Thursday, June 3 2021

Dear Journal,

Good morning, friends of the journal. In case you're not aware, you woke up on a Thursday morning - June 3rd, 2021 to be a little more descriptive. And now you're reading a journal entry - the part where I say 'good morning', comment on the weather, and set the tone based how I'm feeling. Great, now what happens next? I take a big gulp of coffee, of course.

Sip. Let's kick things off with some animal pictures, shall we? Just some pictures of animals, no strings attached. That's what the Internet was really made for.

According to Ibb and Obb, the tank life is the good life. Marissa's added so many corals now that Rodney has stepped down from his honored position of coral namer. I could sense it coming. There's just too many coral now, and if Rodney wants to conserve his special talent for coming up with vivid nonsense words that roll off the tongue, I stand by him.

You've all met Minnie plenty of times. We caught her sleeping like this, wedged between the couch and the ottoman. She got spooked when she sensed me creeping up on her to take a picture, so I had to reposition her.

I guess I embarrassed her. She rolled over to her side and went back to sleep. She looks so content, doesn't she? Probably dreaming of a world without so many rules where she can poop and pee wherever she wants.

I'll spare you of the worm photos. There's not much happening in the tank right now anyway. As I was getting changed this morning, about a dozen of them surfaced for a spontaneous morning rave around the rotting carrot. And over in my closet, the fat five are still bravely awaiting the next stage of life. I try not to open the box too often. The whole point of keeping them there is to fool them into thinking they've burrowed deeply underground and it's safe to become a pupa. Out of the five, three of them are in the proper curled up position, and the two fattest of the fat five are still just hanging out. We've guessed that since they're fatter they don't yet feel like they're starving.

Yesterday I tried to get a picture with my phone's Night Vision mode. I turned off our bedroom lights and closed the curtain behind me, carefully standing over the box with my phone. I took a dozen pictures, and they all came out pitch black. I think it would be pretty cool to set up a place for the worms to pupate in the dark where they could still be observed.

So there's the animal update. In other news, that IT ticket I was waiting on finally came through. I pushed a single update that caused several slack channels to light up with messages. The restoration of my team's slack integration was met with thunderous emoji applause. Seeing hundreds of messages starting to pour in all at once, I felt a little like Clark Griswold in that scene where he finally gets all the Christmas lights on his house to work.

Yesterday was also an ice skating day. Rodney continues to gain confidence at class. He brought a page from his coloring book to give to his teacher. After I tied his skates, on the way to the door he gave her snow jacket a soft tug and handed her a neatly colored picture of Skye from the Paw Patrol. I saw her nod politely and stick it in a stack of papers on her clipboard.

Rodney climbed onto the ice. The rest of the class started to congregate by the far wall, but Rodney stayed behind to help a little girl climb onto the ice. She fell, and he helped her up again. A line of parents swooned in my direction.

Rodney likes to hang by his buddy Eddy in class. The two hit it off. They use each other to get back up after they've fallen. They watch and learn from each other. Yesterday, they even rough-housed. The two of them stood on top the goal crease exchanging tiny punches, like two hockey players settling their differences the old fashion way. At first, I thought it was funny. I even took a little video, and you can hear me chuckling behind the camera. But the on-and-off horseplay continued throughout the class. Rodney even turned his tiny punches on a girl in his class. He helped her onto her feet, then gave her some tiny phantom punches to her back while she tried to skate away. The smile behind my mask vanished and I started to mentally rehearse my speech. After practice, Rodney was surprised to find me upset.

"What were you doing with Eddie?" I asked.

"Eddie is my best friend," he said. "We were just... beating the crap." His eyes were already welling with tears. I went on to explain that he's there to learn, not play with Eddie, and that there was no excuse for punching that girl in his class - even if it was just pretend.

Marissa and I sat him on the deck when we got home. Marissa remarked that this was good practice for Kindergarten - that when a teacher is in the room his only job is to sit still and listen. Slow nods, hugs, and I'm sorry's, and we all moved past it.

After dinner, we got some good outside time in. We got a bag of old sports stuff from my parents this weekend, so we dumped everything out in the yard and unleashed Rodney to burn some energy.

The neighbor girl Lyra even joined in on the fun. Lyra is all about sharing. Her parents should be proud of how important sharing is to her. With every foam football or wiffel ball bat she picked up, Lyra made the rounds between Rodney, Marissa, Miles, and myself. Your turn. My turn. His turn. We share.

Lyra picked up the dogs' long rope toy. I playfully tugged the other end. "See, the puppies use this for tug-of-war," we explained. Lyra was reluctant to pull the other end of the rope, and it immediately made sense. Tug-of-war is definitely not sharing. It's the opposite of sharing. It's anti-sharing, and thus Lyra was not a fan.

Thanks for stopping by today. Have a great Thursday, everybody.