Not Funny

 None of this is funny yet. But it probably will be in a few years, which is why I am writing it down. We'll want to look back on this week and remember it, and we won't be able to come up with all the details unless I get them all out somewhere.

This was the week when it truly felt like we had been locked up together for a year.

The week when I was shopping for health insurance, because our plan through the college was getting cut as part of the adjunct cutbacks.

And when I got so frustrated by the process that I decided to go for a run. And then I slipped and fell and sprained a toe (and busted up my thumb, and pulled a bunch of muscles in my chest) in the middle of the woods, and had to call (with a dying phone battery) J and the kids to come rescue me.

So I was hobbled and on the couch for most of this, like when Owen decided that he wasn't going to do any more school unless it was -9 worksheets and would sit in the time-out corner and scream at the top of his lungs the whole time James was trying to get his done.

And how Felix thought that the only appropriate response to Owen's behavior would be to empty boxes full of puzzle pieces into random piles in the library whenever unsupervised.

And how I had to threated Owen with public school to make him stop.

And how Felix wouldn't sleep in his own bed anymore, but would climb into our bed or into Owen's bed or into his dresser drawers or onto his changing table to fall asleep. And how he'd turn on all the lights in his room after bedtime every night, even when we taped over the light switches. 

ASIDE: In a slight positive, this is the week that Felix started exclaiming "By Jupiter!" with most of his exclamations, because of reading the Asterix comics.

And how we had to move Owen into James' room on a mattress so that he and Felix would stop fighting in the middle of the night. And how Felix was so tired in the mornings that he would come down holding Owen's George and then looking confused about where his was.

And how all of a sudden Felix (though supposedly potty-trained) decided to start pooping in his pants again.

But it all came to a head yesterday, when J and I were going to try to record some long-overdue projects for our churches in the afternoon. The theory was simple: Set the kids up with screen time in our room, set up our recording equipment, and record for an hour or so before dinner. You can do this with a hobbled foot. It's easy.

Except that it wasn't. Because the music that I'd written didn't format correctly, so we had to take apart the whole recording rig to reset the computer, pull up the notation software, and generate new parts. And then in the middle of the master piano track you could hear doors slamming and somebody apparently jumping up and down in Owen/Felix's room. 

But we pushed ahead, because we only had so much time. And then, in the middle of the trumpet track, James came down and announced that he'd thrown up on our bed. 

It was my side of the bed. And he threw up all over my clothes, too.

So we paused the recording process, got him cleaned up, got the laundry going, and then set up the kids in a different room with a different computer to watch more George.

We were going to finish this recording, by Jupiter.

It was in the middle of a flute track that out-of-control thumping sounds erupted from the basement. The washer had spun itself out of center because of all of the bedding inside. And also, the first load still had gunk in it and would need to be rerun. It was at this point that we realized we didn't have enough laundry detergent to wash everything that was hit. 

We got the washer fixed and the flute track down, and I went back to do another take of the trumpet part. That was when the wireless headphone batteries died mid-take. 

We sat down (with only 45 minutes left until my evening lessons) to eat a risotto dinner that should have been lovely and leisurely. I tried to eat mine slowly enough to enjoy it, and then drove out to pick up a new bottle of laundry detergent, offering to J to pick up some dessert (which we normally do only on feast days) since it had been such a hard day. She declined.

While I was out J texted to say that James threw up again and that she'd changed her mind about dessert. The text message never arrived.

I taught a lesson, and had a zoom meeting with prospective student who was 15 minutes late to the interview. Then we finally sat down and listened to the recordings we'd made. They were unusable. Each of us played with decent intonation with the guide track, but our pitch playing together was like the sound of cats fighting in octaves.

And it would still be three hours before all the bedding was washed. 

I worked at the computer and messed around with some of the tracks and drank scotch. J sat on our bare mattress with a glass of wine and her book. I made some progress, and we eventually put layer after layer back on our bed. By the end of the night, we'd salvaged this.

Deep, Deep Love.mp4

It was, without qualification, an awful day. But we made something beautiful by the end of it.

Today, I am getting my first vaccine shot. And there is some light at the end of this tunnel, by Jupiter.