Staying Occupied

Last night, as we were sitting down to dinner, Cute W announced, “tomorrow’s Friday!” like it was a big treat. Then I said, “I’m really looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend at home.” Then Cute W, J, and I laughed uproariously, a sort of semi-hysterical fit of giggles. M, joining us after putting the finishing touches on her salad, let us know that it wasn’t funny and we weren’t funny.

Today, for the first time in weeks, I put on some mascara. After all, I’ve got some busy social occasions. There’s a work GoTo Meeting this afternoon, then a family Zoom this evening. We are adapting to virtual togetherness. Here’s a picture of me while the overworked internet turns my boss into an Impressionist image and a family gathering for my mom’s birthday on Saturday.

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Hmm, what else has been going on? We received a care package from my work, which was very sweet. Of course, it happened to arrive on the same day that I went to the grocery store, so if I had known, I might have hidden it away ahead of time to space out the big, exciting events around the house.

One of our last outings was a trip to the library on the morning of their last day open for a long while. I was focused on hopefully-uplifting and not-too-taxing books that the girls and I might both enjoy. We love Joshilyn Jackson, but unfortunately M and I had read most of them already.

I’ve read a couple of these, but then I decided I needed a little literary chicken soup, so I just re-read Sense and Sensibility. Oh, and we’ve got some DVDs picked out be me and J and Cute W. And embroidery books! J’s been liking embroidery lately. Here’s her work in progress that was a Christmas present but has been keeping her occupied lately:

This is from a beginner’s kit from Crewel Ghoul on Etsy, but there are tons of different embroidery kits available.

We are all very, very happy that the recent snow has melted and the days have been pretty. We’ve done a ton of walks and the girls are running and doing workouts outside (I choose not to subject the public to witnessing my my workouts, which take place in the solitude of our basement playroom).

One weird thing: we have not play a single game since we started social distancing. This is particularly crazy because we have so many of them, and Cute W loves them so much. Early on I suggested that we could take it as a challenge to see if we could actually play every single game in our household inventory at least once. The girls were like: “. . . . . . . Nooooo. ” It was kind of sad. And now, even the games that we usually like, they’ve resisted. I feel like that might be because it’s such hardcore family time.

Oh, wait! We have played one game: Game of Phones. Santa put this into M’s stocking one Christmas, and she never, ever even tried to play it. I was really outraged on Santa’s behalf, because I’m pretty sure that Santa read all sorts of reviews about how it was fun and particularly a big hit for games among teammates hanging out at hotels for tournaments, and didn’t that seem perfect? And why wouldn’t she even try? And so we had set this aside as one of the games we might stick in a Little Free Library before we decided that maybe everyone was too afraid to visit LFLs these days. So we played it. It was fine, except that I strongly disputed Cute W’s judgement in a round in which I absolutely should have won, and let’s face it, when you’re playing a game that revolves around your phone skills as a middle-aged woman against teenagers, your chances of success are few, so when you make a profoundly good play and it is not properly appreciated by the person to whom you’ve committed yourself for life, well, it can make you pretty bitter. Can you tell that I’m still bitter?

Anyway, I think we need to play some more games in our future. But objective ones, because I’m not sure if our marriage can survive Cute W’s poor judgement calls.

I hope that you and yours are all well and not too stir crazy!