Royal Rumble

Overlording the castle with my judy

Last night my kids watched WWE Royal Rumble. Kiki started out by saying she didn’t want to watch because the wrestlers hit each other “in the nuts!”

As Brock Lesnar started tossing dudes over the net, my kids went from their normal hyper selves to completely ballistic; groaning, jumping, fist pumping and throwing their faces into couch pillows.

Kiki was floored to see the next wrestler in leather briefs. “Oh, no! This guys wearing tighty whiteys.”

She whipped her finger over to her little brother and commanded, “Show him what a real man looks like, Geoffrey!”

And, he ripped his pants off and started hula-hooping his hips around to show off his boxer briefs.

My kids are living their best lives during this forced stay-in. In addition to canned corn being their favorite vegetable, they get to play nonstop. I admit, the stay-in has been nice for me too. I spend 80% of the day in deep thought, the dishes don’t pile up, and the laundry is always done. My work though, it takes a lot of motivation to get my ass in gear.

Working from home isn’t something I ever sought out because I live in a fantasyland when I’m at home. Pre-quarantine, my alarm clock for work goes off at 5:30 am, and I need to be in the classroom at 8. I spend the majority of that 2.5 hours drinking coffee, talking on the phone, day dreaming and writing in my journal. I give myself enough time to brush my teeth and put on a Sac State sweatshirt (approx. 2 minutes and ten seconds) and show up to class looking like I rolled out of bed ten minutes prior. My students are great, I think we should just give them all A’s for their non-major related classes, but I’m not in charge, and will do what’s expected of me.

I certainly think we should do that for our own kids! I must not be homeschooling right because I only had to do thirty minutes of work with them last week. Which reminds me of a conversation I had with my mom a couple months ago, when I explained we have to do homework after we get home at 6, and my said, “Well, what the hell are they doing at school all day? They’re just playing all day, and then the school sends all the work home for you to deal with!”

Starting to feel my temperature rise, I said, “Mom, don’t get me riled up right now!”

Someone will email me if we’re doing it wrong. My kids’ classmates are lovely, and their classmates’ parents are lovely too, real hyper competitive types, so I do worry the students will all come back speaking German and doing calculus. So far, in addition to the thirty minutes of homeschooling my kids had, I taught my son how to make me coffee, and add numbers “Carrying the 1” which is probably going to make his teacher mad next year.

In order to prevent brain fatigue and lethargy, we have to implement some strict TV rules. We can’t start watching it till 5. My kids don’t have tablets or video games (at my house) so I don’t have to sledgehammer that stuff to keep them from being screen zombies. This forces them to play, all day. And when they loose interest in pretending to own a surf shop in Hawaii or choose the best Barbie doll to reenact peeing her pants at work, they read or just sit and think.

Yesterday, I walked by my daughter, who was staring off into space, and I thought I had seen her frozen in that pose twenty minutes earlier, so I asked, “You ok?”

Then she cracked a giant smile, and looked at me and said, “I think I’ll name my bunny Chocolate Chip.”

With one child in her brain cave, manifesting her future bunny, the other one was really feeling the loss of his playmate, so I had to pick up the slack, and I pretended to beat him up while he laughed till he peed his pants. Then he put on fresh boxer briefs, and we did it again.