Thank you for checking in and letting me know that you all are okay, friends! That really made my day. I just found an old teddy bear and I carefully placed the little guy in one of our front windows. There is a fun trend going around the world, called “Bear Hunt.” Parents who are trying to get their little ones out for walks and bike rides, look at houses and count the number of bears they can find in the homes’ windows. Someone started up the Bear Hunt in our neighborhood. I hope that it brings the little ones joy and their parents some respite. The Bear Hunt game brought me some cheer, carefully positioning our little guy, smooshed up against the glass of our window. I wonder how many times that our bear will get counted today. I hope that he gets counted many, many times, and with the counts, I hope, comes a lot of smiles.
Another thing that I read about the other day, was that some schools are doing “Virtual Spirit Weeks.” So, I believe yesterday was “Pajama Day”, which is something probably more of us celebrated without even realizing that we were part of “Virtual Spirit Week.” People are so ingenious and creative and hard to keep down. I love it!
It’s interesting to observe yourself and the rest of the world, with how we are handling this forced shutdown. I’m honestly afraid that I’m too rattled right now, to really take full advantage of what this break could do and mean for me. My son said, “Mom, this is your time. Write a book.” I just can’t seem to get motivated to start on that project, or much of anything else, honestly. I find myself being highly distractible right now. I can’t even keep a focus on reading, which is one of my absolute favorite pastimes. I guess that once I come into more of an acceptance of everything that has happened, and an understanding that this is going to be our way of life for a while, I will be able to recreate a temporary, satisfying new routine. I just hope that this dawning of an “acceptance of the situation” doesn’t come too late for me, so that I can fully take advantage of the hidden gifts that this time has to offer.
In other news, I have actually put on make-up about 3-4 times since we have been holed up in our home, for about two weeks. I have found this to be a particularly uplifting experience, when I have mustered the energy to do it. It is like seeing an Extreme Makeover in my own mirror. There is a remarkable difference between “I don’t even give a damn. I haven’t seen my brush in days. Baseball hats are my friends,” to “Wow, mascara really is a difference maker and maybe our grandmothers were on to something, when they coined the term, ‘lipstick fixes everything’.”
Something that really made me chuckle during our “house stay” so far, was the night that my daughter forced my husband and our sons to play the old-fashioned board game Mystery Date with her. My daughter has a dark side and she was utilizing the passive-aggressive control that her birthday afforded her, to torture the men in our lives. Misery loves company, I suppose. Mystery Date was a board game first released by Milton Bradley in 1965. The object of the game is to collect “the right clothes” for “the right date” and to not get stuck with “The Pest”, a scraggly looking guy who doesn’t look like he could take a lady out for a McDonalds hamburger, on a good day. I quickly agreed to wash the dishes, so that I could just watch this scenario, like it was a hilarious sitcom. The last time Mystery Date was re-released by Milton Bradley was in 2005. I don’t think it will be re-released any time soon, in this era of #MeToo. It struck me that men would probably get tarred and feathered, if they had a male version of the Mystery Date game. What would the female version of “the pest” look like and how loud would the outcry be? Also, all of the pawns of the game, are pretty ladies, who look like Stepford Wives with just different colored dresses and shades of hair. In today’s world, shouldn’t the pawns be men and women and everything in-between????
Clearly, I have too much time on my hands, in order to spend too much time in my head, thinking about things like the Mystery Date board game, and its social implications. My family has probably reached a time in our seclusion where we are starting to drive each other crazy. I have enough self-introspection to understand that my habit and my obsession of overthinking just about everything, loses its charm quickly.
I love you all. I know that we will all get through this, better than we were before. Take good care. Stay well and please stay in touch.
Fortune for the Day – “One finds joy in living through love.”