Day 111 in 2020 (isolation day 37)

I've always had a specific shopping day each week. I'd make a meal plan for the coming week, list the things I needed from the store, and tackle said list all in one go. I liked that routine. Though the day of the week would change from year to year based on Calvin's activities and other demands on my schedule, there has always been a shopping day. Now it's been weeks since I set foot in a physical store. I still put together a weekly meal plan and create a list of needed ingredients, but these days I'm doing all my "shopping" in our basement pantry and freezer. Silver lining—I can do it in my pajamas.

Day 116/365

Life must go on. The next morning, the first full day without, all the small things and realizations—these are the things that get you. It’s not making the decision, or handling the bill, or even the moment they stop breathing. It’s the empty collar in your hand as you leave and the empty bed at home. It's the bark free pizza delivery, and having to eat the bowl of popcorn without help. It's leaving the Dogs with Cancer support group on facebook because it cannot help you anymore.

And it's having to go on with your life without them, because if you don't, life will go on without you.

Day 86/365

This is how we do bad colds in our house (and that lunch on a tray? My sweet son brought it to me...which seems only fair, since he's the one that shared the cold with in the first place).

Photo 247/365

Lunch and shopping with my parents has been a self-renewing event on our calendar for nearly twelve years now. I think it started originally as just a lunch or two a month, scattered here and there to celebrate little milestones, like "oh, he's one month old!" or "first day of mommy and me music". As the months went by, the "celebrations" became more frequent and narrowed down to just mom and us, since my dad was still working. They were my break from the monotony of "momhood" and an extra chance for some adult conversation during the day. Somewhere along the way we added grocery shopping after lunch, and later, after he retired we added my dad back in. The day of week has moved around, and trips here or there put things on hold for a week or two at a time, but for pretty much all of Calvin's life that event has been a constant. Until now. This year Calvin is at the public school for about two hours every afternoon, and at the same time he's embarking on more in-depth subject studies, so our mornings have had to be more disciplined, meaning, at least for now, the lunch and shopping tradition is on hold. Today was a our last trip together for a while.

This year has brought lots of changes to our schedule, our way of living, our home...and while change is often freeing and growth-inducing, sometimes it can also feel like the jaws of an alligator closing around a susceptible finger. 

Photo 207/365

Anniversary drinks. Fifteen years.

I've been seeing a lot of posts on facebook lately about anniversaries and the passing of years, probably because summer is wedding season. Posts like "First anniversary: roses, chocolate, expensive dinner out; Umpteenth anniversary: move over, you're hogging the couch". Thanks to leap year, our first anniversary fell on a Monday, and in the beginning of tech week for a musical theater production that Jon was the musical director of. We spent it mostly apart, and enjoyed fondu and champagne in our wedding flutes, seated on the floor at our coffee table, in our pajamas, when he finally got home around 10:30. That same production stilted our first two anniversaries. A newborn curtailed celebrating the third (we actually went to a restaurant but ended up bringing our dinner home because he was upset with at grandparents'). I honestly don't remember each and every anniversary through the years, but all of them, including fondu on the floor and a dinner cut short by a needy baby, were heartfelt and meaningful. All of them.

But there is a difference between year one and year fifteen, to the extent that we this year we plum forgot. It was a busy week. The 4H Youth Show was a drain all week, and Jon has been busy preparing for a presentation he is giving in Virginia next week, so I don't think it was so much that we forgot our anniversary as that we didn't even know what day it was, or up from down or left from right. My first clue came when a package was delivered from my parents, who have been out of town. I was perplexed at first. Why go to such effort to have it delivered then and there? An anniversary card? Whose anniversary is it? Oops.

I texted Jon when I realized at 3:30:

Me: Did you remember it was our anniversary?

Jon: I'm on my way, did you want to go out for a drink?

Me: That doesn't answer my question...

Jon: No

And that's fifteen years for you. Fifteen good years of being partners in crime that add up to it not mattering if both, or even just one, of us forgets the date, because we're still the same great partners. But we did get to go out for that drink. Cheers.