Saturday, February 29 2020

Dear Journal,

Good morning, everyone! Hope you're doing well on this Sunny leap day. It feels so good to be back in my own room at my own computer drinking my own coffee. Our home is even better than I imagined it would be. This morning, I'm grateful for home.

This morning, we all woke up on the later side. I woke up to Rodney hooting and jumping around in his room. I changed him, then ushered him bottomless down the stairs to dig a fresh pair of pants and underwear out of his bag in the kitchen. After setting him up with some cartoons on the couch, I got to cooking breakfast. This morning, I had a meager supply to work with - just two eggs and one potato leftover from last nights soup. I diced the potato, rinsed it, then taking extra care not to spill any of the little cubes, dried them on a paper towel before shallow frying them in olive oil. I toasted some pieces of bread and cut them into wedges. I scrambled the first egg for Marissa and cooked the second sunny side up, excising some of the whites for Rodney's plate (and that's not me being stingy, he actually prefers the whites!). As a finishing touch, I scraped the near empty container of creme friache in the fridge clean to make two dollops for the potatoes. Not a bad breakfast for just a potato and two eggs.

"I slept the best I have ever slept," said Marissa coming down the stairs and joining us at the table. I nodded in agreement.

"This morning when I woke up, I was so comfortable it felt like I was floating in warm water."

We had a crazy day yesterday. It was a blur of code, slack, packing, and remote meetings. We had to check out of our rental house by eleven, and even with our packing game at peak form this past week, it still took 45 minutes to scour the house and get everything in the car. With Marissa and Rodney in the car with ten minutes before checkout to spare, I did a final walkthrough of the house. Just before locking the door, I swiped an energy drink out of the fridge. I felt I had earned that one. The day we moved in, the owner texted us with instructions to remove it from the freezer. Apparently the cleaning crew had left it behind.

After locking the door behind me and leaving the key in the lock box, we finally made our way home. Our house looked like an empty art gallery. The floors looked so bright and healthy. We spent a few minutes pacing around, observing the rooms in our home.

"They look new, but they still look like our floors," I said shuffling my feet. "Does that make sense? I was worried they would look too showy."

"Yeah," said Marissa in agreement scanning the floor with her eyes. "They look so good, I don't even remember what they used to look like. Weren't they orange or something?"

Marissa and I dragged the couch and chairs out of the kitchen. I hooked up the TV and Marissa set up some of Rodney's toys. Marissa ordered Portillo's, which arrived at our door shortly after. "I ordered a lot of food," said Marissa while opening the paper bags. "Just… brace yourselves."

In our half assembled dining room, we sat around the table silently and viciously devouring chicken, burgers, Italian beef, and fries. I felt like I wanted to sleep and run around at circles all at the same time. "OK," I said dabbing my mouth with a napkin. "I'm going to jump online… you good?" Marissa flashed me a thumbs up while chewing.

I worked the rest of the afternoon from our chair in the empty living room. I was pulled into an urgent project, and would need to have a demo ready by the afternoon. "OK Nate," I said in our remote sync up. "I just wolfed down a lot of Portillo's and I'm feeling good. This is the last thing that stands between me and a nap."

Nate chuckled. "OK," he replied. "Let's do this."

As I worked, Rodney joined me in the living room watching ninja turtles. He jumped off the couch, and circled me with his makeshift ninja swords, trying to entice me in combat. "DADA. YOU'RE SHREDDER," Rodney yelled, widening his stance and brandishing his weapons. "Not now, dude," I said, fending him off while running shell commands and bouncing between chrome tabs on my laptop.

Marissa put Rodney down for a nap, and I plugged in my laptop upstairs and joined the meeting just as Nate was introducing our work. The demo went smoothly, and after one final debriefing meeting, I shut my laptop and slumped in my chair. With Rodney sleeping in his room and Marissa asleep on the couch, I happily sneaked out of the house to go to the grocery store. As I passed through the dining room, I recoiled in surprise. Marissa had practically finished putting the whole house together. All that remained was a duffle bags in the corner of the dining room.

I returned from the grocery store and got to cooking dinner, letting the smell of carrot soup slowly wake Marissa and Rodney up from their naps. Once again, we sat down at our dining room table, but it felt different this time. The adrenaline was finally starting to wear off, and our house was feeling more complete. Nothing winds you down like a good bowl of soup.

After putting Rodney to bed, we unpacked a bit more, then called it a night a little earlier, retreating to the couch to catch up on Better Call Saul. After finishing the episode, we went to bed and sailed off to sleep.

We have a fun day planned today. We have some more things to unpack - my closet is still empty, our rugs our rolled up in the basement, and our books are still packed up, but we're taking it slow this weekend. We're going to run some family errands, and we're kicking around the idea of celebrating our homecoming at Dave & Busters.

It feels good to be home. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you have a relaxing weekend.