Coronavirus Day 3 — Chipper
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?
Coronavirus Day 2 — Meltdown
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.
Coronavirus Day 1
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.
Zombie Apocolypse II
Yesterday I decided to go to the grocery store first thing and it was a crazy zoo. I was going to make Trader Joe’s orange chicken for Jacob’s Coronavirus Birthday, but locusts had descended upon the freezer section. All manner of asian delicacies were gone, though the kale gnocchi was plentiful.
I found Plan B at the Whole Paycheck– a rack of baby back ribs and all manner of fruit for chocolate fondue. I was able to score the last three yellow bananas and a can of refried beans for later this week. The canned soup aisle has also been picked clean by locusts. Oh, and they must have washed-up with the lavender wipes. None to be found.
I made it home, put all the groceries away, and then pried the little zombies from their screens. That’s the real challenge. It’s raining. We’re not supposed to go anywhere. And the zombies have already infiltrated my house. Four weeks without organized sports and recess are still relatively unfathomable. We did the Bob Jones this morning, but the storm was blowing in and we had to high-tail it back just as we reached the beach.
The real challenge of the next few months will be deprogramming the zombies. I got them out in the afternoon for a final round of errands. I’m kind of disappointed in my list from yesterday. I mean seriously… Flonase?
Friday the 13th
Floating around my house somewhere is a little hand-drawn gift tag my mom made for my twelfth birthday. It has a sketch of a fault line with the words “Earthquake Birthday!” written on the front. That was the year my presents were buried in a closet somewhere. We had to hastily move to a motel in Scott’s Valley where I had egg flower soup for my birthday dinner at the Harvest Moon, and watched Inspector Gadget every morning on TV. I’d never had Nickelodeon before.
Today is Friday the 13th and it may go down in history as Jake’s “Coronavirus Birthday.” Things have snowballed rapidly since yesterday afternoon. First flag football practice was cancelled. And then the whole season postponed. Then baseball. Then the variety show at school. I got home last night and had about an hour’s worth of Covid-19 emails to read. I read a little bit of news, including an article where four states had shut down their school systems. One for three weeks. I couldn’t fathom what we’d do if school was closed for three full weeks.
Based on guidance from our CEO, roughly half the office was working from home today. Late in the day I saw a flash of a Slack message. Something about a month.
As Nate and I are driving home the gray clouds hang just a little lower. A little darker. I see a lot of crows. Are there normally this many big black crows?
We make it home and the earlier emails and Parent Square notifications are finally sinking in. School is shut down for a full month. Till April 13th. I just can’t seem to process this information. In the barn, I notice last weekend’s slumber partiers have carelessly left a Halloween skull and femur on the floor.
I think the last time I was having this much trouble processing what was going on was exactly eleven years ago, on Friday the 13th, when I had just turned in my final MBA paper for the quarter. I was really pregnant. And I was profoundly looking forward to a girls’ dinner in the city and ten days of vacation before “motherhood” was scheduled. Dr. Antsy came to pick me up to drive to the city. And then she said I was going to have the baby. That very night.
Oh Friday the 13th. You crazy crazy day you.
Space Jam
As my mom tells it, my first slumber party was around third grade for Esther’s birthday. And I would spend the following day as grumpy as, quote, “a little wet hen.” As I grew as a connoisseur of the sleepover soirees, I mostly remember being the primary target of the typical party pranks including seances where little girls tried to lift me with just two fingers, and waking-up with my hand in a cup of warm water. Myths busted. There are several analog photos floating around of fifth grade me covered in towers of toilet paper and soda cans.
Last night was our very first birthday slumber party in the living room of the barn. Poor Cruz succumbed to a barf bug and wasn’t able to make it. It’s quite likely the bug Jake had last weekend when he woke-up at Cruz’s house on Sunday morning and tossed his cookies. Our party was a carefully crafted small group of the Stars and brothers of the Stars: Kai, Big Jackson, Jake and Nate. There was pizza from Giuseppe’s, caesar salad, brownies and double peanut butter chip ice cream. There were nerf gun wars. And the helium balloons suffered immediate death as soon as our guests arrived.
This morning we woke-up and the time had sprung forward. Luca met us downtown and we reclined in luxury for the latest Pixar movie, Onward. I absolutely loved its Brothers Stick Together message. The half-dad wasn’t even too weird. We closed out the marathon birthday party with sandwiches at Ike’s and cones at McConnell’s. All in all it was the easiest party we’ve planned, yet I still needed a recovery nap this afternoon. Today, I’m definitely the mother of two little wet hens.
Last night I slept upstairs in the barn and fell asleep around 9 or so. I’ve been quarantined in the barn this entire week, avoiding the bug that started its usual course: Jacob to James. Around 11:15PM I wake-up and I can still hear the TV. Left to his own devices, Jacob may never go to sleep. I head downstairs and see Michael Jordan slam dunking with some sort of background cartoon animations. Nate is curled up under his Man City blanket, fast asleep.
“Guys, it’s time to go to bed. How much longer till this movie is over?”
Kai says, “One minute.”
