Monday, October 26 2020

Dear Journal,

Good morning, everyone. Happy Monday. Hope you have something warm to wear and some hot coffee to sip on.

It's no secret that I'm the kind of person to lean into the winter. If I had a favorite season, that would be it. Here we are in October, and all it took was a small dusting of frost for me to let my Winter enthusiasm run hog wild. Yesterday for dinner we celebrated the first frost with some beef and vegetable stew, a spicy bottle of malbec, and of course, curling on the couch to watch the movie Frozen.

Going to make a painfully uncontroversial understatement here, but Frozen is a pretty good movie, isn't it? Each year we watch it, it seems to climb the ranks of my personal favorite Disney movies - not that that's a very big list anyway. Frozen has earned my respect. The opening score gives me chills. I find the imagery and the characters compelling. There's lots of little hidden jokes sprinkled around for the parents. I'm as shocked as anyone that I've become so loyal to a Disney movie. Maybe I just had to endure enough terrible kids media before that could ever become a possibility. Helplessly sitting through the endless repeated punishment of Trolls, Bolt, and - shudder - Blippi - might make you count your blessings and appreciate that narrow sliver of good movies you can watch with your kids.

"I'm so glad that they never made a sequel to this movie," said Marissa during the opening credits.

"Yeah, isn't that great?" I replied. "How cool that they just left it alone, it makes the movie even better."

We're well aware they made a Frozen 2. But Marissa and I have entered into a sacred pact where we don't mention it and just pretend it never happened. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's the last time I'll ever mention it in this daily publication.

Rodney is also excited for winter. Putting him to bed, he started to ramble about all the fun winter activities he planned for the morning. "I'm going to make SNOW ANGELS," he said crawling into his blanket with wide eyes. Needless to say, the small dusting last night wasn't quite enough to make that possible. Rodney will have to be a little more patient.

"I'm depressed about winter," said Marissa clutching her hoodie, staring out into the backyard. "We've been talking about it like it was far off, but now that I can see snow, it's just so..."

"Permanent?" I said finishing her phrase.

Marissa nodded. "Yeah. I guess it feels a little permanent."

"We'll have fun with it," I said. "It might suck, but I'm prepared to gut through it and make it as fun as possible."

Sip. How's your Monday going? How are you feeling today? Did you wake up in bed with your head and legs switched around? Around our house, we call that pulling a Miles. Lately, each time we get him out of his crib, he's turned around the opposite way. I'm sure it gradually happens throughout the night with incrementally small wiggles and squirms, but I'd like to imagine that he's instead figured out how to spin quickly on his butt, like a break dancing move. Just picture it. A baby who secretly break dances when his parents aren't watching. I ought to pitch that to Disney - that could be a movie.

I'm feeling good today. The stars are aligning for a great start to the week. My on-call shift ended an hour ago. We have good food and wine in the house. And of course, the Bears play today. Sitting here in my Bears jersey drinking coffee out of my jumbo sized Bears mug, I'm wondering if I'm laying on the enthusiasm a little thick. In fact, if the Packers didn't have a nice little blowout over the Texans yesterday, I might have had to leave my laptop camera off today. I don't want to be accused of rubbing in the fact that the Bears are the top playoff seed in the NFC right now.

A weekend without football felt strange. With all the exciting games happening yesterday, I felt a little left out. But I'll take a Monday night game too - especially one during my first night off duty. Here's to shutting off my obnoxious phone and leaving it in the corner so I can nervously sit perched on the edge of my couch.

In other news, make sure you remember to take your vitamins today. For us, that means four, soon to be five supplements - not counting the Flintstone vitamins. Marissa and I got in a small quarrel over what I see as a growing problem.

"Is it OK if I get some Calcium too?" said Marissa. I slammed my beer on the counter and bit my lip.

"Calcium?" I repeated. "We gotta take Calcium too? Who says?"

"I remember a nutrition prof I had say that Calcium was good, and I don't drink a lot of dairy."

"Well can you just start drinking milk?" I asked.

"I don't like the texture," said Marissa.

"What about our water, there isn't enough calcium in it?" I retorted.

"I don't drink our water, I like bottled," said Marissa. "You don't have to take it if you don't want to."

"Yeah, but it's still another vitamin we have to add to our routine - I still gotta help arrange them all on the cutting board before we go to bed. And they take up space on the window sill." I said. "I just think it's getting out of hand."

"Do you have something against vitamins?" said Marissa.

"I just..." I began to stumble over my words. "I don't want to commit to taking like nine vitamins forever. It's a little tedious. Like, how many vitamins is enough"

"Twenty six," said Marissa with a smirk. "The whole alphabet. What, are you picturing some kind of apothecary spilling over into the kitchen.

"Sort of, yes," I laughed nervously. A thought popped into my head. "What about multi vitamins," I said, snapping my fingers. "Can we just switch to multis? You know - consolidate."

"I think those Flintstone gummies are technically multivitamins," said Marissa. She picked up the colorful can to inspect the label. "Oh, so it's got C and D. You know if you want, we can probably stop taking those if we're just good about the gummmies."

"That helps," I sighed. "Sounds like a small thing, but that clears a little more room on the shelf."

Thanks for stopping by today. Have a great morning, everyone.