(Day 15: Bullet-point your whole day.)
THE WORRY MONSTER – Just wait. We’ll get there.
7:15am – Wake up to the sound of my alarm, which is set to play a random song from a Spotify playlist called Wide Awake. Today’s selection? “You’re Too Weird” by the Fruit Bats. Feeling attacked, I turn off the music and lay in bed a bit longer, listening to the birds outside and feeling thankful to see sunshine through the curtains.
7:30am – Head to the bathroom to get ready for work, which entails:
- Brushing my teeth
- Using my fingers to comb my messy hair into less messy bun
- Tying a robe around my mismatched pajamas
7:45am – Hunt for a shaker cup in the kitchen. Find it in the last cabinet I’d expect to. Silently curse my husband for putting it away someplace weird then silently thank my husband for having put the dishes away at all. Make a protein shake using unsweetened chocolate almond milk (because I bought the wrong kind…I prefer the unsweetened vanilla) and vanilla protein powder (because I bought the wrong kind…I prefer the chocolate).
7:58am – Begin my commute to work which entails walking ten steps from the kitchen to the dining room, firing up my laptop, and opening all the websites I need to access for work.
8:00am – Cram as much of a regular work day as possible into the three hours my company has authorized me per day. Today’s interruptions were minimal and included:
- 8:35am – Kissing my girl good morning and supervising her breakfast selection.
- 9:40am – Discussing with my girl the fact that I don’t want her to go outside to play with Neighbor Child 1 and 2** yet because I want her to do her school work first.
- 9:55am – Bathroom break.
- 10:00am – Discussing with my girl the fact that I didn’t like that she snuck out the front door to play with Neighbor Child 1 and 2 while I was in the bathroom. Subsequent to that, accepted her pinkie promise that once I was done working, she’d come in to do school work “straight away.”
- 10:45am – Diffuse my girl’s emotional upset over an ongoing disagreement between her and Neighbor Child 1.
- 10:55am – Agree to my girl grabbing a morning snack for her and Neighbor Child 2. She stated that Neighbor Child 1 is home doing school work. I remind her that she’ll be doing school work soon, too. She pretends not to hear and bounces out the front door with two packs of mini Oreos. She’s wearing a bike helmet. She’s always wearing a bike helmet.
11:15am – Call out the front door to tell my girl it’s time to get school work done. Endure a brief spurt of grumpiness from her about leaving Neighbor Child 2 to come inside. Begin watching the three required videos for the day and try my best to keep her engaged long enough to write 5 “snap words” and a list of 5 words each for -er, -ir, and -ur words.
12:00pm – Grant my girl a bathroom break. With her tablet. Which lasts 30 minutes.
12:30pm – Refuse my girl’s third request for lunch. Promise her said lunch when her last assignment is done. Continue to battle over her task of writing a realistic fiction story. Ignore huffing and pouting for as long as possible before snapping and shouting like a lunatic, “Fine! Let’s stop doing school work! You can just repeat the first grade!”
1:15pm – Rejoice over the fact that she finished her story AND tackled her art project: creating a “worry monster.” Tell her she’s done a great job when she proudly proclaims, “My worry monster is wearing blue and purple pajamas and he’s surprised because he has a brand new bed.” Serve lunch to my girl and breathe a sigh of relief that she’s chosen to eat at the table on the porch.
1:20pm – Make myself a sandwich, which I shovel into my mouth while standing up over the kitchen sink.
1:45pm – Sort laundry. Decide it’s time to put on actual [non-pajama] clothes and brush my hair with an actual hair brush.
2:00pm – Unload the dishwasher. Immediately reload it with all the dishes that have been piled up in the sink for the past 24 hours.
2:05pm – Hear the hose turn on. Run outside to tell my girl, who’s still wearing a bike helmet, to turn off the hose. Listen calmly as she explains that she and Neighbor Child 2 are “watering the flowers” [that we don’t have] out front. I concede and tell her to turn it on just long enough to fill her watering can then turn it immediately off. She complies. Repeatedly.
2:20pm – Venture out into the light of day for the sole purpose of telling my girl that the flowers are watered enough. Decide to make an outing of this trip outside by setting up a camp chair and reading a book in the sunshine while my girl and Neighbor Child 1 and 2 play outside. Encounter the following interruptions:
- 12x – “Mom, watch me…”
- 1x – “Mom, can I grab a snack for all of us?”
- 1x – “Mooooom, I’m hurt!”
3:30pm – Let the wind get the better of me and finally relocate from the front yard to inside the porch. Continue reading until my girl follows me. Wearing a bike helmet. With her tablet. On full blast. Ask her to turn it down some, which she does. But it’s not enough. Give up. Close my book and resort to playing a game on my phone.
