The prompts are:
#1 must be wearing a ball and chain;
#2 must be half-fish;
#3 must be sweeping.
Mine is not manga, and it’s not a replica of the original. I draw a fish-person in a green gingham apron, ball and chain around one of two feet, tail jutting out behind, in a warrior stance, brandishing a broom over its head, poised to bring it down HARD and break that chain (rendered in coloured pencil on scrapbook paper). A fun diversion. I also work on my colouring pages.
After breakfast, we play Horseopoly. Wizard loses it before anyone except him has managed to have a turn, and retreats to the other room. We encourage Jack to play a decent game with us. I see him becoming restless 40 minutes into the game and call a halt. We add up our cash and the mortgage value of our properties and Brown Owl beats us both, hands down.
I play a long bey blade tournament with Wizard. It’s going well, and I’m feeling good about my patience, when on the spur of the moment I launch from up high. Wizard doesn’t like this. He goes to his bed to be sad for a while, and when I start packing all the bey blades and launchers into the arena, he gets mad at me all over again. (There’s a fair bit of déjà vu during day 12.)
We do a yoga session with Adriene that finishes so quicky we aren’t sure whether it’s because we have become stronger, or whether it was just a short session, so Brown Owl scrolls up and finds another. In total I think we do about 50 minutes of yoga. I’m connecting with my “core” in a way that never made sense to me way back when we did pilates. I’m still incredibly frustrated with the shortness of my limbs and the lumpiness of my breasts and belly, because in certain positions it is really hard to breathe. I can’t reach my hands to the ground on either side of my foot when I’m in a lunge position, which feels ridiculous. Grounding through my feet has really helped my balance.
Brown Owl promises not to play savagely, so I agree on a couple of rounds of Song Birds. I explain to her after two rounds that it would be more fun for me, if we turned the berry tokens over at the end, rather than at the start, because then we wouldn’t know which row or column was adding up to fifteen or twelve (the birds with the most points in these rows or columns always win!) She looks at me quizzically, not getting it at all, and says “So then it’s completely about luck?” Oh well, one can but try. I like winning as much as others, but prefer to play for playing’s sake, rather than to overpower my opponents.
Our third COVID tests come back, all negative. All clear for re-entering the world on Saturday morning. Hooray!
I spend ages on the floor playing with Lego today. I manage to engage Jack for five minutes, requesting that he help me take some of the stuck on pieces off a base board. He manages this. I mentally pat myself on the back for finding a way of getting him to increase his finger muscle strength without triggering his “I hate making things” button. Everyone else is waiting for me to finish what I’m doing so Brown Owl and I can do PE with Joe and the others can go on the screens. I signal that need a bit of help with picking up the last pieces. Wizard happily joins me in pouring the tiny pieces into the boxes I’ve made.
PE with Joe is strenuous today. My left calf twinges. I’m careful of my knees. He loves to make us do spiderman lunges and twisty turny things… I have enough alternative exercises in my repertoire now that I can substitute when necessary. Brown Owl and I laugh at the way we easily sustain jumping and running and shuffling for the full 30 seconds now. We couldn’t manage this a week and a half ago. Jack continues to refuse to join in with this.
I feel kind of dreamy and withdrawn for part of the day, and find it difficult to engage with the boys. I’m not bothered by their antics and conflicts, feeling content to let them work it out for themselves. They throw balls, pillow fight, jump over the beds and wrestle to their heart’s content. Brown Owl, bless her, structures some exercises and ball games with them while I lounge on Wizard’s bed, playing Merge Dragons.
We don’t watch our usual programs last night, because Wizard and Jack decide to watch Maleficent on the big screen in their bedroom. They both watched this movie at least once on one of the plane trips.
Wiz puts the TV on in our room afterwards and finds a children’s restaurant show we’ve seen an episode of once upon a time. Brown Owl decides that since it was halfway over anyway, we might as well watch the rest, which segues into another show about a child learning to budget. Then the boys have showers, I make up all the beds all over again and we put them to bed.
I read Pachinko into the night, stopping when I think I need to go to sleep. Sleep eludes me for several hours. I wish now that I’d just kept reading…
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