(Sunday Paper, Year V, Issue 18)

I’m running out of ways to spice up the Sunday Paper…so it’s back to this ol’ chestnut.

I did an A to Z post once before, and I think it was a really good post.

It was after our trip to North Carolina.

That was a fun trip where we never ran out of things to do and we had a really good time.

This time…..

….well, it’s quite the opposite.

But I do think once again the A to Z thing came through for me..

Activities: If you had asked me when this started, I would have thought we’d have done a puzzle or a board game every night. I’m happy to report that we’ve gotten out for lots of outdoor play time…but I can’t believe that other than the Harry Potter puzzle I told you about way back in Week 1 we haven’t done another puzzle yet. And then the other night we played Bananagrams. We haven’t been doing much game-wise (we have been watching a lot of TV together)…but I feel like it’s good that we have a different activity still in reserve.

Big: Last week it was the four Toy Story movies. This week the (unintentional) Tom Hanks marathon continued with Big. Kathy had suggested it a couple of weeks ago and it lost out in the vote, but we said we’d make it the next movie we watched. I think everyone enjoyed it.

Cleaning: I’m sure I’m not alone in this. I’ve been cleaning out some book shelves and moving some stuff around and trying to better use our storage to maximize our space usage. I feel accomplished in some ways, in other ways I feel like I’m just rearranging the proverbial deck chairs.

Dog Walking: This is the number one form of consistent exercise we’ve been getting…or at least I’m getting. I’ve not been running lately but I have been walking the dog every day, even if it rains. I guess bike riding is up there as the main form of exercise for the girls.

ESPN: I haven’t spent much time in recent years watching ESPN, but lately I’m getting some mileage out of it. I don’t normally watch the NFL Draft but this year I did just to see how they would pull it off. I thought ESPN did a great job (at least for the first couple of nights until the Jets picked, which was all I watched). And I have been watching The Last Dance, the Michael Jordan/Bulls documentary. I don’t know that I’m enjoying it - that wasn’t a particularly fun time for me as an NBA/Knicks fan. But there are flashes of good nostalgia.

Facebook and Twitter: I think I’ve been putting out some good content on the Facebook page, considering not a whole lot is happening to talk about. If you care to catch what you might have missed, you can Like my Facebook page here and you can follow me on Twitter here.

Grill: On Tuesday night we had our first cookout of quarantine and what will surely be our first of many grilled dinners over the next few months. (There was one a month or more ago but I don’t remember exactly when it was.) I was worried I was low on propane, so I took the tank in for a refill. Turned out I wasn’t, but at least that’s something I won’t have to worry about for a while. We had burgers on Tuesday. I’m looking forward to a slightly warmer evening when we can both cook and eat outside.

Hats: Ha! I bet you thought ‘H’ would have been ‘haircut’. Well, it’s not. It’s ‘hats’. Because I gave myself a haircut last Sunday and it was so bad I need to wear hats for the next few weeks.

Ice Cream: In an effort to try to cap our days in a pleasant way I’ve been trying to buy some desserts when we shop. They are non-essential but they sure do help morale. At first I was buying cookie and brownie mixes but lately it’s been ice cream. It is single-handedly undoing the great work I’ve been doing exercising this whole time we’ve been home.

Jeopardy!: I had received a notification that Jeopardy! was allowing people to take an on-line test whenever you wanted, as long as it was before the end of April, instead of waiting for their testing periods to roll around. Since the stay-at-home orders, they might have extended that limit indefinitely…but I forget if that was true or not and I didn’t want to risk it so this week I took the on-line test. It was by far the hardest one I’ve taken and it kicked my butt. You can continue to not look for me on Jeopardy! anytime soon.

Krasinski: Like millions of other Americans, we’ve enjoyed watching ‘Some Good News,’ John Kraskinski’s on-line weekly show highlighting the feel good moments in a feel-bad moment. It’s good for a happy tear or two. But also like millions of Americans, I think, it seems to be losing steam in this house. (I’m not sure if that’s the case everywhere - that’s my speculation.)

Lunch: I’m sure every parent is going through this in some way or another. For whatever reason, the lunches my kids will tolerate in a lunchbox going to school are different from the lunches they eat when they’re at home. (Breakfast on school days compared with breakfast on home days is similar…but less so because there are only so many options, I guess.) So lunch has been a little bit of a challenge, just to keep things creative. Luckily, with Kathy home all the time and taking care of dinner most nights, it’s not too huge of a burden - I kind of handle lunch, she pretty much handles dinner.

