Scenes From A Weekend

Around the House

With the 91 freeway shutdown all weekend long, and local media predicting 3-4 hour delays plaguing alternative routes, we figured we'd it best we play if safe and stick around town. Silly now considering the reality of all. Side streets proving the exact opposite of everything they warned us of. Vacant. Quiet. Stressless. "Carmegeddon" at it's finest.

Mike and Arlo decided to take full advantage of it early Sunday morning, cruising the double cab some 30 miles down the open back streets to Orange County for an annual bus show. Arlo came back with a new surfboard he bought with his own money and Mike, bearing fresh coffee and bagels. 




The remainder of the weekend was slow enough to relax for a few hours outback, where I napped in the sun and the boys watered plants and colored* steadily, silently, for longer than I ever suspected was even possible. There was a last minute birthday party for one of Leon's school friends on Saturday which turned out to be a step above the standard birthday school bash if only because of the delicious tacos on hand in combo with the overly stocked Tecates and Spanish karaoke that unrolled after most of the party had cleared out. 

I also got some good T.V in too - Love,** the new Judd Apatow series (which is just as sweet and enduring as it's sneak peak trailer suggests and what we've come to expect from Apatow) and Better Call Saul (which is one of the only shows - currently - that Mike and I appreciate with the same intensity) We listened to records most of a sun drenched Sunday morning, made bonsai taco bowls*** for lunch and sat for a solid hour teaching the boys the rules of Mancala in the shade after cleaning out the van. 





Slow and mundane. Not counting the hummingbird ordeal that started when I spotted a tiny bird fluttering around in my bedroom nursing the yellow blooms on a small cactus that we had to work so hard at to push back out the window it flew in from. Or the painful (blurry eyed) 3am drive down the street to drop off a kid who said he wanted to stay the night but then decided (somehow at the absolute worst hour of the night) that he didn't.

A self car wash, a trip to Toy's R Us to blow the gift cards they had piling up which granted them a new series of nerf guns and Leon one remote controlled monster truck he let everyone on the block enjoy before him. And me, the blessed promise of an afternoon without them complaining about being bored or begging me to get up and get them out. Toys they made good use of in the dirt field late that afternoon when we drove around to test the new hitch on the L. Rover before settling back at the house for leftover rice and chicken.

All in all, a nice quiet couple of days soaking up the simple pleasure of home, in a town full of parked cars and one long, lonely empty freeway no one round here even dare thought try and bypass.






Post Footnotes:

This coloring book is the best! I even found myself begrudgingly waiting for my own turn on a page watching them flip thought to pick theirs.

** The series is great. I just - and forgive me if I'm starting to sound like your granny here - but find the word "fuck" used too excessively, which started to wear on my nerves a little here and there only 4 episodes deep. Making me focus on the fact of my own annoyance. Which can be hard for me to come back from sometimes. . .

*** I have no idea why these are called bonsai bowls in our house, all I know is that they are healthy,  and delicious drenched in lime. But then again, so everything right?



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