quiet!

Just to belabor this point, this morning the calculation that went through my head was: well, I can try to stay and bed and write and be frustrated because I'll be constantly interrupted by people coming in and out, or I can get up and get in the shower, where I should be alone for at least ten minutes. And so I did get up, and I was alone for precisely the time it took me to get in and out of the shower stall, at which point Christopher came in and needed to learn how to floss his teeth because somehow we've run out of kids' flossers (even though Daniel brings back tons of them every time he flies to the US...they are somewhere in this apartment, we just can't figure out where).

The trouble with this state of desperately-needing-alone-time, which is not at all new, is that it's hard to get myself out of it. You'd think one good long walk or a day of hiding out in the bedroom would do it, but experience says that's not enough. It takes that and, well...a regular schedule of QUIET TIME that just isn't going to happen while we're locked down. I know this is far from the worst problem anyone is having these days, but there it is, my nerves are shot and I have nowhere to hide.

It's taken me all morning and now some of the afternoon to get even this much of a post together. But thanks to Christopher's homework, I've learned the spelling rules-of-thumb for when you use 'z' and 'tz' in German, so there's that.

Per St. Mark's Cathedral recommendations (thanks again, Greg) we made a home altar yesterday.

The real news here is that the living room is cleaned up to the point where there's not just a mess in the background.

Top view. Look! The couch has nothing on it!

Close-up. The kids were unconvinced by this plan at first, but then enthusiastically gathered all their religious articles. Now I suppose we have to work on the concept of praying together...hmm...