Long Double Pile-up

I.
A long double, if you don't happen to be one of the two people who regularly marks up our big whiteboard calendar in the kitchen, is a day when I have two services in a faraway place (too far away to drive back) that are as inconveniently spaced out as possible over the day. Today, for instance, I had a 10 AM rehearsal in Buffalo, and now I'm sticking around until whenever our 2nd rehearsal (which starts at 7:30) lets out.

Long doubles are a pain. You're gone the whole day, you have endless hours to kill, and you don't get back until it's so late that you can't do anything other than immediately go to bed and hope you can get enough sleep to be semi-coherent for church the next morning. (Most long doubles are on Saturdays, but tomorrow, fortunately, is a morning off.)

Today, though, was just about the best sort of way you could spend a long double. For one thing, it is snowing like CRAZY out, which completely takes away any possibility of trying to exercise. (Normally I like to at least get a long walk in, if not a proper run, but there would be no way to do it in the blizzard outside.) Secondly, I had a big project that I'd been saving for just such an occasion--the 2018 taxes.

Every year I say that maybe THIS year I'll take our enormous stack of W2s and 1099s and 1098s to a proper tax professional and have them calculate everything that we've been missing, but I tried it again this year on my own and was happy enough with the result that I just bought Turbotax again. It's a big a project, but exactly the sort of slow and satisfyingly complex puzzle you'd want to work out on a snowy afternoon in February.

II.
James:

Things I Will Never Like:
drying off with a cold damp towel, the feeling of seaweed wrapping around my leg, leaving Alexa's house, beans

Little Joys of Life:
reading a new book, petting a happy dog, getting a letter in the mail, eating marshmallows in hot chocolate, visiting Alexa, swiming, eating sprinkles on ice cream

Things That Bug Me:
squishy, icky mud, mushy bananas, worms on the sidewalk, skin on pudding

Owen:

Things I Will Never Like:
black beans, sleeping in our room during naptime, wrapping paper on my face, having less money than James, eating chex mix that was in spicy soup

Little Joys of Life:
getting my dinosaur from Christmas, being loved by my dogs, going to Csehy, eating a bug at Daddy's church ("it was not real"), having fun with Alexa and getting her basketball, having treats like pancakes, eating cake

Things That Bug Me:
bumblebees, bread that has spiders in it, a smushy banana, Felix grabbing my hair, a T-Rex scaring me away

Guilty Conscience

Owen: I need you to change me.
Me: Not now, I'm reading
Owen: I need you to change me.
Me: Not now, I'm doing some reading. Maybe in a bit.
Owen: <grabbing book> I need you to change me.
Me: Don't grab my book. Why do you need to be changed, anyway?
Owen: I'm wet.
Me: Where are you wet?
Owen: On my pajamas.
Me: Where on your pajamas?
Owen: On the back.
Me: <feels the back> No, you aren't wet.
Owen: I need you to change me.
Me: Not now, I'm reading.
Owen: <grabs book> I need you to change me.
Me: Owen, go away.
Owen: <grabs book> I need you to change me.
Me: I'm reading right now. If you get some clothes and bring them down here.
Owen: <grabs book> I need you to get the clothes.
Me: <swats hand> Owen, you can get clothes or do something else but you can't hang around here grabbing my book.
Owen: MOMMY! Mommy, I need you to change me!
J: Go get clothes and bring them down here.
Owen: <brings down clothes> I need you to change me.
Me: <changing Owen> Why do you need another pair of pajamas on?
Owen: These ones are wet.
Me: <feeling pajamas all over> No, they're completely dry.
Owen: No, they are wet.
J: Well, how did they get wet?
Owen: From when I was playing in the toilet.

Post Super Bowl

I.
James likes the Super Bowl. Except that he doesn't like it when the Patriots win. Or the Giants (unless they are playing the Patriots) or the Redskins or the Cowboys. He is very happy when a bird team wins the Super Bowl, like the Seattle Seahawks with their QB Russell Wilson (#3), who won Super Bowl XLVIII against the Broncos with their star QB Peyton Manning.

Q for Daddy: Why did you want Peyton Manning to win that game?
So that Peyton, who was a good QB and a funny guy, good retire from the NFL after winning one more Super Bowl. He seemed like he deserved another one.

Yes, and he got to retire after winning Super Bowl 50. That was a short while ago. Three years ago, in 2015.

This year's Super Bowl was bad. Actually the Rams did have an excellent defense. The New England Patriots made no team win the most Super Bowls. Because now they are tied with the Steelers with 6.

II.
I finally played, after 12 years of professional trumpeting, the Canadian Brass arrangement of Bach's Little Fugue in G minor. We had an old VHS tape of a live recital somewhere in Atlanta where they played a bunch of their standard rep, but it was that Little Fugue that I always fast-forwarded to and watched again and again. I tried to transcribe it, I ended up ordering an organ copy, and I practiced all the parts off of the organ score. I tried to re-arrange it again in college, and somehow was never playing with a group that had a proper copy of it. There aren't many pieces left that I can say "always wanted to play it, haven't yet had the chance," and it was fun to tick that one off the list.

III.
The kids don't know that we are ordering their favorite pizza for supper. I'm typing this out in the library while James narrates himself making amazing catches in the living room and Felix and Owen dance to the "demo" songs on the Clavinova. (Owen has it turned up to full volume.) I'm about to announce that they need to put shoes on (and that Owen needs to put pants on) so that we can head out and pick the pizza up. I will record their reactions below:

James-Congratulated me on doing a great job and told me that he is pretending to be Zach Ertz
Owen-Jumped and down screaming and hugging the couch. Still screaming at the top of his lungs. Just thanked me for telling him.
Felix-Still dancing to a Bach 2-part invention from the Clavinova demo.