Generally, I don't eat food other people cooked unless I have no other option. No dine-in, no takeout, no pizza delivery, no drive-thru. Not even Starbucks. About once a year I have a social obligation at a restaurant that I can't get out of, DH has to deal with work trips, and there are a few travel situations where we can't bring our own food, but other than that everything is prepared at home. There are a lot of reasons: DH has Celiac. I have food allergies and chronic GI issues. I'm paranoid about germs (we COMPLETELY stopped getting sick when we quit restaurants and potlucks). Large food portions turn my stomach. And I'm a cheapskate who doesn't want to pay 2-4x the cost of an at-home meal plus tip (and I have a pretty luxurious grocery budget!).

This week is looking nothing like my original plan: Yesterday - Leftovers (was supposed to be Cajun Chicken Pasta, but we still had too many leftovers to eat) Today - Grilled Chicken, Mashed Potatoes, Sauteed Zucchini and Peppers, and Salad (was supposed to be a pork roast) Tomorrow - Andouille Pasta Skillet, Pasta House salad (was supposed to be a breakfast sheet-pan dinner) Thursday - Chicken Fajitas, Beans, Chips and Salsa Friday - Junk Food Night Saturday - Chili, Cornbread, Cucumber/Tomato Salad, Apple Crumble Sunday - Pork Roast w/ Veggies, Seasoned Rice (was supposed to be hamburgers, but the grill is not going to be usable while we stain the deck)

Just the one I sleep next to every night.

We have a couple, but this one is the one not missing pieces or stuck in a single position. It has an elastic to hold the tee flat against the base when transporting. We have a baseball field in our subdivision, so that's handy when we're hauling the family's worth of gear down there. Our pitching net gets a lot of use for tee work as well. I think ours is the "Amazon Basics" one. Keeps all the balls in one place (and that place is not the woods behind the house, haha).

Unfortunately, masks (and social distancing) are not 100% effective in preventing people from recognizing you! I do mostly curbside pickup, but once I had to run into the library outside of pickup hours for a hold I had missed. As I was walking toward the exit, I heard someone calling my name from a few yards away. It was someone I went to high school with and hadn’t seen in NINETEEN YEARS! I couldn’t even remember his name until I was back in my car. I was wearing a mask, sunglasses, and a baseball cap, plus I do not have a FB account, so no recent photos of me on there. I’m considering upgrading to a space helmet.

I don’t have a specific recipe because we’re a GF household (and I was on a quest last weekend for this very thing in GF form), but try looking for “St. Louis Style” pizza crust recipes. You can ignore the toppings (provel... ick). I *think* a proper crust will use baking powder as leavening, or self-rising flour.

The changes I would have liked to make in my 20’s would have required changes to happen long before that, with some people making different choices in *their* 20’s starting, oh, about nine months before my birthday, IYKWIM. 😉

When they were preschool age, I tried to let mine play with Lego while I read aloud, but my now-10yo would narrate and add sound effects to whatever he was doing, louder than I could read. One time, I asked him to keep his voice down, and he said, “But mom, if I’m too quiet I’ll be able to hear you read the story!” Argh! Now I read aloud while they are shoving food in their faces. And “He Who Would Like to Ignore the Stories” is now an avid reader and spent part of the weekend writing his own book. Muahahahhaha. He also built a very complicated rubber band gun out of LEGO pieces last week, so I guess I didn’t inhibit his skills in that regard, either!

Oldest is playing (non-travel) baseball, and the older two will possibly play the county golf tournament in July. Soccer was cancelled, swimming is still closed. We kept our youngest out of peewee ball, because it's practically a contact sport at that age, and he still can't keep his fingers out of his dang nose. We play a lot as a family (I think he robbed my oldest of extra bases this morning, haha), and he's had to keep up with the big kids before during park day sandlot games, so he'll be fine to jump back in next spring. Between the MASSIVE rule changes/guidelines and our county's numbers, I'm fine with baseball going on. For many reasons, we had already decided it would be the first priority, even before family gatherings. I haven't registered them for golf yet, but I have until mid-June to make that decision. Usually my kids are in the same division and group, but oldest moved up this year. It would be nice if they switch to primarily sibling groups for this year, even if they are playing different divisions.

This would be a flat-out no to us even before COVID, simply because of the celiac/food allergy issue. We are actually supposed to be in FL right now at my BIL's now-postponed wedding, and the idea was floated that three households (ours, FIL, and SIL) could split a large rental house together. NOOOOOOOPE nope nopey McNopersons. No kitchen sharing with gluten people. We had rented our own house for the trip (darn, it only sleeps five...). I should be sitting at my private pool side tiki bar right now, sigh.

My DH had a lumbar fusion a few years ago (at MoBap). I’m surprised he’s being released so quickly, DH was in for three days! His was a 2-level though, longer surgery and longer recovery. If you are caring for him afterward, I had to use a whiteboard to keep track of medication timing, especially as he weaned off the narcotics. It was like tracking newborn feedings, complete with lack of sleep and bathroom help, lol. Colace, Colace, Colace. One of those claw grabber tools came in really handy too when he needed to pick things up without bending. Hope his surgery went well, and he’s on his way to less pain in the future!

None. I'm not even sure where my hairbrush is these days.

