Morrissey is not in my Release Radar this week, but his mother passed away (RIP), so he is in my thoughts, and she is in my prayers.

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Earlier this week he asked fans to pray, saying “Without her, there is no tomorrow.”

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The breezy sounds of Dent May arrive again this week, with “Easier Said Than Done.” Happy to see he’s still doing his thing and there’s still room in my heart, and my radar, for his work.

[embedded content] Filous went from multi-instrumentalist to beatmaker to producer to artist and now to working with The Kooks, which is the reason I know who he is. I’m not sure exactly what flourishes he’s added to “Hey Love,” but I like it. This song harkens back to a younger Kooks, the one we originally got to know.

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Whatever happened with Nas and Tupac? I don’t know, but I hope it all comes out one day, in that book he keeps teasing. What I do know is that God’s son is sounding an awful lot like Kanye on “Ultra Beautiful.”

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It’s refreshing to see what Delta Spirit has done on their latest track “Home Again.” These guys continue to grow as a rock band, vocally and sonically. I. Dig. This.

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Glass Animals dropped a new record last week, but this week it’s their Diplo remix of “Heat Waves” that has me wanting to push play consecutively. Check out this cut, it’s a fun, summer jam.

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How about the return of sleeper? This “Vegas 2020” track is really unique for a band that hasn’t put out music for 21 years! It’s safe to say they are getting better with age.

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“Easter Island” might be my favorite thing Ron Gallo has done? He’s kind of wrapping, he’s kind of talking and then there’s singing, and more melodious then normal.

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Anderson .Paak is back and I like this track with Rick Ross.

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Normally I would throw Diana Krall into your jazz cut of the week. But these days she’s gone over to the other side of pop music. I like this track but I miss dirty Diana, goddess of the lounge.

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Speaking of a goddess, ARTEMIS is your jazz cut of the week with “Goddess of the Hunt.”

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I could preach to you, but you already know… we are all experiencing some sort of COVID-19 Quarantine Fatigue.  You have probably fallen victim to one if not all of the following symptoms:

1. Irritability
2. Increased sense of Stress
3. Anxiety
4. Eating More
5. Eating Less
6. Inability to Sleep
7. The desire to only Sleep
8. Unmotivated
9. Reduction in Productivity
10. Racing Thoughts
11. General “On Edge” feelings
12. Sense of Hopelessness and Helplessness

I myself have experienced every single one of these except #5 (Eating Less… I stress eat!) and #6 (I only want to sleep, but my nights are certainly filled with tossing, turning and more aches and pains that seem to come out of nowhere.  Certainly restless nights have become my new norm).

A few months back I felt a sense of community solidarity. I pulled out the construction paper, cut out hearts of varying sizes, and taped them to my front windows. I was inspired by other neighbors that had done the same, and it felt right to join in the neighborhood movement to know that we were all feeling the same and there for each other, be it 6-12 feet away.

Now, when I walk the block, I completely overlook the window decorations and go straight for the anger that fuels my fatigue. I look and even count the number of people not wearing masks. I seeth beneath my own mask as I pass folks who are wearing their masks wrong, not covering up their noses, or even peeling them off the minute they enter the “guard” at Target who is there to enforce the mandated mask law in the county. “It’s because of you,” I growl under my breath, “That we are still in this mess. Cover your mouth, cover your nose, how hard can this be?  Because of you, I cannot send my child to school, my son to his day programs, my husband is out of work and cannot secure employment.”

(Pardon my political views on mask-wearing, this is a personal commentary and I do not mean to offend anyone’s beliefs).

So, now I see that my anger at unhealthy practices as well as others’ desires NOT to practice pandemic precautions are both a sign of COVID-19 Quarantine Fatigue.  Some of us are freaking out about the future (ME) and others are just absolutely done with this whole thing and want to feel a sense of normality again (OTHERS). Although it makes me angry, it is where we are now.

