Monday, April 19, 2021

Social Distancing Journal, Days 382 thru 390: Happy Pandemic Easter #2!

 Day 382: Tuesday, March 30

On Sunday the little dogs had a scuffle over food. By Tuesday they were back to normal, but Phenom was taking to licking all the food in the bowl and low-key growling at Porkchop, who just kept looking at me like 'can you please do something about him?' 


Hayden, meanwhile, worked on a new Tinkering Tuesday box. 


And Etta was just being Etta. 


Day 383: Wednesday March 31

I came back from my morning walk to find Peyton had put away the dishes, but left like literally every other cabinet open. I took a picture so I could later show him when he  would inevitably say I was exaggerating. 


My Misfits order came on Wednesday, too. It was a day late, which wasn't awesome. But, everything still looked A-OK. I've learned leafy greens are not the best to order in the boxes. Everything else holds up ok, though. 


My orchid also started blooming.


And Asa made us some delicious enchiladas for dinner. 


And of course, on our evening walk, Hayden visited with the neighborhood cats. He knows all of their names by now- unless we don't know their owners, then we named them. That fluffy one there is Sprinkles. (An Office reference for those of you familiar). The less fluffy one is Snowball. 




Day 384: Thursday, April 1. 

Asa and I finally finished the puzzle on Thursday. This one took a minute. 


But it was super cool once finished. 



And, a little late, I switched out our coffee mugs to our Spring ones and put away the winter ones. 


We also had a fun mail day, or as fun as it can be while you're still waiting on your stimulus check. Aunt Patti sent me all kinds of awesome newspapers. 


And some homemade Easter candy. 

 

Hayden took an afternoon walk with me. I'd been struggling with my back, so I hadn't been walking Ellie in the mornings. 


And we saw not one- but two baby gators. 


And for dinner we had a ton of roasted veggies, pita chips, fruit, and greek chicken. So, it turns out, I actually kind of enjoy roasted fennel. 


I felt so bad about not taking Ellie out as much when everyone was playing basketball, I took her out on the porch with me. 


Our nice nights for basketball will be gone before we know it. 


Day 385: Friday, April 2. 

Last Fish Fry Friday! 


But also likely our last sub-70 degree day until October, maybe November. So we had to make it count. I put on my favorite sweatshirt and wore my hair down (which I never, ever do). 


And we snuggled up on the couch with the doors open. 


Delano and Dipper didn't seem to mind so much though. They just hung out in the sun. 


For dinner, Asa made us Five Guys. 


And then we had movie night to watch Godzilla vs. Kong. 


Phenom was happy to wear his sweater again. In his old age, he's been very whiney about being cold. 


I caught him mid-lick here. 


But anyway, look how cute.


We actually got Peyton and Calib to join us for the movie, we can usually entice them if we put out candy and popcorn! It was decent. I mean, it's not some masterpiece. But, it was fun. And movie nights at home are something to do. 


Ugh. But also my back was seriously killing me. It was so bad at night, I'd lay on the floor to watch TV with Asa. 


Day 386: Saturday, April 3

Bike ride Saturday yielded some good gator sightings. 



Some of them much bigger than others, for sure. This guy was pretty big. 


We also packed ourselves a picnic lunch. 


We even recently got ourselves some silicone wine glasses to bring along with us, too. They're squishy, so they fit virtually anywhere- and reusable, so no waste! 


Some of the boys expressed interest in dying some eggs for Easter, which we don't always do. So Asa did a couple rounds of hard boiled eggs in the Instapot, and I set up the dye outside. 



I think we went a couple years without doing this, then for Pandemic Easter #1 we brought it back as something to do- so it stuck for Pandemic Easter #2. 



We left some in at the end to see how vibrant we could get them. They turned out fun. 


Saturday night, Asa and I had date night with Lobster Ravioli, Steak and Salad. 


And then, I made the "cookie thing" as we call it, for dessert for everyone. It's basically one of those giant pizookie things from BJ's Brewhouse. Super easy (and way cheaper) to make at home. 


Saturday night we decided to do our egg hunt in the dark. 


Or, more like a hybrid situation. Because of everyone's sleep schedules we decided we'd do eggs Saturday night. We hid the eggs, and did half the hunt in the dark then turned on the lights for the rest of it. 


Calib is notoriously terrible at finding Easter eggs. 


His basket of "found" eggs included the wooden ones from the White House Easter Egg Roll, and chapstick. 


You can notice his frustration here. 


So, while the person who gets the most plastic eggs nets themselves an extra $5, everyone has a $20 egg hidden somewhere pretty difficult. (Eggs are color coded so nobody gets confused- And for fun there is a golden egg hidden somewhere that anyone can find for another $5). 

Peyton found his first (after also finding Hayden's). 


It didn't take Hayden too much longer to find his in the box with the checkers from my dad's chess set. 


But Calib, well, he's ALWAYS the last to find his. Everyone else was already on to snacks while Calib was still looking. 


