Sunday, January 5 2020

Dear Journal,

Good morning, everyone! Hope you're having a good Sunday. This morning, time seems to be getting away from me. The plan was to wake up early and enjoy some coffee before church, but all of the sudden it was 9:30, and Rodney was awake. Before I knew it, the 11 AM service was bearing down on us, and it became sort of a rushed situation.

At least Rodney is having a pretty low key morning. He was pretty upset that I made him put on a button down shirt, but we find that he usually comes around to any outfit as long as he has time to wind down and sit by himself. This morning, he's sitting on the living room couch watching Bill & Ted with a bowl of Cheerios. Last I checked him, he was in good spirits.

Even if we sometimes have trouble getting out the door for church, Sundays are great. After church, we're going to go out as a family for pizza at Ian's, then we're hanging out around the house, finishing up projects while we watch the end of the Saints & Vikings game.

Yesterday was a pretty great day. After a long, hearty breakfast, I spent the rest of the morning outside with Rodney collecting the Christmas lights. As I teased the Christmas lights off our porch awning, bushes, and front yard tree, I did my best to keep things organized, but you can only do so much with Christmas lights. Especially the dangling "icicle" style lights. Those things are going to look like hell, no matter how you wrap them. Yesterday, I tried to at least bunch them up in their own large ziploc bag. But it felt good to get the lights done. And having everything packed up by January 4th is pretty respectable as a timetable I think.

After packing away the lights, I spent some time playing hockey with Rodney in the driveway. Rodney's getting pretty good with a hockey stick. He officially shoots lefty. At some point he even figured out how to hold his stick correctly, and his shot it looking pretty decent these days.

We went inside to escape the cold and eat some lunch. Marissa was working on the living room windows, and she too took a break to eat some leftover pizza with us. I straightened up the kitchen while Rodney finished up, then we all took a nap. Marissa and I drifted off to sleep on the couch, letting Cheap Seats play on shuffle.

I rediscovered the show Cheap Seats last night. While we were eating lunch, a picture of me, Marissa, and the Sklar Brothers appeared on our desktop computer slide show. Over lunch, we reflected on how fun of a comedy show that was. "Those guys are pros," I said while chewing. "And I can't believe they spent like five minutes talking to us in the middle of state street. They were super cool." "And they talked to us after the show too, and remembered us," Marissa added.

Reflecting on that comedy show put me in a Sklar mood. Cheap Seats was a TV show they used to do on ESPN classic, where they would watch old sporting events and add their own snarky commentary, Mystery Science Theater style. I still have every episode of the show saved on my Plex server, and it's great to nap to.

The house started to slowly wake up in the early evening. I got Rodney up, we put the dogs away, and we all jumped in the car to go bowling. Rodney brought his stuffed giraffe, and insisted I carry him zipped up in my coat. We bowled one game, taking a long break for pizza, then several more breaks to deal with our broken bowling lane. The first time Marissa walked up to the counter to tell them our lane was stuck, the guy gave her some attitude. But after the fifth time, he was much more apologetic, and by the end of the game he had hooked us up with some free bowling coupons.

In last night's game, I bowled a 109. Rodney bowled something in the low nineties, and Marissa held down last place with something in the mid forties. Keep in mind that Rodney is using the bumpers and the metal bowling ball ramp.

After putting Rodney to bed, I spent most of the night under the blanket on the couch. My back has still been a little iffy all weekend, and I was convinced that I needed just one more solid period of inactivity, so I grabbed Ziggy and crashed on the couch. We kept the Cheap Seats marathon rolling, watching more episodes on shuffle into the night while Marissa kept painting the windows.

I was grateful I got to take it easy most of the day yesterday. For me, next work week is one of those weeks that makes me scared to look at my calendar. Last time I checked, I had four code screens and a meeting on top of what my usual week looks like. The Sunday scaries are mounting. But before we get carried away thinking about how stressful the work week is going to be, there's still plenty of Sunday left. We haven't even left for church yet. We have pizza, football, and home projects as a distraction, not to mention more coffee to drink. There's plenty of things to do before I even start thinking about Monday.

The coffee is starting to kick in, and now I'm feeling pretty good. In a few minutes, I'll jump in the shower, and I might even have time to brew an extra batch of tequila infused coffee to drink in church. That stuff is really starting to grow on me. I'll have to check out that place's website later to see what else they got.

So that's what I got today. Hope you all have a wonderful, relaxing Sunday. If you have a scary work week coming up, I'd recommend taking some generous couch time and watching old episodes Cheap Seats.