4:00pm – The husband returns from work. Breathe a sigh of relief while he takes over parenting. Escape inside to sit in solitude for the first time all day. Except for the dog. Who is whining to get outside again.
4:30pm – Heat up dinner for my girl, which she again chooses to eat on the porch. In her bike helmet.
5:00pm – Negotiate with my girl about dessert. She proposes she gets two scoops of ice cream tonight and promises to not have dessert for a week. I remind her about our weekly Family Movie Night coming up on Friday and point out that she’ll want dessert then. She insists she won’t. I know she’s lying. I counter her with one scoop of ice cream tonight, dessert on Friday, and no dessert otherwise until next Wednesday. The offer is accepted. She chooses to eat on the porch. Neighbor Child 1 and 2 bring over their dinner to dine with her.
5:15pm – Contemplate baking banana muffins, which would require me to get up off the couch and actually do something. But I’m enjoying doing nothing. And eating tortilla chips. In peace.
5:45pm – Finally bake the muffins.
7:00pm – Wrap up a half dozen muffins to send home with Neighbor Child 1 and 2. Shout the “one more hour” warning to hubby and our girl, who have started hockey practice in the driveway. She is not wearing a helmet. Curl up on the couch to read a little more.
7:58pm – Cart the musical instruments out the front door for “Bell Time.” (Every night from 8:00 to 8:02pm, residents in our town are encouraged to ring bells and/or otherwise make noise as a showing of “alone, together” during the pandemic. We participate nightly, as do Neighbor Child 1 and 2.)
8:00pm – Shake my tambourine while shooting a pleading look toward my husband that screams, “Is it 8:02 yet?!”
8:02pm – Shout good night across the street to Neighbor Child 1 and 2. Cart the instruments back inside and begin the nightly prodding that is getting our girl off to bed. This process includes:
- Having her brush and floss her teeth, use the bathroom, and put on pajamas.
- Snuggling with her until doomsday or until she falls asleep, whichever comes first. [Spoiler alert: It’s usually the former.] Thankfully, it was a dad night. WINNING!
9:15pm – Watch 3 episodes of Community on Netflix with hubby while eating dinner, which tonight is reheated cheese tortellini.
10:20pm – Contemplate baking cookies because why not? Decide against it and proceed to watch 3 episodes of Some Good News on YouTube with hubby while wishing I had cookies and reminding myself how much I effing love John Krasinski. Sob like a hot mess during Zac Brown’s new song.
11:30 – Lay on the couch and think about tomorrow. Realize it’ll look a lot like today only with 200% more Zoom calls, thanks to virtual dance class (for my girl) and virtual PTO meeting (for me). Chastise myself for not having made cookies earlier.
12:30am – Press “publish” and get ready for a shower and bed. Only to rinse and repeat tomorrow.
** Yes, we are supposed to be in quarantine. And we are. However, we do fraternize outdoors with Neighbor Child 1 and 2 (brothers, age 6 and 5 respectively) and their mom. My logic: If my [former] daycare is open and offering care to multiple families right now, surely I can let my girl play with the two boys across the street whose family has the same level of potential exposure as ours does. And that’s to say women and children stay home, dads report to work at staff-only establishments. So, yeah. Playdates for daaaaays.
Dirty Dancing – This is my obligatory answer when someone asks me what my favorite move is. I’ve seen it countless times and will watch it any time I get the chance. I can quote it. I can sing along to every song on the soundtrack. As a young girl, I was certain I wanted to marry Patrick Swayze.
Unfaithful – I’d repeatedly watch Olivier Martinez do just about anything, really. But I’ve only seen this one twice. The first time was with my mom, who loved it as much as I did but for her it was all about Richard Gere. The second time was with my husband (who was my fiance at the time). He hated it. And we argued over the fact that we could each only see things from our own perspective and were incredulous that the other didn’t agree. Which I believe was the director’s intention so…job well done.
Mannequin – This one takes me back to my childhood. Any time it came on television, my sister and I would hunker down and watch. In fact, this may have been my very first love story. The love story that made me fall in love with love stories, I suppose. Plus who doesn’t love Hollywood Montrose?
The Motorcycle Diaries – Yes, you’ll have to read subtitles to enjoy this one, unless you know Spanish. It’s a story of adventure, bromance, coming of age. And it humanizes Che Guevara in a way that history books can’t.
Romeo + Juliet – I’m talking about the 1996 film from director Baz Luhrmann. Mercutio is a drug dealer and Tybalt, portrayed by John Leguizamo, makes being bad look so good. My friends and I saw it several times in theaters and several more times when it came out on DVD. And the soundtrack, featuring such ’90s icons as Everclear, Garbage, and the Butthole Surfers, was the anthem to my middle school years.
