Day #123: The Phrase Grand Finale
A fine 4th of July was had by all. Hard to feel patriotic this year. Watching the West Wing helped. No Hamilton for me although the rest of the planet seemed to be watching it. We don't have Disney Plus here. My streaming surrender to the quarantine was to get Hulu. My sister will be in town in about 3 weeks and said we could watch it then using her account. I can't really get excited about it although I feel like I should at least try it...political history musical theater with allusions to the West Wing SOUNDS like something I should like.
Anyway, the day was nice. Grandpa was here and successfully socially distanced from everyone except Max which is a battle I decided not to fight. We ate a lot of food including the barbecued brats I was craving which were what I wanted them to be and the Pioneer Woman's potato salad I really wanted which was not. I made homemade chocolate chip cookies most of which were not eaten by the dog. She hasn't been eating her food lately, which makes sense when I think of how much people food she has stolen lately.
My neighbor did his street corner fireworks which we were able to watch without leaving our yard and while staying behind our fence, social distancing FTW. Max lasted approximately ten minutes and then had to go in with Daddy who had been feeling like the fireworks grinch anyway and liked the excuse.
Last year was the first year of our neighborhood street corner fireworks. We were around because our longtime holiday tradition actually happens on the 3rd usually (not this year, but, you know.) Our neighbor was really excited about his grand finale, one of those multishot box things. He told us at that time that he had been saving it for years for the Seahawks to win the Super Bowl (postgame fireworks neighborhood culprit located) and since they haven't in awhile he made it his grand finale of the 2019 4th of July neighborhood fireworks show. Which is where James learned that phrase.
Fast forward to this year and there were...more fireworks. A LOT more fireworks. Apparently this was a thing everywhere...the fireworks people were in for a rough year because there were no stadium fireworks, no baseball, no parades, etc. etc. but they had a banner year with fireworks stand sales, even though, at least around here, cities have cracked down on the selling and it was hard to find a place.
James liked the fireworks...he likes those fountains and the sparklers were great but as the night got later and the fireworks got bigger and louder he was kinda done but did not want to miss the grand finale...so he would ask. Every single time something was lit he would ask..."Is this the grand finale?" And it's not like James isn't a chatterbox all day every day anyway and we are talking after 10 p.m. now so I was pretty done. But at some point it occurred to me, this is 2020 in a nutshell. We are waiting for the end of something with no defined ending. We are scared of the end but at least once we've seen it we will know it is over. And nothing about 2020 works this way. The pandemic may come to an end with a vaccine and great herd immunity success, but it is just as likely that it will either linger for a long time just there or crash up and down with waves of sickness and less sickness until some future date (six months? two years? who the heck know?) when it stabilizes. It could get better. It could get worse. No one knows. And the waiting really sucks. So after everything happens, we all don't want to say out loud...hey, are we done yet?
In the meantime, we live our lives. We hang out with grandpa. We video chat out of town family. Our kids get a little bigger every day. We hold on to each other. We try to appreciate small things, like walks in the woods and grilled onions on brats. And we try to have patience with our talkative small people.
I wish James didn't know the phrase grand finale. But mostly I wish we all just knew what the ending looked like. I feel like we are in the part now where when this time period is written about in historical fiction the people reading it will all know what that thing is ahead of us and they will read us going...hey, you don't even know. And this is not a reassuring thought.
Historical fiction is on my mind because under the heading of media consumption after finishing Such a Fun Age last night (not a fan) today I started We Dream of Space by Erin Entrada Kelley about three kids living in January 1986, also known as the month of the Challenger disaster. I was really little in January 1986, about a year older than James is now so while I remember it I don't have the "where were you" story of people just a little older than I am. I learned more about the teacher on board the Challenger when I worked at Girl Scout camp in New Hampshire which has a cottage dedicated to her memory in 2002 but I was never a space nerd like the kids in this book. I was interested but not obsessed. I'm enjoying the book so far. It is weird to see your own childhood era depicted as historical fiction...the things kids today will find interesting about the time period, like when you're home from school sick you don't always want to watch TV because you are stuck with whatever is on.
James and I are reading space books as well. We've been working on Sadiq and the desert star which is about a Somali American kid living in Minnesota who wants to see the desert star that is so bright in Somalia but hard to see in big cities so he forms a Space Club in his school. It's an adorable book. I'm glad there are more and more books all the time that have kids of different races and nationalities represented so James and I can share them.
