The Bickersons

Well we're still pretty much only at home. Tod is back to the office full time as of two weeks ago but I'm still at home full time. In the beginning I pretty much only went to the grocery store once a week (rather than the twice a week that I used to do pre-pandemic) and gone to restaurants to pick up food (as opposed to having it all delivered, as we did in the beginning of the shutdown). But now I've been going out a bit more, to Walmart and a couple of other stores here and there. And we've hosted a Father's Day get-together when Jim and Nicki were in town, attended our friend Laura Yager's outdoor wedding, and gone to Jennifer's to celebrate Aly's birthday. I'm not sure we made the right choices for those things, but we did our best to be safe.

Anyway, while the kids and I are all cooped up in this house 24/7 (minus the walks we all take) we really still manage to be separate. During workdays I'm upstairs in my office, and whenever Amy rolls out of bed, she's in the "formal living room" that is basically her office, and when Reed gets up he heads to the basement for pretty much the entire day. Reed talks with his friends through Discord, and Amy occasionally talks with her friends over zoom. Not a ton of socialization going on. The three of us interact a bit throughout the day, but don't really log any "together" time until the four of us sit down for dinner.

And then, my goodness. These kids just l.o.v.e. to bicker. They push each other's buttons like siblings do, and even though they are really enjoying it, it is SO miserable to listen to!!!! It seems to be a great deal of fun for them, so Tod and I both try to let it go a little bit, but we have to protect our own sanity. I'm not sure what we'd do if we managed to make it through dinner in an entirely civil manner. LOL

We're in the midst of trying to decide between two not-great options for school in the fall -- sending the kids 2 days a week or total distance learning. It's really tough to know the right call to make. Deadline for the decision is Monday so we'll see what happens.