Today’s lesson: a pandemic is not the time for diet muffins. I baked some muffins for breakfast and wanted to use up some ingredients we had, such as applesauce, frozen blueberries and oatmeal. I found a recipe that looked okay, even though the first 1000 words of it were the blogger talking about all the deep insight she gained from her juice cleanse. I didn’t realize that these are diet muffins: the kind that the juice cleanse crowd sees as a “special treat” or “just like eating real food.” Well, they taste like someone smeared blueberries on some wallpaper paste. Bah! A pandemic is a time for, in the words of the poet Mary Oliver, letting “the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” The extremely soft animal of my body does not love diet muffins!

Speaking of soft animals, the toddler took my ill-timed bathroom break as an opportunity to turn herself into Daniel Tiger. I came out of the washroom to hear “Oh yeah! Tattoos like Aunty Kiki!” She was covered in orange marker. Tiger stripes, like Daniel Tiger. Well, if the kid’s going to need a bath anyhow, we might as well go for broke. So, we busted out the paint and some brown paper from an Amazon order. Then, it was time for a bubble bath, where Dot made me several “coffees” out of bubbles in a teacup. 

A toddler's painting on some brown paper. The letters F and E are present
A toddler's arm striped with orange marker.

We didn’t go outside for the first time, in part because I couldn’t think of ways to keep away from crowds and in part because she woke up from her nap cranky. Instead, we Daniel-Tigered it up. Not having the outside time to look forward to was really disappointing, but I think it’s become necessary now.