No It All

Yesterday James made a delicious new dinner we’ve never had before.  Picture a beautiful pool of lemony hollandaise sauce surrounding salmon, grilled asparagus, and a perfectly poached egg balanced on top.  It was Easter brunch for dinner.  Spring on a plate.  Mwoi– Fingertip kiss.

Jacob hated it.  Oh the wailing and harrumphing.  The rest of us thought it was great.  Jake finally returned to the table, ate his egg and asparagus, and made sure we all know he only eats expensive lox and nigiri.  Common salmon?  Pashaw.

Tonight James made spaghetti– King Jacob’s favorite.  Though it was made with a lesser tomato sauce from Trader Joe’s and ground beef rather than his favorite ground buffalo.

Jake was relatively pleased despite the inferior ingredients.  And then he says in all sincerity, “It’s pretty good.  And I mean, really, it’s the Zombie Apocalypse.  You can’t be picky.”

Honestly, even at the end of yesterday I wasn’t entirely sure what happened yesterday.  I woke-up.  I started work at 7:30AM.  I worked almost non-stop.  I ate lunch.  The boys started 1:00 Zoom Recess.  I went back to the barn.  I came home from work (across the yard).  Jacob’s Dr. Cain comic book subscription arrived.  I talked to Alesia while I walked the loop.  I went to bed.  I woke-up.

Yesterday it was Monday again.  I returned to my office in the barn and the realities of a business where all of our customers have shuttered their doors.  The boys started remote learning at the grand opening of Dining Table Elementary.  They’re using Google Classroom to get assignments that only seem to last 90 minutes, if we’re lucky.

Jacob had his first class Zoom yesterday.  Given I spend at least eight hours back-to-back on Zoom every day, I wish I could summon the excitement of a fifth grader.  It seems Jake has taken to Zoom like a fish to water.  His teacher had to lean on him to get the rest of the class into the Zoom with both audio and video.  You can almost see Jake sit a little taller and shimmy his non-existent lapels when we refer to him as Zoom Tech Support.

I hear they’re hiring.

This morning I went to Trader Joe’s and found a line.  Outside.  Each person was carefully waiting six feet behind the next.  They were only letting us in as someone else exited.  It made shopping at Trader Joe’s feel as spacious as a normal store.  Thankfully, they’d overstocked the shelves, communicating a world of abundance and an unspoken message to the food hoarders– only take your fair share of orange chicken.  Four bags didn’t seem so extreme.

After I got home, Nate and I took two soccer balls down to Bellevue.  One that was as hard as a rock.  And one that was as flat as a rock.  We took turns as striker and keeper.  We hopped the new plastic fences and discreetly completed our recycling chores.

The sun and the thick, wet grass made me grateful we’d gotten lucky enough to finish the All Stars season before the arrival of Pandemic 2020.  I’ve been meaning to try and capture a few of the highlights from our final tournament.  I may not have all the details exactly right, but the emotions are something we’ll never forget.

The last weekend tourney for the Stars was the Area Q, the weekend of February 8th and 9th at the Barney Schwartz fields in Paso.  It was the same place where we’d started the season, just a few short weeks prior.  The Stars were not the same team they’d been way back in January.

Our first game was against our usual nemesis, Lompoc.  Nate scored another hat trick.  Our next game was against Paso B.  Nate scored three again, but the ref called one back that bounced off the bottom of the crossbar, hit the net, and then bounced back out.  This very play has inspired Nate to become a famous footballer so he can purchase VAR for the Under 10’s of the world.  We won our third game against Atascadero B.

The next morning we had to leave in the 5AM hour.  Nate is not the kind of kid that complains even one little smidge about being woken up in the dark to go play soccer 45 minutes away in below freezing weather for the second day in a row.  Our morning game was against 5 Cities.  We knew it was going to be tough.  We surprised them when Nate scored with a left footed shot to the inside of the right net just 15 seconds after kick-off.  Unfortunately, 5 Cities wasn’t having it.  We lost by a lot, but were still in the medal running.  Fortunately, Nate wasn’t too disappointed that he couldn’t eat Second Breakfast.  Grandma delivered Nate a warm breakfast sandwich through the window of the truck.

Our final game was against Lompoc again, for third place.  They’d brought their star scorer for Sunday.  Word on the field was that he’d been sick the day before.  The game was neck-and-neck.  We were up.  They caught up.  Back and forth, back and forth.  We were nearing the end and it was tied 4-4.  As we were prepping to go into overtime, Coach made the controversial decision to put Nate in goal.  I guess if it went into PK’s, he’d be goalie.

This of course is a recipe for me to have a heart attack.  Kai B’s dad, Robbie, and I have traded off as cardiac-arrest victims for much of the season, depending on who is in as our last line of defense.

