Olive Wah!

Captain's bLog: 27 & 28 weeks.

(Surely even Picard missed the occasional stardate, right? Don't judge me.)

We decided to come home early to allow time to quarantine, and had a whirlwind last couple of weeks on our grand tour. Unlike many folks as of late, we had no trouble getting home, which I was honestly a bit sad about as I would have been happy to extend our final leg in the Netherlands indefinitely: Whaaaat, flights cancelled again? Welp, guess I'll just have to suffer this beautiful, cheery, cheese-eating and bike-riding country a little longer! Drat!

Small Fry, on the other hand, was thrilled to come home. He immediately ran to hug Medium Fry and reacquaint himself with his stuffed animals, with a brief stop along the way to huff the upstairs bathroom cupboard because he missed its "slightly musty smell." Ah, the comforts (and smells) of home! He has been plotting for months how we would all play board games together, and we have indeed had family games night every night since returning home... and most mornings and afternoons, too. He knows I have a particular weakness for Scrabble and has taken to shaking the tile bag like cat treats to entice me to the kitchen table. He's not all that great at Scrabble yet - it takes real commitment to train your kids into worthwhile opponents - so with all my "help" it's really more like I'm playing against myself, but I don't mind. It's all part of the training. Small Fry is as sore a winner as he is a loser (envision whatever the opposite is of crying onto one's Monopoly money), so I have to be careful not to beat myself at Scrabble or else I'd never hear the end of his gloating. It came dangerously close the other day - 314 to 311 - and even then he was boasting to Medium Fry about how he almost beat me. (Yep, it definitely defies logic, but whatever keeps him shaking the treats bag on the reg, y'know?)

Small Fry has quantified his Happiness to be Home at 90%, and to be honest I suspect he's faking the 10% Sad to be Done Our Trip for DH's and my benefit because we are obviously still in mourning over it. Grieving aside, I do have to admit that it's pretty great to not be wearing my travel wardrobe any longer, and to have access to my full suite of kitchen tools and pantry items again. I haven't huffed the cupboards, but it's been nice to burn my favourite incense and wear my favourite scents. My hair is - well, it's at least behaving in a low-humidity way that I'm familiar with. And when I can go to the store again, I will relish being able to understand what the hell I'm buying; in fact, I'm finding being able to communicate with better fluency than a crazed toddler in day to day life to be a massive relief. In short, everything is easy and familiar here, in so many ways. So I'm not sure that it's quite what I'd call good to be back, but it sure is comfortable, which has an undeniable charm of its own.

DH and I have already started plotting when we can do something like this again, and we're full of grand ideas about how we'll do it even smarter and better next time (Step 1: no pandemics allowed). Until then, we bid a fond farewell - or as Small Fry says, Olive wah! - to the wonderful places we visited. Perhaps we'll meet again one day!