Today I'm grateful for my James, for books, for rest, for my husband, for neighbors, for my dad, for another day of life and health, and for the fact that it will be bedtime very very soon.
Anyway, the day was nice. Grandpa was here and successfully socially distanced from everyone except Max which is a battle I decided not to fight. We ate a lot of food including the barbecued brats I was craving which were what I wanted them to be and the Pioneer Woman's potato salad I really wanted which was not. I made homemade chocolate chip cookies most of which were not eaten by the dog. She hasn't been eating her food lately, which makes sense when I think of how much people food she has stolen lately.
My neighbor did his street corner fireworks which we were able to watch without leaving our yard and while staying behind our fence, social distancing FTW. Max lasted approximately ten minutes and then had to go in with Daddy who had been feeling like the fireworks grinch anyway and liked the excuse.
Last year was the first year of our neighborhood street corner fireworks. We were around because our longtime holiday tradition actually happens on the 3rd usually (not this year, but, you know.) Our neighbor was really excited about his grand finale, one of those multishot box things. He told us at that time that he had been saving it for years for the Seahawks to win the Super Bowl (postgame fireworks neighborhood culprit located) and since they haven't in awhile he made it his grand finale of the 2019 4th of July neighborhood fireworks show. Which is where James learned that phrase.
Fast forward to this year and there were...more fireworks. A LOT more fireworks. Apparently this was a thing everywhere...the fireworks people were in for a rough year because there were no stadium fireworks, no baseball, no parades, etc. etc. but they had a banner year with fireworks stand sales, even though, at least around here, cities have cracked down on the selling and it was hard to find a place.
James liked the fireworks...he likes those fountains and the sparklers were great but as the night got later and the fireworks got bigger and louder he was kinda done but did not want to miss the grand finale...so he would ask. Every single time something was lit he would ask..."Is this the grand finale?" And it's not like James isn't a chatterbox all day every day anyway and we are talking after 10 p.m. now so I was pretty done. But at some point it occurred to me, this is 2020 in a nutshell. We are waiting for the end of something with no defined ending. We are scared of the end but at least once we've seen it we will know it is over. And nothing about 2020 works this way. The pandemic may come to an end with a vaccine and great herd immunity success, but it is just as likely that it will either linger for a long time just there or crash up and down with waves of sickness and less sickness until some future date (six months? two years? who the heck know?) when it stabilizes. It could get better. It could get worse. No one knows. And the waiting really sucks. So after everything happens, we all don't want to say out loud...hey, are we done yet?
In the meantime, we live our lives. We hang out with grandpa. We video chat out of town family. Our kids get a little bigger every day. We hold on to each other. We try to appreciate small things, like walks in the woods and grilled onions on brats. And we try to have patience with our talkative small people.
I wish James didn't know the phrase grand finale. But mostly I wish we all just knew what the ending looked like. I feel like we are in the part now where when this time period is written about in historical fiction the people reading it will all know what that thing is ahead of us and they will read us going...hey, you don't even know. And this is not a reassuring thought.
Historical fiction is on my mind because under the heading of media consumption after finishing Such a Fun Age last night (not a fan) today I started We Dream of Space by Erin Entrada Kelley about three kids living in January 1986, also known as the month of the Challenger disaster. I was really little in January 1986, about a year older than James is now so while I remember it I don't have the "where were you" story of people just a little older than I am. I learned more about the teacher on board the Challenger when I worked at Girl Scout camp in New Hampshire which has a cottage dedicated to her memory in 2002 but I was never a space nerd like the kids in this book. I was interested but not obsessed. I'm enjoying the book so far. It is weird to see your own childhood era depicted as historical fiction...the things kids today will find interesting about the time period, like when you're home from school sick you don't always want to watch TV because you are stuck with whatever is on.
James and I are reading space books as well. We've been working on Sadiq and the desert star which is about a Somali American kid living in Minnesota who wants to see the desert star that is so bright in Somalia but hard to see in big cities so he forms a Space Club in his school. It's an adorable book. I'm glad there are more and more books all the time that have kids of different races and nationalities represented so James and I can share them.
Today I'm grateful for my James, for books, for rest, for my husband, for neighbors, for my dad, for another day of life and health, and for the fact that it will be bedtime very very soon.
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