Jane Stine
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JANE STINE

PARENTING, TRAVEL, AND LITTLE JOYS

It's getting weird

3/31/2020

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"Like the week between Christmas and New Years, but make it apocalypse."

We have been in the house for 19 days. To say the novelty has worn off is an understatement. It's going mostly okay, but I think all of us could use some space and a little personal time. We have enjoyed the pajama days and strange baking experiments, but I miss my regular work schedule. A lot. Here's hoping that April can bring back a little bit of a productive routine.
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My First Misfits Market Box

3/24/2020

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Note: This post is not sponsored or compensated by Misfits Market. There is a referral link at the bottom if you want a 25% discount on your first order.

We're currently doing our part by staying at home. We haven't been in a building that isn't our house for 12 days. I'm a vegetarian and we try to eat lots of fruits and veggies, so going without trips to the grocery has been a little tough. Plus, being stuck inside makes you want to eat junk basically all day!
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So we decided to give Misfits Market a try. Generally I don't love when you don't know what you're getting ahead of time, but the price seemed reasonable ($39.50 including shipping) given that our other options right now are instacart or going to the grocery store and potentially being exposed to a pandemic.

Just 2 days later, the box arrived! Normally I would have taken a cool unboxing video, but we're currently opening everything outside and washing items before they come in the house. Eeks.

My first major concern was whether the packaging would be wasteful. I was pleasantly surprised that the box is almost 100% recyclable packaging, less a couple pieces of tape, a few compostable "plastic" bags, and 2 small icepacks. 

My next concern was that the stuff would be weird items we wouldn't eat, bad condition items, or lots of the same thing. Nope! There was only one little bruise on one tomato, and otherwise everything was in great condition. Most of the items are organic versions of things we would eat, even if they aren't what we'd normally buy.

What did we get?
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Organic lemons, organic fuji apples, green peppers, red and yellow peppers, parsnips, potatoes, organic tomatoes, oranges, brussel sprouts, red cabbage, organic celery, organic kale, green onions, and carrots.

In a time when we really don't want to go to the grocery store but still want to eat healthy, this was really worth it for us. 

If you want to give Misfits Market a try, you can get 25% off your first box with code COOKWME-UL7IAE  toto 
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And then since we're playing with everything we can get our hand on, being stuck inside, we played "Garden" for a while. Honestly that alone was basically worth it.
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Lessons from the Beach

3/19/2020

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See also: "No lifeguard on duty." 
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Stop

3/18/2020

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I took this photo in the Galapagos at the top of a hike, but it's a good reminder for today: stop.

There's very little we can do right now. I happen to run a study abroad company, so there really is VERY little I can do right now in terms of work but comfort my future students and wait together. And most of the things we like to do as a family include going places, like to the playground or the library or to visit family. It's very easy to get frustrated.

But today, we're just going to stop being frustrated and try to enjoy being home. Are we going a little stir crazy? Yes. Have we watched the same youtube videos so many times that mom and dad can recite them? Yes. Are we out of wine? Tragically, yes. But we're doing our part, and in our house, this isn't an emergency. So we can do this.
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Give it the old college try

3/17/2020

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When I was a kid, the only time I ever heard the phrase "give it the old college try" was when my mom's friend Karen would bring her two daughters to visit. Before they'd leave for the 3-hour car ride home, she'd always ask if they had to use the bathroom, and they'd always say no, and then she'd say, "Well, give it the old college try."
I was a pretty shy kid, so I didn't ask anyone, but I devoted a lot of time to trying to figure out what peeing had to do with college. And then when I was actually in college, someone in a class said (I forget about what topic), that the company we were discussing should "give it the old college try." And I said, "what does this have to do with peeing?"

As we are trapped inside for 3 weeks under quarantine, we are finding ourselves giving a lot of things the old college try. Ironically, potty training is at the top of the list. Maybe our confusion over this term will be a generational thing?

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10 COVID-19 Activities for You and Your Toddler

3/13/2020

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Stuck inside for yet another day of avoiding human contact? Try these fun and family-friendly activities to pass the time! Happy Friday the 13th, y'all.

  1. Make your own hand sanitizer. Just combine aloe vera gel and rubbing alcohol to make your own hand sanitizer. Then learn about economics by selling it on Facebook Marketplace for $20 a bottle.
  2. Un-Kleenex all the art projects. Time to turn those snowmen, angels, and ghosts back into Kleenex - just shake off the glitter.
  3. Stack canned goods. Fitting all your new groceries into the cabinets can be a lesson in geometry, nutrition, and hand-eye coordination.
  4. Practice hand-washing activities. Hand washing can be fun! Use some of your precious soap rations to wonder to yourself how a human person can possibly use so much soap and get exactly none of it on their hands.
  5. Rank your neighbors in terms of suspiciousness. Try using variables such as “shiftiness of eyes” and “amount of times he/she wipes nose on sleeve”. Irrationality is important.
  6. Build your immunity. Your toddler already has some excellent skills in this area, and can guide you in activities such as “Holy crap, you coughed directly into my open mouth!”
  7. Fake a healthy look. Worried that daycare providers will think you’re sick when you’re not? Practice exhibiting vigor and cheerful optimism in a mirror!
  8. Eat a lot of chips. Why not?
  9. Sew a reusable face mask. Any scrap of cloth and two hair elastics can become a fashionable and fun face mask with just a little effort.
  10. Weep softly in the bathroom. This free and fun activity can be done any time, pandemic or otherwise!​
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Basically Kale

3/12/2020

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My favorite gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, soy-free, plastic-free, low calorie, vegan, locally grown, organic lunch recipe. 
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Spring has sprung

3/11/2020

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That first 70-degree day after a snow day and the flu.
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Facts

3/10/2020

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My son is really into memorizing facts, particularly about space and US Presidents. This provides me with thrilling opportunities to do things such as listen to someone yell a spitty list of all our solar system's dwarf planets into my ear for 2 to 3 hours at a time, which, judging from how often I do it, must be a hobby I really enjoy.

What's interesting about both history and space resources is they are full of "facts" that are no longer true. Because we have books and toys from different periods in time, some of them will say things like "Now, Bill Clinton is president" or... well, I don't know enough about Mars to write something that seemed true 10 years ago but now isn't. Pluto's existence is hotly contested by our toy bin, for example.

When I was in school, not in the dark ages but 20 years ago, we learned that there were 9 planets. There were 3 states of matter. There were 4 oceans. There were 2 genders. We learned these things as facts. 


It's still the same universe, but we just understand it better. We categorize it differently. Thankfully for all of us, we learned something in the last 2 decades. So now there are 8 planets, and 5 states of matter, and 5 oceans, and all the space-rocks and water and plasma are still where they were and what they were before. Nothing has changed except for our ability to better understand and describe things.

Don't be scared of learning new things and finding out that what you thought was a fact was, in fact, not.
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From "Jane" Magazine in maybe... 1999?

3/7/2020

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    Hi, I'm Jane.

    "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes." Said Thoreau. But he hung out in the woods and jail.

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