The long term stress of this whole mess is taking a significant mental health toll on everyone.  Stress experienced over a prolonged period of time is dramatically more devastating to the mind and body than a short term crisis. 5 months, (140 days on my Coronavirus Calendar- which I track cases daily) is a VERY LONG TIME.

Another factor that is making the fatigue last so long is our inability to cope together.  Like I said before, I was at one time, inspired to join in, from a distance, so show my support.  Now, as I read that memorial services such as the 9/11 tribute has been canceled, I can see the disparity in our ability to mourn collectively.  For the past 19 years, we have memorialized 9/11 as a day of remembrance. Churches were filled, blood drives were encouraged, candlelight vigils were held… all in an effort to join together and display our despair.  The collective arrangements provided for a type of group therapy, harmony, consensus, and mutual support.

Now in our new normal, we must mourn alone.  We cannot join in large groups, link arm in arm, and feel the pain of others through the pain of ourselves. We cannot hug or kiss or embrace strangers in attempts to show the invisible bonds that we have with each other, we are all struggling together, and together we will get through this.

We now sit in our homes, alone, surrounded by only a scant few, rehashing the latest news that keeps us distant from our own lives.  This lack of community only exacerbates the fatigue we feel as we balance the urgency with the unknown.

So, as I end this rant, I encourage you to have compassion for yourself at this time, take care of yourself, and take care of those around you. We truly are all in this together, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.

I first started writing Portrait of an Adoption when my oldest child was six years old. She will be seventeen next month. I close my eyes, and I’m seventeen again.

It seems impossible, the way that time passes in blurred years and in drawn-out minutes, one and the same. When I began this blog, when I had a toddler and a kindergartener; now I have one child in elementary school, one in middle school, and one in high school.

Year over year, I have run my November series, 30 Adoption Portraits in 30 Days. It has become increasingly challenging to find the time to curate, edit, upload, and share this series, a true volunteer labor of love that claims many of my waking hours in October and November.

I had always planned to conclude the series after ten years, and now we are here. This November will be the final series. It is with a bittersweet heart that I put out the final call for submissions. Some of you have followed this series since the very first season. I know you will miss it, and I’m grateful for your loyal readership. If you are one of the people who sends me an email each year saying, “I might send in my story next time” — next time is now!

As you know, the series is designed to give a voice to many different people with widely varying perspectives on adoption. Some stories will describe heartwarming and uplifting experiences, while others will reflect the pain, darkness and loss often embedded in adoption.

In an effort to provide an authentic portrayal of what adoption means to different people, the series will feature guest posts by adoptees, birthparents, adoptive parents, relatives of adoptees, and foster parents.

If you are interested in submitting your story, please note the following submission guidelines:

• Email me a personal essay about your experience with adoption or foster care (1,000 – 3,000 words) to [email protected].
• You may also submit your piece directly to my website by going here.
• Please include a 2-3 sentence bio with any links to your work and an optional photo.
• Submission deadline is October 1, 2020, but I pick posts on a first come, first serve basis, so the sooner you send in your piece, the better to guarantee a spot.
• It is very important to me that the series has a good flow and an emotional balance. As such, I try to pick stories that are not too similar to each other.  If I receive a bunch of fantastic essays that are from a common perspective, I will only run a couple of them, so that we can represent multiple experiences.

Remember, I can only run stories from the options that have been submitted, so if you have a story to tell and you want to see your voice represented, send it in! Anyone is invited to send a story. May the Force Be With You as you send in your submission!

And be sure to check out the awesome children’s chapter book series, Jazzy’s Quest: Adopted and Amazing that I co-authored with Juliet Bond, LCSW. The third book in the series, Jazzy’s Quest: Camp to Belong, is now available. Jazzy is a creative, ten-year-old Star Wars fan who also happens to be a transracial adoptee in an open adoption.

The first book in the Jazzy’s Quest series is a chapter book designed to introduce Jazzy, her loving family, and her friends to our readers. The second book is twice the length of the first and explores Jazzy’s social relationships at school and her struggle to fit in with peers.