Seven Pounds – Will Smith can do no wrong in my eyes. If you ask film critics, though, perhaps THIS was the “wrong” Smith did. But I loved the mystery of it all and watching it unfold.
The Color Purple – I fell in love with the book in high school and after discussing the novel in class, our teacher wheeled in the A/V department’s cart and popped in the VHS for us. Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Danny Glover. A story of triumph over oppression. Family above all else. There’s lots of dark themes to wade through but it tells such an important story.
Girl, Interrupted – A motley crew of young women come together in a mental hospital. I remember watching this one repeatedly during high school, mostly because I was (and still am) in love with Angelina Jolie.
My Sister’s Keeper – I felt compelled to head to the theater when this one came out after having read the book by Jodi Picoult, one of my favorite authors. At the risk of spoiling the movie for you if you’ve read the book (or spoiling the book for you if you’ve seen the movie), the book and the movie have wildly different endings. And this is probably the only movie I can say this about but…I liked the movie’s ending better than the book’s ending.
40 Year Old Virgin – Who doesn’t love Steve Carell, am I right? This one is always good for a laugh, no matter how many times I’ve seen him exclaim, “Kelly Clarkson!”
Our girl turned 7 this week and despite the “stay at home” orders still in place, I think we managed to make it a kick-ass birthday for her. She’s been all smiles from Thursday (her actual birthday) through Saturday (when her “party” took place) because those three days were all about her. But in the process, it occurred to me that there’s a whole list of things I never expected to do altogether in the span of just three days… Or perhaps at all.
Like most of you, family is huge to us. A birthday never passes without a family gathering of some sort. My dad, my sister, and my sister’s family along with hubby’s mom, twin brother, and dad and stepmom are always there to sing her “Happy Birthday,” watch her blow out the candles, and enjoy a piece of cake. Not being able to do that this year was rough but she made the best of it. She accepted video calls throughout the day to “see” the people she’d normally see and enjoyed having birthday dinner (and cake!) with a smaller group.
Usually, my sister makes her birthday cake and it’s always something giant and artistic and worthy of Cake Boss. But this year, we’re saving that one for whenever we’re (legally, safely) able to throw her a party. So I offered to make her a cake or order one from a local bakery to celebrate with in the day of. Her decision? She wanted the chocolate-on-chocolate cake from Costco. Two layers of rich dark chocolate cake coated in a chocolate frosting with chocolate ganache in the center. Yeah, that’s my kid. Anyway, when hubby got there, there was only one left on the shelf and it said “Happy Mother’s Day” on it in bright red icing. Our girl was not amused. Thus led us to scraping “Mother’s” off and using M&Ms to spell out some semblance of the word “birth” in multicolored candy to appease her.
“We have to make it magical for her!” If insisted. Of course that meant our Christmas elves would make an appearance for her birthday. They showed up on Thursday morning, dangling from balloons we’d hung the night before. And when I checked my email that morning, there was one from Sven that explained Santa had granted them three vacation days to spend with us before Rudolph would pick them up on Saturday night. They brought a gift and she was so tickled to see them!
It was a gift from Memere. And hubby “had to make sure it worked and wasn’t damaged or anything.” It was only about 60 degree so he insisted he wouldn’t hook up the hose to it. Fast forward about a half hour and our girl is rushing out of the house in last year’s too-small swimsuit and sliding down into the icy pool at the slide’s base as passersby were walking by the house in pants and hoodies. Surely if there was a Mother of the Year trophy available, it’s this act that would’ve earned me my nomination.
Our girl never NOT has a party. And we usually go all out. This year, though? No can do. Venues aren’t open and gatherings of over five people are prohibited. We’ve promised her a big party as soon as we’re allowed, which we’re all hoping will be this summer. But in the meantime, we jumped on the latest bandwagon by celebrating in the trendiest of ways…. With a car parade. Our friends and family did not disappoint. They came rolling down the street with their cars decorated, silly string flying, music blaring, horns beeping, and shouts of celebration streaming out their windows. It. Was. Awesome. But I hope to never have to organize one again because I hope all those people will be able to come to our house, walk into our backyard, and party with us for longer than it takes to drive by and grab a roadside cupcake. It was equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming to witness.
Maureen, our former daycare provider who cared for our girl from the time she was six weeks old until the day she (Maureen) retired, is a crafty person who loves to sew. She’s come to our girl’s birthday celebration every year since birth and always gifts beautiful, handmade gifts. A few years ago, for example, it was a quilted library bag that we still love and use to this day. This year, it was face masks. And we LOVED them
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