Stay at Home: Days 57-63

Day 57:

The day is not over but I am! It only took about an hour to pile up the two shrubs at the curb. It took the rest of the day to get the stumps out and weeds pulled.

Day 58:

Some Mother’s Days I want to be alone and recharge but today I wanted to spend time with my people and it was lovely. My favorite sous chef helped me make peach purée for brunch and birthday bellinis. Then we ate bacon and chatted about cooking and life and watched mass together snuggled on the couch. He made me a beautiful card with a heartfelt message that I will treasure. This afternoon I left the house to get cupcakes for a virtual birthday party and did contactless pickup of more mulch at my new favorite store, Menards. All stores should make it this easy to order online. Ok maybe they do. I haven’t really tried anywhere else except Target and they won’t bring me cheese so no go! I surprised myself and did not stop at Starbucks even when I realized I could. Next time I run errands I should do it on an empty stomach so I can get a tall flat white. A family viewing of Aladdin closed out the night. We all giggled a lot at the Disneyland map joke.

 Our first Mother's Day!

Day 59:

Some thoughts on animals:

Birds: why was there a bird chirping outside my bedroom at 430 this morning when it was still dark?

Chipmunks: Our front porch resident has had his home disrupted since a neighbor wanted some of the extra paver bricks stacked nicely on the porch since 2017 awaiting a project. I give him a day to return and rebuild.

Groundhogs: It never fails that after a long Monday after a sleepless Sunday when I’m hoping for a sort of sleep in Tuesday, I remember that Tuesday is trash day and those trucks are going to be my alarm clock. Again.

Day 60:

I never thought we would be “gone” more than two weeks so two months is eye opening. I needed a change of pace today so I took a half day off work and taught shop class (deck box success!), read a little and made lasagna for dinner. I may go back inside and eat it eventually. But right now I’m hanging on my patio with my book.

Day 61:

Breakfast delivered to my office, and a taste of childhood for the after dinner snack.

Day 62:

Groundhog Day again but with thunderstorms. I think when the sun comes out again that the new grass around the patio will be ready for its first haircut. I have haircuts in the brain. My March 17 haircut has been rescheduled for the third time now. I was ok missing April and until a week ago didn’t realize how ridiculous my hair was getting. Poor guy is going to have to work hard to tame the wave another 6 weeks from now! I’m ready to cut the boy’s hair again. Guess we have a pretty full start to the weekend plan!

Day 63:

Alternative schooling has been taken to a new level. Ten days and counting. Birthday and summer start the same day. We can’t wait!

Alternative happy hour - where we drink our pool drinks and talk about how the pool may not open.....

Alternative dining outdoors. Always a treat to eat my enchiladas al fresco!

I did give William's hair that second trim. Got a little close to the ear with the scissors but he forgave me and liked how I did on the front if not the sides.

Stay at Home: Days 50-56

Day 5-0!

Our Golden Quarantine Anniversary. The boy has started planning his birthday at the end of the month by building a Minecraft world with his buddies where they can party and eat cake. I spent the day pulling weeds in the yard and wishing for a mulch delivery. Our beautiful backyard oasis also doubles as a dog park when the boy and his buddy are both out. John made dinner! Of the four times in 50 days we’ve done carryout, three have been to our neighborhood Mexican restaurant. The new neighborhood pizza place is on tap for tomorrow. After dinner entertainment provided by the Nerf football and my lovelies. The lefty puts his whole body into his throws.

Day 51:

I feel like I’ve spent 51 hours on cleaning my yard in the past two weekends but it’s probably more like 15. I guess that’s not much of an investment in 10+ years but my back and hamstrings are telling me to sit on the couch with a drink for the rest of the weekend. Guess I’d better text my dinner order to the husband to make sure he gets that phoned in and picked up.

Day 52:

I took up a kind neighbor on her offer of a free mask. This is kitchens in flannel. Definitely won't have to worry about John borrowing this one. It probably makes him itchy just looking at it!

Day 53:

My most important meeting today was my 3 pm with Kid Chef to make grandma’s banana bread recipe. Except we don’t have loaf pans anymore and decided on the round Pyrex. And we had some chocolate chips to add. So it looks like a cake instead of Grandma Joni’s bread but yum!

Tacos too, of course.

I listened to my audiobook before bed last night and woke up to a particularly startling chapter. Had to read 3 chapters first thing this morning with my coffee to catch up with what I slept through. Feels good to be reading a book again.

Targeted marketing works. I’m ready to order the Doughp cookie dough from its FB ad - either as my Mother’s Day gift to myself or just because the only thing almost as good as ice cream is cookie dough that you eat like ice cream.

Day 54:

We started the day at the Taj Mahal and ended the day in Narnia.

Today’s social studies lesson included a video of the Taj Mahal which we watched together while I supplemented the lesson with photos and stories of my own trips there. I even dug out a souvenir to demonstrate the inlaid floral designs.

