Quarantine Journals - Gardening, Chores, Puddles

My friend was talking about how she's saving so much money right now, and I felt like such a loser. Like.. I know we are buying shit OBVIOUSLY, but man... are we buying that much? And then I realized... I am supporting 3 households right now. Actually, 4 if you count the huge batch of groceries we sent Lynette... and I just wanted to say that out loud. We are stress shopping, but we are also pulling a lot of people along with us.

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I'm heading to bed but I just wanted to write a quick entry here. It has been raining for over the last 36 hours, and both the front and backyard are totally flooded. Today was memorial day, so Richard had the day off.  The kids didn't a lot of coloring and cutting out stuff and decorating the house this morning, and then we had a nice lunch together and Richard took Oliver for a nap. While Oliver was napping, Penny helped me water all the plants and do some pruning. I spent the morning pruning all of our basil plants to get ready for some pesto tonight at dinner.  

After Oliver got up from his nap, Richard made shrimp pesto, and it was amazing! While he was cooking it, we called my dad and talk to him on FaceTime for a little bit. Oliver has been asking to call someone for hours. Anyway, the shrimp pesto was really delicious.  Penny was really hesitant to try it, and we ended up with a bit of a dinner battle. I got up and fixed her a fruit salad as her alternative meal, and we talked about how we don't ever want to make her eat some thing that she doesn't like, but we would like her to at least sit down at the table with an open mind and give the food a real, honest chance before deciding that she doesn't like it. I don't know, it seems like somethings sunken, because after I brought the fruit salad she ate five or six bites of the pasta and said that it was OK. We talked through feelings of worry about a new food, not liking a new food, not wanting to admit you were wrong about a new food, and so on and so forth.  Penny got really excited about the idea of starting to help make dinners, and eventually making dinner by herself. That somehow led into her getting really excited and passionate about helping us with chores around the house as well, and so we talked about different meals that she might be able to make by herself.

After that, we took the kids outside to go jumping in puddles, and then back inside for bedtime.  Penny really wanted to sit down and make a list of chores that she could help out with around the house before she went to bed so she didn't forget. On her list she wrote laundry, dishes, cooking, picking up, and surprise. She explained that the surprise would be picking up her toys before we got up in the morning. But, at bedtime with Richard, she confessed that she probably won't do that tomorrow.

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