You may have noticed that I've been slightly quieter than usual around these parts. I don't think I need to explain why, but beyond the whole "teach two children with wildly specific, yet totally different schedules while also theoretically working to keep a roof over their heads," there's also the fact that I have a book coming out in two weeks (!) and then a draft of another book due to my editor in three. (Weeks. That would be three weeks.)

So I've decided that I'm going to take it easy on the blogging schedule during Pandemic Times. I hope you guys understand (I have a feeling you do). But that doesn't mean that I'm not going to be popping up around the Internets both here and elsewhere in the next month or two - I have articles in the works for Mashable and The Washington Post and a few podcast interviews on the schedule, and am also hosting a virtual event on May 7 at 6:30PST with Diesel: A Brentwood Bookstore. I'll be there, glass of wine in hand, and I hope you guys can join!

Parents these days are not OK; this we know. Our current crisis has thrown the extent to which our system fails working parents into high relief. We already had to do far too much, all at the same time, and somehow "make it work" even though, for most of us, the avenues of support from everyone to our employers to our spouses to the federal government amounted to nil.

Still: One of the major questions on my mind right now is how all of this is going to affect my kids. It'll have a lasting impact, for sure...but what will that impact be? I reached out to parenting and relationship coach Graziella Simonetti of Your Parenting Pals to find out what we can expect - and how we can help.

We are in what is likely, and hopefully, a once in a generation type crisis.  With that comes an uncertainty over how this prolonged stress will impact us and our children.  We wish had a magical wand that gave us the power to say what life will look like when things settle or to share, with certainty, what can be done to protect ourselves and our children from the trauma. We don’t. What we know is that right now, there is a lot of uncertainty, and uncertainty can cause anxiety and stress.  This stressful event doesn’t necessarily have to turn into toxic stress. The goal is to make it as tolerable and manageable as possible.

Me and my kimono

I wrote this post right before my parents and I left for the Caymans - I forgot to post it back then, but still want to, because the four brands I discovered are great. It was just a little less than a month ago, and people were still doing things like being in rooms together. (You guys. That was less than a month ago. Read this article; it gave me whiplash.)

[button]

Tarot contributor Jessica designs a spread to help us understand our relationship with sentimental objects that are weighing us down (and then get rid of them).

I live in Michigan, and I tend to hibernate during the months of cold and darkness. I get sluggish and slack. Then the days get longer, the sunlight streams through the windows, and I discover that I hate my house and everything in it. Right about now is when I get spring-cleaning fever. 

For me, cleaning pretty much always begin clearing away the crap that’s accumulated while I’ve been too busy or too distracted or too consumed by physical lassitude and existential despair to deal with said crap. (Midwestern winters are no joke, y’all.) So, as I started considering what this month’s column might be, I found myself thinking about my house and the mess that’s making me crazy now that there’s enough light to see it and I have enough energy to care. (Midwestern winters are no joke, y’all.)

Sometimes, decluttering is easy. That self-help book that has been sitting on my bedside table, unopened, for months? Give-away pile. A really nice box that I kept because it might come in handy while wrapping Christmas presents? Recycling bin. Lipstick I bought five years ago and have worn exactly once? Garbage can.