The rest of the day was a bit of a bust as I was grouchy and bagged on the kiddo for not giving any effort to reading for fun or his math acceleration games.

As we sat down tonight to read a chapter together I spotted my fuzzy slippers and remarked that I hadn’t worn them at all today. The boy said, “That is probably why you were so grouchy today!” After I stopped laughing I told him that he was probably right!

Day 55:

Today was the last nice day for a week so we took our lunch on the patio and started a game of Scrabble. Cleared my tiles for the first time ever (I think)!

When I had to head back to Zoom meetings, the boy and the neighbor pup zoomed through the yard. I’m glad they had a chance to play this afternoon since she came “knocking” on the back door this morning looking for him. That gave us all a big laugh.

Dinner was pancakes and bacon because why not?!

Day 56:

The Friday that was totally a Monday! After a long day, I jumped at the chance to grocery shop. Hubs and I both went and split the list - just meeting back up at the car!

I can’t remember my last trip to Target. (Though as a digression I really stopped shopping there a few years ago when they remodeled to make it fancy because now it just has weird empty spaces....)

To avoid the waste of plastic bags, I went Aldi on them and just put all my groceries back into an empty cart. In the parking lot I packed them inside the plastic tub and beach bag that I brought for this purpose. Hubs doesn’t share my commitment to owning the checkout process so he got bags for his cart.

I bought two bags of flour and three kinds of chocolate chips. Bring on the bake!

Enjoyed a drink together on the porch to finish our date night!

Stay at Home: Days 43-49

Day 43:

A rainy day inside.

Finally jumped on the puzzle bandwagon everyone has been on. It was a nice way to spend an hour working with and chatting with the kiddo before he disappeared. And then another hour for me to work alone before I realized it was 6 Pm and we still had to make pasta from scratch for dinner.

We cranked out that fresh spaghetti in 30 minutes and it was amazing with our meatballs and marinara and some garlic flatbread. I guess we have to make more spaghetti tomorrow for the leftover sauce....

Order of the Phoenix to wrap up with family movie night. The adults have discussed and are planning to let the boy watch the last three movies even though we know how they end. Though he may be 11 by the time we finish at our current pace.

Day 44:

More....

Made more spaghetti, did more yard work (my auto correct wrote hard work...I agree), ate more food ($19.99 at Texas Roadhouse gets A LOT of food), and enjoyed more patio time thanks to our new heater.

Oh, and more puzzles!

  

Day 45:

Monday is always a little Groundhog Day-ish but this was a good day.

The boy did all of his class work promptly and apparently completely. I got to reminisce with my sorority sisters about our t-shirt quilts and the memories we got collecting those shirts more than 20 year ago. The Puzzle has been conquered. I did a little coloring on the postcard we are mailing to the care center since I wanted to whip out the craft box due to the Theta throwback. And Kid Chef whipped up his special chocolate chip cookie recipe that has delicious toffee undertones to it.

Adding chocolate chips, butter and flour to the grocery list so he can keep us supplied with yumminess.

He also seems to think we should end every night with a movie so we obliged with the first two hours of The Half Blood Prince.

Day 46:

Apparently I didn’t take any picture today. Not even schoolwork.

I considered ordering groceries from Whole Foods or curbside pickup from

Target and Walmart. After loading carts and wasting time on their sites I gave up and decided we have plenty of food for another week.

Heard about a promotion a local donut shop is doing where they’ll do porch drop off one neighborhood at a time. Managed to get those lined up for tomorrow morning so I guess we’ve got plenty of carbs for another day....

It’s Tuesday and we had tacos. Frankly it was just a happy coincidence.

Day 47? I’ll be double checking that here shortly....

My picture production is way down. We got our donut delivery for breakfast and snacks and our Green Chef box arrived for the week so we could have baked chicken and roasted broccoli for dinner (before eating more donuts for dessert).

I did take picture of math and “family life” worksheets but I don’t think you want to see the word search for puberty, procreation and sexuality.

Day 48:

The sun came out! After 24 hours of rain, the sun came out. I walked through the puddles in the morning but by an evening bike ride they were in better shape.

The boy has decided we need an hour of family movie night most nights so we watched an hour of Deathly Hallows, Part I. I haven’t checked with the cruise director but I assume he’s planning for the rest tonight. He’s easy to say yes to.

As I mentally try to plan *something* for summer assuming any of our June travel reservations will be postponed/cancelled, I’m wondering if hotel swimming pools will be open? I registered the boy for Boy Scout camp for July which he can now attend if it’s held since our summer vacation history tour was cancelled. No new info on when our neighborhood pool may reopen or if Little League - massively postponed - will still occur.

Day 49:

After my photo drought I made it a point to take photos on my walk around the neighborhood tonight.

Closed playground

Little library (we have 3 on my path)

Funny jokes

We enjoyed dinner on the patio and soaked up the views! Our new grass around the patio is trying to grow. I ordered the 6th grade school supply box today. That makes it official. They’re going back to school!