Matt Sucich: Long-time readers know how much I love my brother’s music. Even though we’re all stuck at home and he isn’t performing at venues as much as he was…he’s still performing live quite a bit. I’ve been watching him on-line - a couple of Facebook Lives, but mostly on Instagram Live. He does a live one every Thursday night at 9:01pm on his Instagram page, which you can find here. Sometimes they live there for 24 hours, sometimes they’re live and gone. But I would recommend you check it out.

Newspaper: I’ve written before about my love of reading the newspaper every day. That may never be more true than right now. I don’t love the news I’m reading, that’s for sure, but I love the routine of having the newspaper to read with my morning coffee.

Ordering Out: We’ve broken the seal on take-out orders during quarantine. We’re not going to go crazy with it, mind you, but at least one meal a week we’re making an effort to support a local business. So far we haven't gotten sick, which is the number one good thing, but also, everything’s been really tasty too.

Puzzles: Not the jigsaw kind. Last week I told you about the new puzzles in the New York Times every day and just like reading the paper, doing the puzzles is good for my mental health. For the record: the crossword is my favorite, and I love the Acrostic every other Sunday. As far as the new daily puzzles, Two Not Touch is good for my brain, I’m struggling with the Cryptogram, and I love solving the Brain Ticklers with the family.

Quiet: Even though there’s no reason for me to set an alarm these days, I’ve been doing so more often than not. I don’t always get up on the first ring, but I usually am up before 6. And I wasn’t sure why, but in thinking of a letter Q for this Sunday Paper I realized it’s just for a moment or two of quiet before the whole house is up. Sometimes I get a little work done, sometimes I get my exercise done for the day…sometimes I just waste time. But it’s a nice moment to myself, which isn’t always easy to find these days.

Reuse: I read something in the New York Times the other day - a suggestion for getting through quarantine meals: Use one plate throughout the day so you’re using the dishwasher less, etc. I thought it was a great idea and suggested we implement it on Thursday. Which turned out to be chili night, when we used bowls for dinner. So I thought maybe we’ll start on Friday. Beef stew. Bowls. So we’re working on getting this started…but I definitely would like to be using the dishwasher less, so we’ll figure it out eventually.

Simpsons: I was trying to figure out something to watch with the girls and realized that when The Simpsons started I was the same age as my middle child, and my brother was the same age as my youngest, and we loved it, so I started watching it with them and so far they’ve really been enjoying it. It’s amazing how much I remember (I watched every episode at least once for at least the first 15 years or so), and it’s also amazing how the show hit the ground running and never looked back. Some really good episodes right off the bat.

Tree Grows In Brooklyn: Came across another classic book in the house that I figured there’s no time like now, I might as well read it. Thus, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn joins Gone With The Wind and Little Women as classic books John has read in 2020.

Uneasiness: As long as this is going on, the uneasiness will never go away. I will say, though, the last time I went to the grocery store was easier than the time before that. And I expect it will get less uneasy each time…but I don’t know how OK I am with that because everything is not what I’m used to right now…and I don’t want to get used to that. (I hope that makes sense.) For what it’s worth, we’re on an every ten days or so shopping schedule right now, give or take.

Video Games: I go back and forth about whether I’m playing too many video games. I don’t think so, really. It’s good for me because the baseball games have me working towards a goal every day and I enjoy the stats and, well, it’s the only baseball I have right now. I don’t think I’ll be keeping up the habit after things open back up, either, so I think it’s all pretty healthy.

Writing: Work has been going well, for which I am very grateful and acknowledge how lucky I am, considering how uncertain everything is. And I have a creative writing idea percolating, but I haven’t devoted enough energy to that yet. I look forward to keeping you updated on that.

Xylem: The xylem is part of plants, and I’ve cleared a spot for the girls to plant some flowers in the…..

Yard: Between exercise, work, and yard work, sometimes all three don’t get done. I suppose the fact that we’re home all the time is helping in that regard - at least with the yard work. If it’s a nice day, I’ve been trying to get stuff done back there, and I have done a lot and I’m really happy with where I’m at back there considering May just started. I haven’t even mowed for the first time yet and I feel very accomplished.

Zoom: I am not someone who is having constant work meetings all day long on Zoom, so I am not suffering from Zoom fatigue. I rather enjoy my Zoom meetings. There’s the family one with my parents and siblings, which doesn’t happen as often as it probably should, and there’s an extended family one, which I’ve participated in a few times and enjoy. The one consistent one is a weekly chat with Justin, Kevin, and Dave. I’m not a big phone person, so it’s not super-surprising that we didn’t always call each other like this back in non-pandemic times - there were always texts and e-mails but not calls. So it’s been really nice checking in each week and seeing each other and just chatting.

Oh man. That was a lot of writing. Thanks for reading it all. I appreciate it.