The third book is a full middle-grade book and it delves into the complex relationship among separated siblings in reunion, as well as the unique challenges that adoptees face as they navigate the world. Jazzy explores her feelings about being a person of color in a white family, and she learns more about foster care.
* * * *

Carrie Goldman is the author of Portrait of an Adoption. She is an award-winning author, speaker, and bullying prevention educator. Follow Carrie’s blog Portrait of an Adoption on Facebook and Twitter.

To continue receiving posts from Portrait of an Adoption, simply type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button.

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This post was edited while our power was out thanks to the early August derecho, and after half a pizza and a glass of wine. For more information about pizza and wine, follow @natcmatthews on Instagram.

Let me preface this post by saying we are those parents who really didn’t do much pre-pandemic. When our daughter was a newborn, we took her out to dinner and she would sleep in her bassinet, but once we implemented her bedtime routine, those normal-people-timed dinners effectively ended and we developed this paralyzing fear of messing with her routine – as if keeping her up late one night or throwing off her nap would mean she would never sleep again, and she’d call me as an adult in the middle of the night, asking why I did this to her.

So, over the last couple years, we’ve watched our friends take their babies everywhere: Nice restaurants and parties and on faraway beach vacations and even to the mountains. Meanwhile, we stayed home and just hoped that the diligence with which we executed her schedule would pay off in the form of our little girl sleeping through the night and being in a good mood the whole next day, every day. Is that too much to ask?

Don’t get me wrong – we’ve taken her out to eat (mostly lunch/brunch), out on walks, to a couple of street festivals, and right before covid hit we started going to dance class (I miss that so much!). But after these outings we sometimes felt exhausted or frustrated, and wondered if the going out was worth the trouble.

All that to say, when we were trying to find childcare earlier this summer, the idea came up to drive eight-ish hours from Chicago to my hometown of Pittsburgh to have my parents watch her and, well, the traveling sounded kind of hellish. What would she do for eight hours? What if she just cries the whole time? You mean I have to get out of the car and go into a rest stop filled with germy travelers when all I’ve been doing for four months is avoiding going inside of ANYwhere? I have to change a diaper in a car? WTF does that look like?

But, without childcare set up for the summer, we needed help. And so, our decision was made – we would drive to Pittsburgh and stay for a month, until we could hire a nanny or otherwise figure out childcare in Chicago.

Before we left, we got tested and quarantined (at the time, Chicago testing was widely available with quick results). We packed up a month’s worth of things, three days’ worth of food (you never know what’s going to happen when you’re driving through Ohio), and made the long drive to Pennsylvania.

The trip there was incredibly fast (a record-breaking 7 hours) and our daughter was an ANGEL. (Not so much on the way back, but that post is for another day).

We ended up staying with my parents for five weeks, slightly longer than expected, and it was the greatest decision we could have made. I had been warned by some friends that moving back in with your old “roommates” might be fun at first, but eventually we’d all get sick of each other. I can totally understand how that might happen, but we really didn’t experience that (Hi, Mom!).

Not only were we spoiled with the comforts of homemade meals nearly every night (plus my mom’s excellent choice of local takeout – looking at you, Gaucho Parilla Argentina – and my dad’s random donut purchases that would appear in the fridge, thanks Dad!), but our daughter got to know her grandparents, and vice versa. In a year where being away from loved ones has been the norm, that’s worth any 7-8 hour drive. Plus, now we know that while taking a long road trip will throw off our daughter’s entire schedule for the day, that isn’t the end of the world. Not only was it worth the trouble, it’s been a highlight of our quarantine experience.

So thank you, Pittsburgh, for being our summer quarantine home. While we didn’t get to see much of the city, it gave us a place to stay safe, a place to see family, and trusted and loving childcare (that also allowed mama to go back to work full-time). The city gave us daily walks in quiet parks and along the river, the best Italian hoagies I’ve had in a long time, and a long drive with a toddler that was way less miserable than I expected.

If you’re looking for some guidance in helping you make decisions like this one, I found this article (that went viral earlier this year) very helpful.

