lyric with my hand marking the beat.

Some situations call for cellos,
some require popping in your gold grill.

I mentally told off my husband as I drove, explaining that the next time you wake from a nap to see that your wife is now on hour four of looking like she will cry and tear out her hair from attempting to homeschool your second grader,
it is VERY unwise to then screw up your face and say judgey things like,
“Why do you look so FRUSTRATED?”

I rapped along –
Face tightened up real thug-like –
My mind on my money and my money on my mind –
and I didn’t even care who looked at me funny because other people’s opinions over what I appear to be doing have not mattered once in the last three solid weeks.
I’ll wear the heck out of pajamas, sports bras, and hiking boots now.
I don’t even care anymore.

I drove and I thought, “You know what you need, Kerri? You need a little feeling of normalcy,”
So I flipped my car around and headed back home.
Maybe a shower and some make-up would do the trick.
I showered for the first time in days,
and I dusted all my makeup off.

Ah, yeah. This was it.
This was feeling right.
This was going well.

UNTIL I GOT TO THE MASCARA,
when upon applying it to my first eye I got a huge glob of it on my left upper eyelid.
No biggie. I’d just wipe it off, right?
Wrong.
Because no sooner had I wiped off what I’d gotten on the upper eyelid, than I smeared a huge amount right onto the bottom one.
I sighed and got out a Q-tip.
However, when I went to use that Q-tip,
I failed to see that I had somehow managed to get a giant smear of mascara also on my hand,
which I then rested on the entire bridge of my nose.
It was mayhem.
Not wanting to waste precious soap while in this crisis, at that point, my only solution was just to line my entire other eye in black so that the two at least matched, and just go into the remainder of my day looking like one very stressed out goth.
So that is what I did.

If ever I had gotten the message that I should have listened and just not touched my face it was in those 5 minutes spent nose-to-nose with myself absolutely plastered in mascara smudges in my own bathroom magnifying mirror.

What had started as an exercise to reclaim a shred of my pre-quarantine self had turned into a 20x magnified question about more than just mascara.
That mirror posed a question to me I think I’d been asking myself for days:
“What if you just can’t do it anymore EVER?!”
Any of it.
Good make-up for a date night, play dates for the kids, the career you studied for, socializing, your regular daily LIFE?

It’s so easy to take it all for granted until you’re scared it’s gone away.

Nothing is exactly the same right now.

Not our jobs, our schooling, our eating, our parenting, our time with friends, our bed times, or our mental health.
How we shop is different, how we talk is different, how we walk, think, and live are all different,
and that is hard.

Its hard on the families of the immune compromised, worrying that their loved one will be safe.
It’s hard on the grocery store clerks getting yelled at because the store doesn’t have what we need.
It’s hard on the people living alone who were already agonizingly lonely even BEFORE this all began.
It’s hard on the kids who don’t understand it, and whose grieving sounds like whining.
It’s hard on so many, in so many ways,
and it’s hard on the mamas,
trying to keep everything held together with some semblance of normal when all we want is a half hour in a locked shed with some loud rap music and two symmetrically made-up eyes.

It’s hard on us all.

Today I had to go to the bank for a deposit that could not be made online.
The older girls rode along in the car.
I hadn’t been out in so long that I guess I was driving too slow, soaking up the green of the hills and bigness of the sky.
I must have offended the lady behind me, because as she whizzed around me, Chloe informed, “She just glared so hard at you.”
“That’s OK, Honey,” I said.
“We’re all just getting through.
Maybe it just looked like a glare.
Maybe she just needed a drive with some rap music, too.”

This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.

Mom Outnumbered

Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.