The Turner Christmas Newsletter

Dear Everyone,

I'm sending out my annual Christmas newsletter in June. We are in week i-don't-even-know-anymore of quarantine. Well, honestly, not all of us are in quarantine. By the looks of things, I think several people apparently finished quarantine early. I just tell my kids that some people are naturally gifted and finish things quicker than others. 

But us? We are still trying to pretend like we don't "need" to go to Target several times a week, all willy nilly (okay, that's just me, I miss willy nilly).  But did Target do anything to help make this easier, NO. They kept their perfectly curated target whimsy and their dollar bins and then just sat there and watched us TRY to not need them. Meanwhile, my Target Red Card  sadly collecting dust while my Cartwheel app uninstalled from my iPhone. I'm surprised there's been no wellness check.  

To quote mostly Joan Jett, "I hate myself for loving you, Target." 

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

Anyway, in my copious amounts of free time, I'm     getting our Christmas newsletter out early this year. Also, I've never actually sent a Christmas newsletter out and likely never will. 

Soooo...this is basically just a letter. 

First time letter. In a blog. With Christmas pictures. 

...So it's just like a blog post or whatever. 

Anyone got something to say? Good. 

So...here's how we've been doing. Let's begin with my standards. 

I no longer have any. 

*unscrews cap to giant barrel of cheeseballs I promised I would buy over my dead body and begins to stress eat*

I thought I could kick it old school for a bit. I approached quarantine like a fun reality show experiment. I can sit at home. I can teach my kids school. We can be "off the grid" for a time, making our own fun and planting freedom gardens. I'll stock up on dry goods and we'll play board games and watch movies together. I'm the mother, I'm in control of the ambiance of this house - plus I've watched an obscene amount of homesteading YouTube videos. It can't be hard. So I bought a pair of clippers and some hairdresser scissors, a bug-out bag for four and 54 gallons of water. 

Was I ready? I dunno. I was reading a lot of random prepper blogs at the time. 

But, as it turns out, my kids won't actually eat dry goods. *hears your comments regarding starvation and being a short order cook, keeps shaking head no, grabs more cheeseballs*. They won't. You don't get it. They are fine with starvation. They don't want to get to that level of the apocalypse where beans and rice are their only option. 

Also, no one wants me to cut their hair. It doesn't matter how many instructional videos I've watched. They don't believe I can do a "fade" or whatever. They'd rather fling it out of their face forever. I have no reasonable explanation as to why I now own a bug out bag. I was panicky when I didn't have one...and now I'm not. I can handle buyers remorse way better. It's a skill I've been developing for YEARS. 

At least we've made a decent dent in the 54 gallons of water that I'm never going to live down. 

Thank God for Amazon Prime. It's been the Pony Express for middle-aged women. No less than three times a day, a brave Amazon driver faces the dangers of EVERYONE OUT DRIVING BECAUSE WHAT'S A QUARANTINE to drop off something at my door. They are bringing much needed supplies to get us through the long quarantine. Literally, one package at a time. Some of the quarantine necessities include: more phone chargers, colorful paperclips and post its (so pretty), organic plant based protein powder (y'all I don't know), and the man-sized barrel of cheeseballs I am currently spending time with. 

So with supplies at hand, and a complete fluke buy that lead me to be fine in the toilet paper department, the only thing I had to worry about was teaching my kids at home.  Is that all? 

I'm not gonna lie, distance learning started off rough. It got rougher from there, and that's when, through the tears, I decided that book smarts were overrated and just taught my kids how to play Blackjack instead. 

Pardon? 

Well, the whole idea behind homesteading is passing down useful family skills to the up and coming generation, right?  Then I stand by the unit titled "Antes and Bankrolls". Maybe my kid doesn't know his Teddy Roosevelt facts, maybe he doesn't know or care about how hurricanes damage ecosystems and economies and just MAYBE the only handwriting practice he's getting is by writing "Deez Nuts" on every piece of paper he finds... but if things get rougher and he has to troll towns scrounging a living a la Kevin Costner in the Postman, he'll at least know how to bluff. 

What's your kid gonna accomplish armed only with the Pythagorean theorem?  

My oldest son has not lost one single beat in his social life. He plays Playstation like it's his job. I finally decided to come clean with the fact that I didn't care. When he isn't playing video games, he's asking what we're eating for the next meal. During this quarantine, he's lost six teeth. I had to google if he was supposed to be losing them since I stopped milestone counting either child in 2014. Now that his voice is deeper, I have no idea if he's talking to his local school friends or like a 55 year old in Cleveland. I don't even care. A bunch of 12 year olds can form teams, coordinate skins, make decisions, have arguments, decide they need better gear, get $10 from their parents in one collective fundraiser, apologize for the fight and beat the game way better than a country full of over qualified experts can agree on whether or not to wear a mask...my money is on him. 

Let's see, what else. Oh, I stand firm in the fact that inherent, wild dog instincts are completely bred out of

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

a dog once they are a Doodle of any kind. I mean, lay on your chest when you are having a bad day, yes. Cuddle with you on the couch while you binge New Girl and drink Rose in a can with a bendy straw- yup. But...forage for food or even indicate a bug crawling on the carpet right in front of their nose...negative Ghost Rider. What an utterly useless breed to have in the apocalypse. I should have known. There are no wandering Doodles in The Walking Dead.  

My husband was furloughed from his restaurant for three months. That was three months of staring at each other suspiciously from across the room and assuming we were in trouble for something. He might be in trouble for parading in three roofers on quarantine week 2 to inspect a leak on the ceiling that was so small it COULDN'T BE SEEN WITH THE HUMAN EYE and I might be in bigger trouble for allowing my son to order spray cheese off the internet. Sixteen years of marriage folks, the success of which is somewhat contingent on both of us having something else to do for the majority of most days.

He's back at work now and we feel no further along than we were three months ago. Cheers to us all that we get through whatever this is, and when we do, let's lock it in, seal the portal and sacrifice whatever so it stays away. 

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and what not. 

The Turners