Day 10:
Howie:
When I sat down to write this entry, it was Thursday morning. A brief discussion with Craig had me thinking I’d somehow missed an entire day and that I should have been writing about Day 11, but we got our days figured out. When this goes up, the day is Day 11, but what follows is about Day 10, which was indeed Wednesday. As you can imagine, our days are all blurring together.
With that out of the way, I’ll now proceed to talk about Wednesday. A day during which I managed to accomplish very little in my house. Even cooking was super basic, as breakfast was instant oatmeal, lunch was leftovers, and dinner was a frozen pizza. Wednesdays, as is the norm, also happen to be my wife’s day off. As a local physician, yesterday and last Wednesday’s days at home were necessary for her sanity, in a manner of speaking, because being a health care professional right now is, obviously, a high-stress job. Moreso than normal.
One of the things I managed to cram into my tasks yesterday was something I’ve wanted to do for a few weeks - I watched Picard. Thanks to the incomparable Patrick Stewart giving the world a chance a free month subscription to CBS All Access, I jumped into the show at the second episode (the first was a free preview) and quickly realized I needed to watch the rest. I started watching Tuesday evening. This morning (Thursday) I was able to watch the season finale after finishing up the remaining available episodes Wednesday night. As far as science fiction dramas that rely heavily on plot and character development - as the best ones do - this gets high marks from me. Whereas there seems to be a battle between Star Trek and Star Wars fans about which is better, if anything, Picard illustrates that the allure of Trek is that humanity always should strive to be better versions of itself. Star Wars, on the other hand, is more two-dimensional good vs. evil. Both can be enjoyed by fans. Both have multiple generations of fans. But right now? In my opinion? One is significantly better written than the other and is much more layered in its storytelling.
Want proof? Watch The Mandalorian. Enjoyable, it was. Much less nuanced, was it too.
Anyway, while I binged Picard yesterday, I managed to finally finish cleaning my “office” and...ok I lied. I’m finishing that once I’m done with this. Then I’ll work out for the first time in a long, long time. Honestly, that was another part of the reason to get the office clean. It’s a big enough space to do what I want to do to get into shape. Although, if I am looking at everything through rose colored glasses right now, staying home has brought down the amount of snacking I didn’t realize I was doing.
Regarding my kids, on Wednesday my son “visited” us to participate in a Zoom conference call with his social studies class. It turns out there is another one later today and tomorrow with his English class. I’m loving how well how many teachers have adapted to this distance learning and how they are embracing all the modern ways of keeping in touch with their students. When all this craziness subsides, I look forward to seeing which changes are kept and which ones are not. At worst, this is a time when everyone will find out what works well and what does not.
As for my daughters, they did zero school work yesterday. That will change this afternoon.
And, finally, I wish to rebut what Craig said about Gargoyles in his Day 9 entry. I have a lot to say about his nasty, negative comments. In this case, though, I think I’ll hold off on going down that rabbit hole. Let’s just say he is wrong, must not have given it enough of a chance, and leave it at that. As far as Euchre goes, I take responsibility for the game bracket seedings, and since I never “got” Euchre, it was relegated to a 15th seed. Touche!
Craig:
Wednesday. The day it all started coming apart. Maybe it was because I wasn’t feeling well. No, I didn’t have the SARS. I had a migraine/stress headache. I bet we’ve all had a few more of those lately. Whatever it was, the girls were at each other all day. And they were loud. Very loud. I swear, they picked at each just so they could fight.
And the school work… The twins are doing fine with it, although sometimes it seems to me to be a lot. Now Corliss is a different beast all together. She almost refuses to do any work and argues whenever we bring it up. She is so far behind on her assignments, it’s unbelievable. Wendy had to go through her assignments and prioritize them so she would get something done. We’ll see how Thursday goes. She wants to take Friday off from school work since it's her birthday. She has a lot to do to make that happen, though.
The arguing between the girls came to a head around dinner time when they started getting on Wendy’s case about things. That didn’t go over well. And then I made a huge mistake while making dinner. I was trying to add chili powder to some meat and I opened the wrong side of the lid. Instead of the shaker side, I opened the scoop side and proceeded to dump three open shakes onto the meat. With having a headache and being tired of listening to the girls fight, I just lost it. I was very angry with myself. Probably more angry than I normally would have been. I yelled for a minute before Wendy saved the day by meticulously scooping away most of the offending spice and making the meal palatable.
This has been an interesting week and a half. The issue is not being home with the kids. It’s the whole idea of not being able to go anywhere or do anything. I think once you’re told you can’t do something, you want to do it all the more. Sort of like the basketball nets at the city parks. What do you mean I can’t? Unfortunately, we can’t. That’s just the way it is right now. I completely commiserate with everyone about hindered lives. And I’m still not entirely sold on the drastic isolation measures that have been taken. But, I’m not an expert. I’ll leave it to them.
Thursday will be a busy day. Hopefully, Corliss will accomplish a lot of homework. Hopefully I’ll get started with painting. And Thursday marks the season one finale of Star Trek:Picard. It’s almost like date night for Wendy and I. The kids aren’t watching the show (yet), so we get an hour to relax on the couch together and watch a little television.
Hope you’re all doing well. Chin up, Wilbur!