It took about an hour for him to finally find it. We buried it in the dog food container. He even said like 45 minutes earlier "I'm going elbow deep in this dog food if I have to", and then he forgot and moved onto something else. 


Day 387: Sunday, April 4

And we've come back around to our second holiday in quarantine. 



Sunday morning,  I set out their baskets for them so they would get them as they woke up (which for some of them was like 2 pm). 



Hayden is not as big of a fan of snack food in general, so he also got all kind of Shakespeare books. But instead of being actual Shakespeare, it's just the stories in kids books forms. And since I suck at deciphering what the hell is going on in Shakespeare, I thought these would be a perfect compromise. 


For breakfast I made our traditional bunny pancakes. 


Hayden was the only one who chowed up for breakfast though. 


And then we took a nice afternoon walk. We wanted to do smores as a special evening treat, but we were lacking dry firewood, so we collected some while we were out. 


Calib got up midday and checked out his basket. 


And Peyton also humored me with a picture. 


For dinner I made a fun little board of all kinds of special treats. 


I know it was a hit, because everyone showed up (including Peyton, eventually). 


I also made some deviled eggs. Some normal. Some Pesto. 


Still a little chilly, Phenom sported his Easter best. 


And since it was chilly it made for the perfect evening for a fire. 


We decided we were going to try and roast some peeps. 


But it didn't really work. 


It mostly didn't roast, and when it did, it just kept falling off the stick. 


Nobody ended up trying them. But, I had regular marshmallows on hand, so it wasn't that big of an issue. 


Day 388: Monday, April 5

Monday April 5th, Florida opened up vaccine eligibility to everyone over 18. But, appointments were still hard to come by. And doing it for all four of us was proving tricky. We figured with Asa's long days on Monday and Tuesday, we would see how the later part of the week shook out. 

I'd be lying if I didn't have a bit of vaccine envy though. Ohio had opened it up everyone sooner, so a lot of my Facebook feed was people getting the vaccine. And I'm glad everyone was getting it, but I wanted to be one of those people. 

A week prior, Florida opened up vaccines to those 40 and up. But, even that I miss by a few months, and I'm the oldest in the house. Also, I was like the youngest in my graduating class so when Ohio was at 40 and up, most people I graduated with were posting their vaccine selfies too. (Ironically, I remember on my senior class trip I was one of the few not 18 and couldn't go to any clubs. Us 17 year olds reasoned one day they'd all be 40 and we'd still be young and 39- and now even that wasn't working out for us!) 

So anyway, Monday I was trying to power through- with my backache, no vaccine and STILL no stimulus check, which had been sent 10 days ago at this point. It wasn't my *favorite* day. 

But I did decide I was going to walk Ellie again. So I took her all the way around the loop, without ever having to actually hold on to the leash. She only pulls on my if she sees a lizard. But then she really pulls. I left her leash like this, so I could grab it if I had to, but if she was just lunging in the grass at a lizard, I could let go. It worked out perfect. Ellie is such a good girl, she really could walk herself. 


We are having some progress in the garden, though not as much as I'd like. 


Only one of my sunflower seeds took this year. 


And it'll be awhile, but we do have baby lemons coming back! 


Asa, meanwhile, has been using his pot ash for the plants. 


We've got some big banana peppers. 


And my squash and zucchini plants are getting bigger. 


On my afternoon walk, I came across some baby cranes. 



and baby gators. 


Speaking of babies...


And for dinner on Monday we had a low country boil. Usually this is our Easter dinner, but we put it off because of weird sleeping schedules. 


Hayden visited with his cat friends on our dinner walk... 



And we saw some more baby cranes! 



Day 389: Tuesday, April 6

Another long day for Asa. Another day without the stimulus. Another day without the vaccine. That all called for comfort food for dinner: Nancy Reagan Mac & Cheese. 


I also finally got around to moving the pictures above the couch. We're spreading them out throughout the house so we can finally frame and display our favorite puzzles! 


Porkchop, meanwhile, has decided he's a big fan of his new-ish bed being in this new-ish place. 


And Asa had himself another graduate. I believe this was graduate #5! So, of course, we had rootbeer floats to celebrate. 


                                            Day 390: Wednesday, April 7

So, on my memories on Facebook for Wednesday the video Hayden and I did of the beginning of Toy Story came up. And I thought, man, we used to be so ambitious and fun. And now I'm like 'here's a picture of my dinner and some animals I saw on one of my three walks around the loop" 

So, yea, here's my dinner. To be fair, Asa made it, and it was delicious. 


And I did see a gator on my evening walk. 


And that was pretty much it for Wednesday. Peyton did hang out with us a little more than normal though. Check on Porkchop intently watching him eat. 


Oh and I did hit my 200 day streak on Duolingo, so at least I've done something with my time, right? (I lost an 80 day streak in the beginning, so I wasn't going to let that happen again!) 

So that's that. The next blog, I'll cover the most anticipated event of quarantine: getting vaccinated! It was an event for us, for sure. 



No comments:

Post a Comment