I know things are bad out there but I’ll admit there are moments when it’s kind of nice to have all the kids home. It’s fun to watch them interacting, especially the younger ones with the older ones. I’m not saying it’s all giggles and hi-fives. (Actually hi-fives have been declared illegal and punishable by three months dipped in hand sanitizer.)

A few troubling things. My son is on the crew team and the coach sends home workouts. He not only sends home workouts but he sent home the ergs. For the uninitiated, an erg is a medieval torture device with modern upgrades to train middle class children to do the work of prisoners from the Dark Ages. I call it the masochism club. So yeah, I have this big giant rowing machine in my front room so every day I have to shimmy past it to the front door and every night I get to bang my foot on it.

I tell myself that one of the advantages to having a messy house. No burglar in the world could navigate this place in the dark. I live here and I can hardly do it.

But anyway, I’m pretty sure my son wouldn’t be doing every jot and tittle of these workouts but his older sister is captain of the crew team. So…yeah, he kinda’ has to. Make no mistake I’m pretty proud of him for rowing every day during this little sabbatical we call a pandemic. Unfortunately, before school let out I was told that my son would often row so hard that he would vomit while rowing. It seemed kind of funny to me that he was throwing up at school. I know, I’m a terrible Dad but it seemed funny.

As weird as it seems that’s not an anomaly in crew world. Kids vomit, they pass out. Crew is the one sport where, after a race, you can’t tell the winners or losers. They’re all too exhausted.

But my son has taken this vomiting business very seriously and now my son has essentially transformed himself into a vomit fountain every day around rowing time. So now we have this giant erg set up and this bright red bucket as well in the front room. Wonderful!

And now, the dog, upset that so many people are sitting in his spot on the couch has taken to punishing us by peeing on the floor.

I’m honestly not sure which is worse. The dog or my son. It’s a coin toss.

But we did all pray together for those suffering from the Coronavirus. We’ve watched movies together. My kids think Shakespeare’s kinda’ boring and Tom Cruise is pretty awesome. Yeah, I know.

But it’s nice to just connect again. It’s nice to have long extended conversations about stupid things and laugh until it hurts. No sports, no clubs, no playdates. It’s fun to watch the kids run around opening up windows because they set off the smoke alarm making pizza. These are all memories that I think we’ll treasure when things get back to normal. I can’t help but think sometimes that I wish normal looked a little more like this.