More notes on moving back in with my parents:

• For the first couple of weeks, my nightly glass of wine would be confiscated if I left it unattended. I learned that my Dad has a habit of clearing the entire table after dinner and dumping out whatever’s in the glasses…I now hide my wine if I have to leave to change a diaper.
• The first time we ordered pizza for Friday pizza night, trying to decide what toppings we were going to order was like trying to beat back coronavirus in the U.S., aka never-ending…then we realized we’d have five more Fridays to pick whatever toppings we wanted.
• I have never seen a cheese drawer so full.
• One day I left my daughter’s shorts on a chair because she refused to put them on. My dad picked them up and thought they were my underwear…awkwaaard.
• One time my parents’ landline phone rang and they both turned to me, like, “is it for you”? I had to remind them that I haven’t given out a landline number since I was 16.

Life events, simple pleasures, hard times, and moments of joy still persist during the Coronavirus Pandemic. This week, our family grieves the passing of a loved one, my husband’s cousin, who died of a brain hemorrhage. We mourn with her children, parents and grandmother. Sentiments from our recent family movie, Goodbye Christopher Robin, ring true. Christopher Robin’s childhood coming of age tale urges, “Keep me in your heart I’ll stay there forever.” 

We acknowledge the sadness in our hearts, hope for brighter tomorrow and continue with loved ones. “[When] there is tomorrow when we’re not together…there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think but the most important thing is, even if we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.”

Days may run together during almost 24/7 quarantine, times of uncertainty and grief. As the wise Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh friends asked, “What day is it? It’s today.” Hard news facts and family loss may jolt us from summer of 2020 monotony during Covid-19. 

Christopher Robin, and his Winnie-the-Pooh friends expound, “doing nothing often leads to the very kind of something.” We experience peace in neighborhood walks. We still work toward progress. We follow public health guidelines as we journey outside our comfort zone to learn and grow.

“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing everyday.” We pause and recharge. We anchor weekend days with three activities help, e.g. workbook pages, hiking and/or soccer, usual reading. We adapt and stay safe with facial masks, social distance and lots of cleaning. Acceptance helps conserve our energy as we do our best to control our reaction.

As the Zen Winnie-the-Pooh friends acquiesced, “I suppose it’s right where it needs to be.” We strive to practice patience and compassion with ourselves and loved ones. Christopher Robin understood, “I always get to where I’m going by walking from where I’ve been.”

We wonder at the sound of rain, roar of thunder, and beauty of clouds. This week in Chicago, we felt grateful to take shelter from tornado winds that pummeled our block. As Christopher Robin said, “Your life is happening right in front of you.”

We extend our condolences to friends and family who shoulder loss. We keep friends and family in our hearts and prayers during this time unique pressure. XO

Poem 8-15-20

You spread your angel wings

Like an eagle’s

Across the night sky

And the stars shine and blink

But offer no way home

For you

And your armies

Of the desolate

Poem 8-15-20

In the place

Of laughter

In the place of sadness

Paris and Dresden

St. Louis and New York

The Atlantic Ocean

Touches you and it touches me

We get out and dry off

I’ll have a white wine

Poem 8-14-20

All my life I’ve been looking for this

Come with me now

Take my hand

And fly with me

To the questions

And the answers

And the thing

In between

And above

You are the night sky when the

colors explode

And the songs end on a chord

Of love

With a little less news to report since this weekend, here’s a quick recap of what this column is about.

I’m reporting beer tappings, dinners, and related events in brewery tap rooms, brewpubs and beer bars in the Chicago area. For now I’m also throwing in all the beer trucks and trivia events I find, just to encourage people to get out and support their local beer scene.

You’ll often find breaking news on my Facebook page. I usually re-post notices of establishments that have closed temporarily if one of their employees tests out for COVID exposure. Especially in these times, if you to go somewhere, call your destination beforehand. And DO follow the current rules on distancing and masking.

If I have been missing any events you know about, click the email link on this page and let me know!

Monday, August 17

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Tuesday, August 18

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Wednesday, August 19

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Thursday, August 20

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