Hmmm. Likely story. The movie ends and we scramble around looking for the remote control, which seems to be lost in a mess of blankets and sleeping bags and pillows. I find it next to Nate’s feet.
TV off, lights out. Goodnight people.
This morning I ask Nate when he fell asleep… was it during the Michael Jordan movie? He naturally responds, “What Michael Jordan movie?”
We know whose got a childhood of toilet-papering ahead of him.
Friday Night Lights
We had that short lull after soccer All Stars and now we’re back in it. Baseball and Flag Football. Full swing. Nate’s on the Yankees and the Georgia Bulldogs. Jake scored big, making it onto the starting line-up for the Kansas City Chiefs in just his second year.
Now we know Nate’s been playing roughly 5 soccer games every weekend so he’s in pretty good shape. But, then James verbalized this Friday evening’s schedule for both boys and it goes:
Baseball
Football Pics
Football Pics
Football
Football
Football
Football
Too much?
Man buns
Over the last few days, Nate’s been fairly fixated on tracing his soccer lineage. He tells me he’s great at soccer because I’m great at soccer (naturally). And I’m great at soccer because Granddad’s great at soccer. And then the trail goes cold. Maybe it then leaps all the way back to our British ancestors? We’ll go with that.
Meanwhile, last night we had a hoopin’ and hollerin’ good time watching Man City play Real Madrid in the Champions League. Of course our all-time fave, Kevin De Bruyne, or Kevinder as we call him, scored the winning goal and propelled us to our first ever win against the madrileños. It was so exciting, we’re still all abuzz.
After the match we caught some highlights of the Juve game against Lyon, featuring the primary hero of the third grade “Stars” crowd– Cristiano.
Nate looked visibly distressed when we discovered Ronaldo’s relatively new…. man bun. No joke.
Chickity China
Nate mostly speaks minion. Yes, “minion” as in those little yellow cartoon guys that sometimes have one eye and sometimes have two and speak some version of gibberish Italian. Nate is fluent.
It started way back when little kids make noises that sound like talking, but is really just gibberish. And then it never stopped. He picked-up English, but never abandoned his first language. He greets me each morning with “Bello, Mama guena!”
Lately, he’s added new catch words and phrases.
It probably started with “Macarena, Macarena, Macarena.”
Then it was exclamations of “pina colada!” Whenever the mood struck.
There was a short stint of “Man buns!” Till I explained it was a hairstyle. After that, he didn’t love it as much.
He’s had several weeks of “Mint condition!” Followed by a few months of embarrassing, publicly sarcastic outbursts of “OK… Boomer.”
His latest go-to is “Chinese chickón,” said with a bit of a Spanish accent. Origins unclear… possibly based on a recent radio ad for the Barenaked Ladies concert in Paso? Chickity China, the Chinese chicken. Have a drumstick and your brain starts tickin’…
Then last night, I was quietly writing my blog, just minding my own business, when Nate caught wind of my muse. He tried to delete my writing and ended the encounter with a harrumphing, “You smell like man buns!”
OK… Gen Alpha.
Ear Worm
I’ve gotta hand it to the YouTube generation. Jake was struggling with learning not just where the states go on a blank map, but also then learning the capital cities. That’s when he took it upon himself to find a song to help him learn. Score another one for “Self-directed Learner!” He found this old-timey Animaniacs cartoon and we’ve been singing it ever since:
And now, Wakko Warner with the fifty US states and their capitals:
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Indianapolis, Indiana
And Columbus is the capital of Ohio
There’s Montgomery, Alabama, south of Helena, Montana
Then there’s Denver, Colorado, under Boise, Idaho
Texas has Austin, then we go north
To Massachusetts, Boston, and Albany, New York
Tallahassee, Florida, and Washington, D.C.
Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Nashville, Tennessee
Elvis used to hang out there a lot, ya know
Trenton’s in New Jersey north of Jefferson, Missouri
You got Richmond in Virginia, South Dakota has Pierre
Harrisburg’s in Pennsylvania and Augusta’s up in Maine
And here is Providence, Rhode Island, next to Dover, Delaware
Concord, New Hampshire, just a quick jaunt
To Montpelier, which is up in Vermont
Hartford’s in Connecticut, so pretty in the fall
And Kansas has Topeka, Minnesota has St. Paul
Juneau’s in Alaska and there’s Lincoln in Nebraska
And it’s Raleigh out in North Carolina and then
There’s Madison, Wisconsin and Olympia in Washington
Phoenix, Arizona, and Lansing, Michigan
Here’s Honolulu, Hawaii’s a joy
Jackson, Mississippi, and Springfield, Illinois
South Carolina with Columbia down the way
And Annapolis in Maryland on Chesapeake Bay
They have wonderful clam chowder
Cheyenne is in Wyomin’ and perhaps you make your home in
Salt Lake City out in Utah, where the Buffalo roam
Atlanta’s down in Georgia, and there’s Bismarck, North Dakota
And you can live in Frankfort in your old Kentucky home
Salem in Oregon, from there we join
Little Rock in Arkansas, Iowa’s got Des Moines
Sacramento, California, Oklahoma, and its city
Charleston, West Virginia, and Nevada, Carson City
That’s all the capitals there are.
