Weekend Plans Post: A Glimpse Into Another Life

Maribou’s best friend (well, the one who isn’t me) is still exceptionally apprehensive about the whole “pandemic” thing. A few months back, when Maribou wanted to visit, she asked me if I would do stuff like mask 100% of the time when I wasn’t in the house or car and, if I could swing it, work from home and if I couldn’t work from home, could I please take some days off and spend them in the basement. She wanted to be able to tell her bestie that, hey, I haven’t been exposed at all in the last week and neither has Jaybird.

I admit, I sort of rankled at this. I got my shots. I got my booster. I got my bivalent booster. The numbers in El Paso County are really good. This caused a little bit of tension and we were talking about what is and isn’t reasonable at this point in the pandemic when… *MY* bestie told me “Dude! You know how we were finishing the basement? Well, I finished it! Come over! Spend the night! We’ll get a pizza and play video games!” “Can I come over for a week?” “HELL YES!!!!”

And so I went over there for a week. We took time off and just spent the days cooking and watching movies and playing video games and it was like a mini-vacation. He’s got three kiddos. The youngest is 2, the oldest is 6. It is my job to be “Uncle Jaybird”.

So part of my job while I’m over there is to help be funny and distracting for the kids and do stuff like burp for them and have little conversations about the differences between ketchup and mustard and mayonnaise and ranch dressing. This gives Mom and Dad an opportunity to eat their food in silence and just stare off into the middle distance for five minutes. Other times, while they’re dealing with the chaos of the kiddos, I can cook or take the doggy out to the yard and just be an extra pair of hands while they’re doing important other stuff and so they can finish up and then come back to some hot food or a doggy that is ready to play instead of one more chore.

I try to be the absolute best house guest that I can possibly be and it’s really interesting to be around little kids since I never had any.

And to be around little kids outside of any given 10-minute “best behavior” window. To actually sit and talk with them and listen to them discuss the injustice of having to sit in *THIS* chair instead of *THAT* chair, the problems of going to school when other kids are sometimes mean, and the occasional meltdown.

Half of me says “man, I really messed up by not having children.” The other half says “Yeah, you seriously made the right call.”

They are very, very bright lights and I am used to darkened basements.

All that to say, I’ve spent the last week at my buddy’s while Maribou was in quarantine in prep for visiting her bestie and I put Maribou (in an N100 mask) on a plane today after a lovely drive to the airport. As such, this weekend will be spent batchin’ it in a darkened basement after a wonderful week spent with dear friends and dear kiddos and, oh my goodness, it’s nice to be back home.

So I’m going to do some laundry, do some grocery shopping, and maybe go for a jog but I will be doing all of those all by my lonesome. Whew.

So… what’s on your docket?

(Featured image is “Where’s the bearded one?”. Photo taken by Maribou.)