Life By Kristen

5 on Friday: September 2020

Will I ever not be amazed by the passage of time? Here we are, the last Friday in September. Here I am, with five random thoughts for today.

• I have consumed so much media, of all different types, feverishly over the past 6 months of pandemic lockdown. I feel like we’ve watched so much, and yet haven’t even deep dived into the depths of Netflix. I wish I could tell you some of the favorite things we’ve watched, but there’s been so much and I was so bad at keeping track of it all, that I can’t quite remember. I can say we finally watched all of The Handmaid’s Tale, which back in May when we binged in over a 4-day period seemed a lot less scary than it does not in September. I’m trying to counteract all the TV/movie watching with reading and word puzzles to keep my brain equally balanced.

• One of the great things that came out of this pandemic nonsense is our daily family walk. It’s become a bit harder on some days when I’m working out of the house and Q’s work from the basement runs into our dinner hour, but for the most part, we’ve kept up the routine and I hope that coats, hats, and gloves will let us keep it up when weather gets chillier too.

• Our house is right near a Dunkin Donuts and after the building next door to house burned down a few years ago, we now have a clear view of their parking lot and drive through. It is absolutely insane how many people, even during the height of the pandemic in my neck of the woods, waited in lines out to the road for their coffee. I feel like I’m a bad New Englander to say I hate Dunkin coffee and cannot even remember the last time I ate something from there. I used to love it, but somewhere along the line, they lost me as a customer. Plus their coffee gives me major heartburn.

• No one warned me about the part of being a parent where the songs from toys and Sesame Street get stuck in your head for days. I swear I hear “Letter of the Day” Elmo song in my dreams.

• If you have any good wishes and room in your prayer list next week (there’s a lot to pray for these days for sure), please send some our way. Our little guy is having very minor surgery next week to remove a growth on his arm. In the scheme of things he and we have been through in his 16 months together, it’s very minimal, but does involve anesthesia and a COVID test that will likely be more traumatic for me than it is for him. He won’t even remember this thing happened of course, but we will! Though he’s going to be pretty pumped after this thing because we got him a pretty awesome Elmo stuffed animal as a treat for the whole ordeal.