At Least It's Not Boring

When Jeremy and I got married and divided up the different roles within our relationship, I let him have the "steady, reliable, and practical" job title, while I assumed all responsibility for fun and spontaneity. It was really nice of me to agree to this arrangement, because while fun and spontaneity are easy to come by when you're 21, it's a lot harder as you grow up and are forced to participate in responsible adulting. During a pandemic. While everyone works and does school at home for months on end. So let's be honest, there are plenty of days when "fun" looks like a spoon, a jar of Nutella, and Season 8 of British Bake Off. But we've had some important wins over the last few months.

Last spring, when we were going full throttle with the pandemic lockdown, I was the one who had the great idea to get another dog. Now, let's not overlook the fact that our last dog was one of hell's angels and peed all over my house for a year. Mercifully, she finally bit a neighbor girl so I had cause enough to get rid of her. So, you can imagine Jeremy's excitement when I announced it was time to spice up quarantine and try again. In this case, we had a happy ending because Henry potty trained in a few weeks and I love him almost as much as my kids. It was a giant gamble, but we're so glad we did it.

My other attempts at fun and spontaneity resulted in multiple cross country car trips last summer (25 hours to Montana with a puppy!), "paint the room" projects, and late night "let's order pizza and watch Netflix until 2am" parties. But my best fun and spontaneous stunt, to date, was when I dragged Jeremy to look at a new house back in October, convinced him it is absolutely without a doubt the best thing ever, and then announced we had exactly eight days to list our current house on the market. October was not boring. 

Maybe all of this sounds like a terrible case of whiplash. Or maybe it sounds like what I hope it sounds like, which is my attempt to live my best life even during the plague. And by "best life," I certainly don't mean my perfect life. Let's be clear, my perfect life involves a private chef and a beachside nail painting service that also serves virgin mojitos. But that kind of perfection has never been the goal. What I'm looking for is just a little, tiny smidge of amazing every now and then.

The past month has been really hard and not especially fun or spontaneous. So, a few days ago I decided to systematically burst in on each of my kids while they were in class on zoom and performed a pretty decent reenactment of Chunk's "Truffle Shuffle." I have found that my children aren't always as grateful for my spontaneous acts of love as they should be. But I felt better. 

We can agree that most of the time we need to put our head down and get to work. Most days my best life really does involve hard work, deadlines, and patience. But don't forget to look out the window. Don't bend down and admit defeat to a bad day at eleven o'clock in the morning. Instead, reach for fun and spontaneous, even for a few minutes. Stand on a chair, pull up your shirt, and shake that belly. Let your hair down and buy a dog (just don't tell your family it was my idea). Because here's the thing: it will not always be calm. It's rarely going to be perfect. But it does not have to be boring.