Note: I did not complete this puzzle by myself.

(Sunday Paper, Year V, Issue 12)

We are all stay-at-home right now, whether we are parents or not.

I’m learning how to adjust to something that I thought I had already adjusted to - and coming to realize again how much getting out of the house is a part of my healthy stay-at-home routine.

But this is an entirely different and new experience for all of us, so I thought I’d use the Sunday Paper to capture some highlights and lowlights of the experience, and I invite you to share your experiences as well.

Or random facts you learned - like, for me, the fact that the only hot dogs available at the grocery store(s - I went to two) this weekend were beef hot dogs. Which I didn’t buy because the girls don’t like them. I didn’t realize how widely favored pork (I guess? Are those the other kind) hot dogs were.

What follows are my other observations.

HIghlight

*I honestly think I’m more excited about having the kids home than they are to be home. All things considered they would rather be in school. But it’s been really nice having this family time together.

Lowlight

*We’ve structured the day a little bit (actually a lot, but I stray from it quite often)…but there are quite a few times where I’ve been like, “What do we do now?” And then I have a momentary panic that this scenario will repeat itself for weeks. But it passes, because the girls are really great and able to figure out their time for themselves.

Highlights

*Activities: One week in and we haven’t tapped all of our activities. We still have plenty of board games that we didn’t crack this week, and another puzzle. As you can see above, this week’s accomplishment was a 4-D Harry Potter puzzle that had been sitting around for a few years. That took a couple of nights. It was a good one.

*Outside Time: The girls have gotten some good biking in, and the youngest is almost there with riding independently. Last year we didn’t take the bikes out nearly as much as we should have. This year we’ve certainly gotten a jump start on it. I’ve also done some running and biking myself, and I’m keeping to my indoor exercise regimen, which didn’t rely on going to the gym anyway.

Highlight

*Video Games: I haven’t played video games since 2006. I remember because my oldest daughter was a baby and I tried to play while feeding her and it wasn’t working so great and I put down the controller and pretty much never picked it back up. Then we got a Switch a few years ago but I still didn’t play a lot. Then this weekend I downloaded RBI Baseball for the Switch and I’ve been playing a lot of video game baseball, which I defend to Kathy by saying I’ll only play when I otherwise would have been watching March Madness or Major League Baseball. (I like this comparison because so far I have actually played less than the amount of time I would have been watching basketball.)

Lowlights

*Video Games: I haven’t played video games since 2006. Before that it was quite the addiction. This could be the beginning of a very bad trend.

*I’m going to double up on the lowlights here because I want to end on a highlight. It’s a little scary going into the grocery store and seeing empty shelves. It’s not like a hurricane or snowstorm, where maybe they might be out of milk. It’s a lot, and it looks weird and I don’t like it. I like going to the grocery store and knowing I can buy what I want when I want it.

Highlight

*But in the grand scheme of things we’re doing OK. We may not have been able to get hot dogs (what am I a monster? I’m not buying the beef dogs), but we have toilet paper (one thing I learned about myself is that it turns out I do regular grocery shopping like I’m always stocking up for a pandemic) and most importantly we have our health.

I hope you and yours are staying healthy and keeping your distance and not playing too many video games and rotting your brain.

I might stick with this format for the coming weeks, depending on what develops in the world. I would love for you to join the conversation, whether it be on Twitter or on the Facebook page - a highlight and a lowlight, or just one, or an amusing experience.

*Hey, one last thing…I’ll throw it in here for the sake of accountability: I’m thinking of doing a daily video thing where I dig into my teaching roots and do a lesson a day for kids…is that the type of thing that would garner any interest from anyone other than my daughters and maybe my nephews? Let me know somehow (Facebook, Twitter, e-mail text - whatever) and I might start it as soon as this week? Tomorrow?