Day Thirty-Nine

I spend my days in meetings. One after another after another, each one only slightly different than the last. That means I look for little ways to entertain myself and let's just go ahead and admit I'm obsessed with virtual backgrounds.

Look, I am not going to win the "keep the house clean battle" for as long as there are two children trying their best to stay entertained all day and not leaving my house. I have to be able to send them away to clean, so they're going to trash my house. It is what it is, and what it is happens to be a good reason that I need all Zoom meetings to have a background. Nobody needs to see all that, y'know?

I started out obsessed with living rooms from old television shows, like the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and then I had a Gilmore Girls phase. Now I've moved on to Pittsburgh. Give me ALL of the Pittsburgh.

I quickly ran out of solid Pittsburgh choices, so I took to twitter to ask some local awesomeness to help me out. AND THEY DELIVERED! So, if you happen to be in need of some Pittsburgh Zoom backgrounds, here you go. You're welcome.

Pittsburgh Zoo

Kennywood

Cultural Trust

Visit Pittsburgh

And some bonuses

Day Thirty-Eight

UNO!

I never knew two syllables could cause so much stress. Say those syllables around Mila and I swear, the kid will cut you. She will dig deep in her pockets, find a rock, sharpen it with her teeth, and cut you. Mila gets so angry when someone says, "Uno!" that I have actually cheated to lose. Forget winning, that's for victims of a 5-year old's violent crime. It's much safer to lose.

But, man, it is HARD to lose a game of Uno against Mila. She has just barely hit the age where she can play the card game competently, in part because she is legitimately such a small kid. She can't hold her cards well, so basically you can count on her to show you exactly what she's got. That means it's REAL easy to know when you should change the color.

But don't play a Draw 4 card.

OMG. If you thought you had seen violence from calling "Uno," you have a real lesson to learn. The Draw 4 is grounds for murder. Legit, I think Mila is going to smother me with a pillow in my sleep and she'll probably shove one of those cards down my throat as a parting gift.

So now that I've explained that Mila is a teensy bit competitive and that Uno makes her feel things, this little story will make sense. Alexis, Mila, and I were playing Uno because apparently we do these sorts of things when we're locked in the house together for over a month. I was winning because of course I was. It's easy to win when one kid keeps showing you her cards and the other one couldn't bluff if her life depended on it. I was winning, but was managing to keep things close enough to keep Mila from losing her temper.

And then it happened. Alexis played the damn reverse card.

That meant that I was no longer in control of protecting Mila's hand. I was down to nothing but three wild cards so, legitimately, the game was mine to win, but I wanted to do it slowly. Patiently. With lots of smiling because Mila needed to feel warm and fuzzy about it. Alexis, though. ALEXIS.

Alexis is just as competitive as Mila. She handles it with a bit more grace, but she is ruthless. That girl will destroy anyone just so she can say that you lost and she won neener neener.

Alexis apparently had all of the "screw your neighbor" cards. She could have played them when they would have ruined my day, but nooooo. She saved them until after the reverse and started destroying Mila. One Draw 2 after another after another and I swear she had them in every color. I kept drawing cards that I didn't need to draw just to keep the pain from falling immediately. but then Alexis would make Mila draw all of the cards. ALL of them.

I finally decided to put the kid out of her misery. I stopped reverse-cheating and began playing to win, so it took four rounds for me to yell the worst two syllables to ever exist in Mila's life, "Uno!"

Mila slammed her cards down, glared at me and then glared at Alexis. She then hissed, literally, because apparently I gave birth to a two-legged cat. She dropped her voice real low and snarled, "You are both dead to me," and then stormed off.

I really hope no future partner ever cheats on Mila or otherwise finds a way to truly wrong her because I don't think I'm going to have enough bail money to get her out.

Day Thirty-Seven

I honestly don't think this kid has figured out that she has cause to be miserable.

Absolutely nothing is going Mila's way right now. School is dumb and stupid and pointless because the packet of worksheets she is expected to fill out each week are exactly what she thinks they are - dumb and stupid and pointless. She's been doing them, but not without rolling her eyes and making sure I know that our school district sucks for not trying AT ALL to engage younger learners. (Alexis' classes are 90% absolutely the best I could expect considering the situation. A few of her teachers actually seem to be doing better in this environment than they do in person, which is pretty freakin' awesome. The whole thing makes it harder to ignore the giant miss that is distance kindergarten.)

Another thing not going Mila's way is that she just SO badly wants to play with her friends. We're doing what we can to fill in that gap, but she's a social butterfly and a Zoom lunch date here and a FaceTime call with her crew there just isn't the same.

Kennywood isn't going to open this year. I realize they haven't announced any such thing, but let's be real. If Kennywood does open, we won't be going. There is not a circumstance in which I will feel comfortable being a part of a large crowd for a very long time. Kennywood won't be a thing this year, and that's basically like taking away Christmas for Mila. It might be worse, even.

A year of birthday party planning will get Mila nowhere. She will be turning six in just over a month, a date that she's been looking forward to since about ten minutes after her 5th birthday ended. I haven't quite figured out how we will celebrate the big 6, but it won't be the party that Mila has in her head. We've started talking about it so we can bring her expectations in line with what could be reality, but still. Disappointment is ahead. 

All of that is to say that it's rough being a five-year old right now. And yet.

She's pretty stinking happy.

Mila gets to hang out with her sister all day, every day. She gets to go on hikes and look at pretty flowers and climb on rocks and all sorts of fun. The trampoline is worthy of hours of giggles. She gets to eat lots of her favorite foods. Mario Kart races are unlimited and full of fun. Family Uno games are ... well, that's a story all on its own. Basically, Mila isn't getting to do any of the things she usually loves. Instead of sitting around and moping about that, though, she has found new things to love.

Be more like Mila. She's got this whole "key to happiness" thing figured out.