Maybe try the Drury Inn at Hampton and I-44 (I think it’s the Drury at Forest Park). It’s not too far from the Botanical Garden, and you’ll have all the restaurants of The Hill in between. It’s a generally safe area of the city, with a lot of tourist attractions nearby.

I had an aversion to homemade hamburger buns during my first pregnancy. Not all homemade breads, just hamburger buns. I’m still gagging just thinking about it, and that child is almost 12 now. But I have no idea when the milder aversions went away. I was pretty bad at tracking and remembering those kinds of details.

I have nightly nausea issues due to IBS, GERD, allergies, probably stress too. Menthol cough drops + an electric heating pad + binge watching The Office. Rinse, repeat.

Two pairs each of tennis shoes, boots, and flip flops - one newer pair for inside stuff, the old pair for outside and gross stuff. A pair of Toms to go with my "Witches' Night Out" costume, a pair of nicer shoes to go with my funeral/wedding/concert outfit (yes, it's the same outfit). A pair of snow boots that I pilfered from a bag of hand-me-downs meant for the kids (they already had pairs in that size... I snagged two t-shirts out of there too, lol). I have a pair of hockey skates in there too, but I suppose those don't count. So, nine pairs.

The Walmart lot here has been full when I drive by, even when the grocery stores I'm actually going to are empty. I suspect the employees from restaurants nearby are parking over there so they can leave their smaller lots open for delivery drivers and well-spaced curbside pickup. And since I can only see the rear side of the lot, not the front where people shopping in Walmart would be parking, it looks a lot more crowded than it really is. I bet people picking up to-go food orders are also parking over there and waiting in their cars until their pickup time.

That’s what I did to mine. Kind of like what you do with a plastic necklace your kids make you that hangs down to your knees (might have a couple of those... lol). My first idea was to pull the elastics around my ponytail but I nearly suffocated in Aldi. Knotted behind the ears works better. If that doesn’t work it’s possible the mask is just too big. My mom ordered mine from a family friend, and I’m pretty sure she requested “youth sized” for mine. And I still had to tie the elastics.

I'm the non-D&D player in our household (DS6 literally taught himself to read and write using the Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual when he was supposed to be sleeping), but there's a few things I know get used frequently for their RPGs. LEGO and board game parts pilfered for characters and terrain (we have the Wrath of Ashardalon game, and they'll repurpose those figures for different campaigns). Extra clipboards. Extra printer ink. Dry-erase grid map. One thing I wish we had is a dice-rolling mat or tray. The sound of dice clattering on the wood table drives me crazy.

Regular laundry with all the other clothes. I can go two weeks without being in public, so it doesn't need to be washed that often. If I had to go out more than that, I'd probably hand wash to save it from the wear-and-tear of going through the washer/dryer all the time.

Pot roast with those tiny potatoes, carrots, onions, and green beans. Homemade gluten free buttermilk dinner rolls (from the GF Artisan Bread in 5 book, never made these before). Maybe some baked apples, so I can use up the rest of the maple glazed walnuts and the can of whipped cream.

Haha, I agree. I call Fortnite "Minecraft Battlegrounds". PUBG ain't for middle schoolers, though. My older two play sometimes, usually when there's a new update or their friends or cousins are playing (I think DH has it set to where they can't ever hear/talk to non-friends over the headset). They hopped on for a bit tonight before switching over to Plants vs. Zombies and Splatoon. Meanwhile, I'm currently sitting here, leveling up my warlock on World of Warcraft. Talk about a time suck, lol.

I save the ends from our (expensive gluten free) bread in a bag in the freezer. When the bag is full or I need freezer room again, I thaw the pieces, tear them up in a casserole dish, toss them in butter/sugar/cinnamon, and pour over the standard French toast milk/egg/vanilla mixture (1 egg per 1/4 c. milk, I usually need between 4-6 eggs). Voila, baked French toast! It takes us up to two weeks to go through a whole loaf, so we probably only have enough for this every 3 months or so. Everyone will eat it though, even the heel haters.

I'm not sure "enjoying" is the right word, but I'm not disliking it. I admit to feeling a twinge of personal disappointment at the thought of having to go out and do things again. What I'm really feeling is a lack of guilt. I don't enjoy the work of maintaining extended family relationships - visiting, hosting people, attending gatherings for holidays I'd rather not celebrate, pretending I've kept up with family news when I haven't, etc. So I don't have to feel guilty about not going to Easter dinner, because there wasn't one, and that's a huge relief. I don't have to feel guilty about choosing not to visit my father, because I wouldn't be able to visit even if I did want to. I don't have to feel guilty about not enjoying other people's kids, because I'm only around the ones I gave birth to. I don't have to feel guilty about my kids not having "must see" friendships, because they really haven't missed anyone, which makes all this easier. I don't have to feel guilty about how weirdly self-entertaining and "obnoxiously creative" my kids are, because they've never been bored during this whole month. I don't have to feel guilty about not wanting to spend money on the kids' activities, because everything's cancelled and the savings is piling up. I don't have to feel guilty about not trying to make friends, because I tend to curl up in my shell when anyone Has Opinions, even if I agree 100%, and I'm much happier when I don't have to deal with that. Basically, I don't handle people well, unless they are the people I chose to live with. And right now, for one rare moment in time, I don't have to.

Can anyone zoom in and see if he’s got a zipper on his forehead?