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February: The longest short month

 Well. 

Here we are. 

Only a couple more days and this (LOOOOONG) short month will be over. 

Some good, some not good....

Anyone else find themselves struggling with the fact that we've been readjusting our lives to Covid-19 for nearly a year?  I think that is the wall that I'm facing -- but it could just be other things. Or the other things might just seem harder because we're nearing the one year mark of life being turned upside down, and so much of that trauma is still unresolved.  (If you didn't experience some kind of trauma when the world shut down due to Covid-19, congratulations!  Three days before schools went "virtual" here, my husband and I made a very last minute decision that he should fly to Chile the next day, to spend time with his mother, who was in the hospital, leaving the states before the airlines/airports shut down.  We predicted this accurately, and by the end of that weekend, he would not have been able to get into Chile.  Over the next two weeks, while I was solo-parenting with absolutely no outside help, his mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he spend time in the hospital in Chile for his own case of diverticulitis, and all outbound flights from Chile were canceled. I totally solo parented for a month before my parents stopped in-person shopping; we joined our "bubbles" in late April.  Hubby's mom died on May 6.  He returned home at the end of May and quarantined for two weeks before we were reunited in June.  Are we all fine?  In the sense of "none of us got Covid, we're alive and together and all of that," then yes, we're fine.  Are we truly fine?  In the sense of "we all miss our friends, alone time, the way we were together before we were apart for three months, and there is no true end in sight for the changes that we didn't really want to make to our lives?"  I think the answer would probably be that no, we are not exactly fine. Everyone's experience is different.  Same storm, different boats, right?)

This month has been a struggle for me.  I've had a hard time being "productive" in many of the conventional senses of the word.  I've managed to keep my family fed and clothed, but it hasn't looked very pretty.  The house is a constant mess, and I've had a consistently hard time trying to convince myself and the kids to do a better job of straightening it up and then actually cleaning it.  Hubby and I are on a roller coaster of trying to figure out how to move forward through grief and trauma, both supporting each other and also giving space.  It's a constant work in progress, and it often feels like we take one step forward and one step back again. 

There hasn't been a whole lot of making going on in the project room, though I did start a quilt (it was very much so not on my list of projects that need/want doing).  Lots and lots more flying geese are on my cutting table these days, as a pink and purple version of "flight behavior" (what I'm calling 2020's flying geese quilt) has jumped the queue and taken precedence over all of the (very little) time I'm devoting to "making" these days.  At the end of January, I did finish a hoodie/jacket for me; it is not perfect, but I did install a zipper, so I'm counting it as one of my "make 9" projects. Most everything on my list is waiting for the inspiration to rekindle itself, and the large stack of fabrics awaiting their turn is just waiting. 

Big and little squares, ready to become geese. 

Do you do anything special to help you get things done?  Are you plagued by the same type of inertia that keeps me sitting, rather than doing?

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