Tank Day

So all the Compliance and contracts stuff? Done. Tech Council Meeting? Done. Johnnie's meet-and-greet with his teachers?  Check. First day online? Done. Figure out how to navigate his school portal. Check. By golly I think I got done all I wanted to do this week! And I got paid today! Woo-hoo! Could it be? I have nothing left to do today? Could I be in line for a tank day? YEAH! But wait. Not so fast. I promised Lisa I'd be at her house first thing today to help her with Johnnie's 9 AM Zoom session with his class. I did not want to take the chance that she would have any technical difficulties and so I volunteered to help. And so Lisa made me breakfast in fact and even mentioned that it was nice to have me in house this morning. She made eggs and croissant and made me hot tea. She burned the croissant but who's checking? I certainly didn't care, I just appreciated the effort. And after I sort of helped her start the Zoom meeting, I just took a step back and let mom and son do the Zoom class so she could get used to it. Remember I had been doing these Zoom classes from March when Johnnie's TK class started to do it. And Johnnie is used to it too. Just that now he will have to do it every day. Look at him in the pic kicking back. What I cared about was that he was engaged, that he raised his hand and participated, and that he did his assignment afterwards, this time with mom. And by 10 AM it was all done and I went on back to my apartment to tank the rest of the day.  I tried to draw a balance between being on the web and surfing all day, and doing internal stuff... and still keep myself on track for finding ways to help others online. Kind of hard to do when most of my focus is doing QueensCare stuff. Which is why I'm trying to figure out how to get myself funded fully so I don't have to do any more QueensCare stuff and figure out how to do other stuff. I think the lesson here is to figure out how to do that WHILE doing my regular job right? OK then... I ended up eating a pretty heavy lunch, which meant that I would get to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon. Which, by itself, WAS the main symbol of tanking the day since I would have never been able to do that if I were working in the office. I would have been in the movie theater watching something. Hard to tell which is better. Still I must admit, it's easy to tank the afternoon and then by 4 PM, switch myself back to life by doing my own aerobics class right in my living room. Easy to get from 3000 steps to 8000 steps just like that.

Usually Friday nights are spent making decisions about what to cook myself to eat, whether to cook or to get something and then what to watch. Tonight there would be no such options. Lisa called and asked if I could watch Johnnie while she played the piano. I do remember telling her to think of me as the number one option when she feels like doing that and being that I had nothing else to do anyway, I agreed to come and have dinner with them too. Wow. That would be TWO meals in one day with Lisa and Johnnie. Can't remember the last time I did that. I got to Lisa's house around 6:15 PM. Mommy and son were in the shower. I guess they had gone out biking late and Lisa made a stop at some clothing store that was designing new work gear for her office staff. Which was why Johnnie was already in his pajamas in the picture. Lisa hadn't started cooking yet. I ended up being her sous chef in the kitchen. I can't tell you how reluctant I am to do that because I really have no idea how she cooks anymore, and I have my own ideas about what to cook and how to cook it. But I figured, she's doing fish and veggies and rice pilaf so how could it go wrong? As it was I let her take the lead and then just asked for directions along the way. You want to put onions where? I also made my own suggestions along the way... We should just make spinach, onions, and tomato as a side dish... And then of course you know Lisa would find some imperfection she could latch on to, which is why I didn't like working next to her in the kitchen. This time it was the rice pilaf. The noodles didn't get browned enough. Oh well. And Johnnie's noodles actually took the longest to cook. But despite all of that, we managed to make dinner and it managed to turn out pretty good actually. How can you mess up just cooking swai in a pan? Again, the fact that we had 2 meals together today was the outlier I thought. And so when we got done with dinner, of course Lisa would leave me with all these pots and pans that she used for me to wash. Hey I'm here to watch Johnnie while she played the piano right? Fortunately, Johnnie is kind of used to this and I just left him with his building blocks while I did the dishes. And then when he got bored, which was coincidentally the same time as me getting done with said dishes, he and i sort of did our thing, playing around, him wrestling with Knuckle Sandwich. Look at the pic I posted. I can never have enough of these pictures for later on in life. I did dutifully got him to clean up his toys and then we went upstairs and I brushed his teeth. It was 9 PM already after all. And I had to be back right here first thing in the morning because it is a Lisa work day tomorrow. I tried to get him to sleep while I read him something, but it's just not the same as it is when he is with me in my apartment. Of course he wanted to wait until mommy got done. By 9:15, she pronounced herself done with piano and ready for bed herself. And so I headed home. She mentioned how strange it felt considering I was practically with them today and then I'm back tomorrow. But it is what it is. And I accept that. NOW I could go home and watch stuff on TV. Not for too long though. I have to be up early in the morning...