Nate caught a couple of hard shots.  The pinnacle of coronary failure included a shot that hit the crossbar and bounced around two or three times before Nate smothered the ball with his body.  Robbie and Granddad and I almost died right there on the sidelines.

The Stars put one more goal in during overtime and took third place in the tournament.  Oh the grins and the jumping hugs and the admiration of engraved rose gold around one’s neck.

I’m sure this must be exactly what it feels like to win the World Cup.

Yesterday the boys did a new Black Panther YouTube workout.  They yelled, “Mom, Mom come here!  Black Panther is fat!”  Of course I came running.  I’m proud to report that Black Panther was simply promoting realistic body images for little boys.

Mid-morning, I did my first streaming class with my usual Pilates teacher.  She had this fantastic coffee cup that a client gave her with her signature saying on one side, and “The tears of Casey Canino’s clients” on the other.  After a tough mat class, we all walked the Bob Jones trail.  While we walked, Nate started singing a little jingle the kids made-up at school “Lávate las manos, no quieres la coronavee-roos.”  It’s quite catchy.

In the afternoon I watched some Netflix and took a nap.

Last night I was putting Jake to bed and as I was kissing him goodnight, I smelled his hair.  “Why does your hair smell so good?  Did you wash it?”

“No.”

“Wait a second… I know that smell.  You smell like Daddy’s armpits!”

Seriously, he smelled like deodorant because he’d been cuddling with his dad on the couch, his head cradled gently in his father’s armpit.

We couldn’t stop laughing.  Nighty night Armpithead.  I love you.

It’s been one week since Friday the 13th.  Things are very, very different just one week in.

We’re sheltering-in-place.
Work is really stressful.
I mostly live in my new office in the barn.
James is Chief Learning Officer.
The boys have to run laps across the yard and around the house.
Today they did a Fortnite workout on the TV.
We’ve watched all four Hunger Games movies.
Tonight we’ve split into two camps: those weirdos who want to watch The Lord of the Rings, and the rest of us.
I got a new battery in my car key fob.
The Volvo guys were not practicing social distancing.
The boys and I picked-up Insomnia cookies and delivered it to a work colleague’s front yard for her birthday.
It was one of the best things that happened all day.
And I found the perfect card in my stash.

It read: My bucket list is pretty short, but my f*** it list keeps growing.

The days really start to run together if you don’t write them down in some way.  Now we know why certain retired grandparents are expecting weekend-level responsiveness on Tuesdays.

Yesterday I started the day with conference calls on the Bob Jones.  My key fob was nearly dead.  Just twenty-five pulls of the door handle before it opened.  A recycling trip to the school dumpster and back-to-back CO-VID-eo conferences all.  Day.  Long.

The boys lugged 5 loads of our newly chipped pine tree into the mud pit that is the chicken coop.  Hopefully now our eggs won’t resemble Nate’s knees.

I’m told Nate gunned another ball.  This time it was a soccer ball, over the mountain, into a never-ending thicket of poison oak.  They listened to it for “5 minutes” as it crashed through the brush and maybe landed on a neighbor’s house.  Or broke a window.  Or hit someone in the head.  Four days in and their ability to discern reality from fantasy is waning.

The boys did a Stars Wars workout on YouTube.  We only had one light saber.

Oh, and apparently in response to the toilet paper shortage, James installed something on our upstairs toilet called the Toto washlet.  I’m still very much on the fence.  Or rather… using the downstairs bathroom.

Today I woke up early to the sound of a lot of heavy equipment coming up our hill.  It was just our neighbor Julian.  But then around 8, more heavy equipment showed-up.  And it parked in our driveway.

James got a little hot under the collar.  Seems the tree trimmers that came out for a quote on Monday, assumed the close and sent a crew out this morning.  After some calls and some huffing and some puffing, a 50% discount and our giant pine tree and the fallen oak were cut up, chipped, and hauled away.

James did get a good laugh with a social media post of him hauling our Christmas tree off the back porch to the chipper.  Is it March?

Yesterday the boys went on a walk on the Bob Jones.  They took the football and ran into Coach Tom from the Chiefs.  Apparently Nate gunned the football over Jake’s head into a thicket of poison oak.

Jake went in, since he seems impervious to this poisonous plant, despite his delicate complexion.  Nate came home and was so upset I found him hiding in the daisies.  I lured him out with an outdoor chicken nugget picnic.

It was a tough day.

12:38PM: James
“I’ve been home schooling these people for three hours and I can’t take it anymore.  We should be paying teachers billions.”

12:48PM: Jacob
Whimpering… “I really wish I was at school right now.”

It’s Day 1 soldiers!  Buck-up and wash your hands.