The New BOO

 

The School Board canceled Trick or Treat, so we just had pizza for dinner with Halloween candy for dessert. Cilla put candy corn and and pumpkins on hers on top of the pepperoni. I put some on mine, too. Josh said, “Now we have another tradition,” and got some of the Halloween Peeps, bit off their heads and put both the heads and bodies on separate slices. I took pictures.

The grade school and middle school let the kids wear costumes. The high school didn't, but the kids all wore black and orange and appropriate accessories like cat and rabbit ears, witches' hats, and devil horns. They couldn't wear tails, though.

I went up to the attic to see if I could find any old costumes for Cilla. (Josh was a vampire, his favorite).  There was an angel from a Christmas pageant, the usual witches, the wig Betsey had worn as Kim Kardashian. (Betsey had been able to wear the dress (short and black) later, as she always reminds me, although I didn't let her wear it to the Christmas Eve service). Finally, we chose the dress I'd worn as Amy the year Aunt Pooh decided to do Little Women. Fortunately for Jim, I could always fill in for him when Aunt Pooh did themes. That year, he was Boy George.

The Newest New Normal

 

School has started. All summer we had been hearing about the different options, but it wasn't until September first that the school board decided to go live. Of course, they said they could always go back to video and home schooling.

That hadn't worked out too well for us. We got everyone a new laptop (an early Christmas present).  Ed fussed they would be back in school by Easter. I reminded him of all those wars that were going to be “over by Christmas.”

Fortunately, Ed and I could both work from home, so we could “help” with the online classes, Ed with math and science and me with English and social studies. Unfortunately, Ed and I have different philosophies. Mine is “Isn't this fun!” Ed's is “You have to learn, so you can go college and get a good job and make a lot of money. So suck it up!”

Josh wanted to know what Jesus would do, since “money was the root of all evil.” Ed told him that he would have more money to give to the poor.

Betsey, who is planning to be the AOC of her generation, (She got AOC glasses when she needed a new prescription. Fortunately or unfortunately, she already had AOC hair.) said that was classist. Ed snorted. I said she was right, but the more you know, the more you can help people. He snorted again.

They gave us two weeks to get ready. We did back to school shopping online, and for a while it was like Christmas every day with new packages arriving. When we dropped the kids off at school, it was like Halloween, with everyone wearing a different mask, animals, superheroes, cartoon characters.

I don't know what's going to happen for Halloween. I ordered some Scary Shapes candy (candy corn in shapes of bones and bats and so on), but the purple skulls had melted all over everything, and even though we managed to pull them apart, they still didn't taste good.

Of course this could all be over by Halloween. Good one.

Dear Readers,

Is it just me or are these pictures creepy?

Charlie

America's Favorite Episcopal Family Scenes from the Big House

 

Looking back, I think the time before the lockdown was like one of those horror movies that shows everyone going about their business before everything hits the fan. I had to take Cilla to dance class in the morning. (She has added hip hop to ballet, so that's two hours a week, not counting transportation.) In the afternoon, I took Betsey to the Mall. We picked up Ilse on the way, and Nikki walked to the car with a bag of books she was getting rid of. I said “Terrific" (an English major never turns down books), but I was going to clean out all the drawers and closets and maybe even the attic. She said, “I don't think it's going to last a year,” and we laughed.

Ed, who is very practical and likes apocalyptic and dystopian literature, has always insisted we keep a stock pile of paper products and canned food. We have an overflow of canned chili, and I thought I might as well pick up a few bags of tortilla chips and jars of salsa (all strength as well as pineapple and watermelon), but the parking lot at the supermarket was packed and people were rushing to their cars with overflowing baskets. (Karen told me she had put in an order on the computer, but at 5:00 the store told her the order had been canceled.)

I went to the drug store and got the chips and salsa (although they only had hot and mild. Hard times.) We were waiting to hear what would be closed. There was the feel of waiting for a snow day for the kids. Ed and I would both be working at home. The kids were delighted when it was announced that schools would be closed. What they hadn't thought of was that they would be home-schooled and that locked down means you are locked in your house, and so is everyone else.

Josh called the isolation “solitary confinement” and “house arrest.” Betsey said that lack of human contact makes people crazy. I asked them what was their family, chopped liver? Josh said Ed and I were the corrections officers and the girls were his fellow prisoners. Probably at the instigation of the others, Cilla had made an ankle bracelet out of Legos and duct tape.

I said “good one,” and, as I do when they fight, I told them I had wished for siblings all my life.  I would have even prayed for them, but I was a Unitarian. The Only Child Card may get old for them, but never for me. Cilla looked sympathetic. Betsey rolled her eyes and Josh told me how lucky I was to have all that extra money spent on me. Betsey said I hadn't had to put up with anybody getting in my stuff or walking by and hitting me on the back of the head. Josh said he just tapped.

Ed happened to be walking by on his way on his way to the kitchen, He said anybody who had siblings would say I was neurotic. I said maybe that was what made me that way. Not to mention being raised by two scientists/and having most of the family named after writers or literary characters, including an Aunt Pooh.

Is this the deluge?

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I'm probably not a “brilliant” writer, but I like to think I'm “gifted” on good day.

But lately (ever since The Election, if I'm honest), there haven't been that many; It's not that we didn't have good times, – there's always something to celebrate with kids (not to mention a dog and cat). But there was always something not quite right. We were waiting, not for the other shoe to drop, but for a whole display case of shoes to fall over.

This past winter was like a soggy spring or summer. The scarves and mittens stayed in the drawers, and Karen's boys never got to wear the snowsuits they'd gotten for Christmas. We watched White Christmas and A Christmas Story, hoping for real snow, but after a fall which didn't leave you feeling brisk drinking your Pumpkin Spice cocoa or latte in your autumnal turtleneck, I was worried.

Ed wanted to know why I was getting upset over weather. I said obsessing about trivia kept my mind off the real problems, not the least of which was feeling guilty because so many people had so many more problems.

We hoped that 2020 would fix things. But we should have know that a leap year with a full moon on Friday the thirteenth would be, as Kate said, “a real side trip on The Journey” or as Nikki put it, “Another f**king opportunity so make some different mistakes for a change.”

And we're off!