No It All

We’re fortunate we get to eat a lot of meals together these days.  Three squares really.  I’m pretty sure Nate is skinny not so much because of all his running, but more because during mealtimes is when he’s running… his mouth.  He’s a boy of few words, except when it’s lunch or dinner.

At some point this week I see him using his shorts as a napkin.  “Nate!  How many times do I have to tell you not to wipe your hands on your clothes?”

“I’m not!  I’m using my knees.”

This week marks one full month from that dreaded Friday the 13th when an email from the school Superintendant, Dr. Prater, made this whole thing real.  Now I look fondly upon that naive me that couldn’t imagine how we’d survive three weeks without school.  And had never heard of Dr. Prater.  And felt sorry for those poor sods in states like Washington, staring down the barrel of four weeks without school.

Earlier this week we got the Parent Square notification we knew was coming.  None of us believed Dr. Prater and that interim push of the date from April 14 to May 1.  School year’s history.  Sayonara third grade.  Hasta la bye bye fifth grade.  On the bright side, we can in fact survive several weeks without school.  Christmas breaks now look like a cake walk.

And even more importantly.  The boys really miss school.  They miss that feeling of accomplishment after a solid day of good, quality work.  Hopefully this situation results in a deep and lasting academic appreciation and work ethic.

Not a degree in YouTube.

When Jacob was little and lacked enough money and lost teeth to afford Pokémon cards, he started making his own.  We have little tiny bits of paper everywhere of imaginative Pokémon cards with 1,000,000,000,000,000 health.  I love them.

At some point last year Jake offhandedly comments to me, “Mom, I’ve made at least twenty bucks at school.”

“What?  How?”

“Selling Food Fighters.”

“Foo Fighters?”

“No Food Fighters.”

“What are Food Fighters?”

“They’re cards I make of foods that fight.”

And he shows me how he’s taken the index cards I bought him for presentations, and turned them into a new brand of collecting card.  Just like Grandma Suzy, he can pump out dozens of handmade cards in a day.  Then for Christmas he gets some (highly recommended) modeling clay and pretty soon he’s sold sixteen of these little baby three-dimensional Food Fighters at Club Star.  All together he’s pretty sure he’s pulled in at least forty bucks.

This week, he inked a full comic book with his dad.  After all this time at home, we’re hoping the Food Fighters can defend us from gaining the COVID-19.

It was about 1:30PM yesterday when the Easter Bunny remembered that today is Easter Sunday.  I guess he’d just been lounging around watering his orchids and updating contractual term sheets or something.

He made a quick call to the local chocolatier as he’s very committed to supporting small businesses.  They had a couple of things left and were scheduled to close at 3.  Fortunately, he was able to hop on over for curbside pick-up from a lady in an on-brand pink surgical mask.  He considered a stop at Target for some festive springtime additions to the basket and then thought better of it.

This morning the boys woke-up and couldn’t wait to look for their Easter baskets.  Of course he hid them in the barn.  It was the responsible thing to do.

Sometime this winter the phrase “OK Boomer” caught on like wildfire.  It became the talk of the playground.  Over Christmas it was Nate’s go-to embarrassing catch-phrase.  Everywhere we went the boys were busy loudly pointing out “Boomers.”  They’re obsessed.  It’s a bit like those days when little Jake would yell “Santa!” at every bearded man we came across.

Yesterday Jacob says something about Millennials being old.  Apparently he’s right.  Most of them have kids and mortgages.

While I’m walking the trail, James texts me that the boys are considered Generation Z.  And the new catch phrase?

“OK Zoomer.”  We just about died.

Over the July fourth holiday, we all headed to Flatrock.  It’s a family tradition to bring all the cousins together for several days of roughin’ in the Pennsylvanian wilderness.  Flatrock makes us all especially hungry for all the food.

As we shopped at Weiss market for lunch supplies, I was looking forward to the pickle aisle.  I mean this is Pennsylvania, home to the infamous “Pickle on a Stick” that James ordered at a movie theatre so long ago.  I was hoping for some kind of specialty Amish fare but this is Weiss… practitioners of triple plastic bagging.  People leave the joint with fistfuls of climate change, and a few plastic bags pinned under their armpits for good measure.

Fortunately, I found a big jar of bread and butter pickles chips to add to the stockpile.

Back at camp, I come across Grandma lamenting why we would need such a giant jar of pickles  “You like these?”  Of course there’s no actual transcript of the conversation but I’m sure she said that.  She was positive they wouldn’t get eaten.  Technically we were only there for three nights and I kid you not, I had to buy a second huge jar during our stay.  Every last tangy morsel was gone as we headed out the dirt road on our way to NYC.

Meanwhile this month in lockdown, the main staple the boys added to the grocery list was pickles.  “Mom, don’t forget we need pickles!”

It’s a topic of many dinnertime conversations.  We seem to find pickles make an excellent little side dish to just about every evening meal.  And they’re a must for Nate’s lunchtime “stackers” or as I call them, cheese tacos.  He’s decided he doesn’t like bread and so his latest lunches involve a piece of cheese filled with prosciutto and pickles.  Fold it like a taco and voilà (said with more of a Spanish accent then French, of course).

For some reason, we regularly have conversations at the dinner table that go something like this:

“Can you pickle bread?”
“No.”
“How ’bout pasta?”
“No.  It has to be harder.  Like a vegetable.”
“Can you pickle carrots?”
“Yes.”
“Marshmallows?”
“No!”

It goes on and on.

Friday night someone asks, “So where does vinegar come from?”
And Nate chimes in, “I think from cows?”
And Jake says, “No, horses!  It comes from horses.”

Apparently it was Thursday.