Saturday With Johnnie

Now that the holidays are over, not only do I get to do a comprehensive breathe out, but you know how I love routine. First the breathe-out: ONE MORE HOLIDAY over with. I don't know why the Christmas holiday has turned out to be not a time I look forward to, more like something to hopefully cruise through. Do you blame me though? Considering I had yet one more thing to try to forget about this time around? Of course I also know that this was me pushing something out too and so THAT is also something on my mind. I probably got what I anticipated to get didn't I? Which is why I am breathing out. And looking forward to a "normal" Saturday Lisa work-day with me looking after Johnnie the entire day more than likely. It used to be she would come by at 3 PM. Not these days. And so I had to make sure I had something to occupy Johnnie with for the whole afternoon. Fortunately I WAS prepared. I had SING 2 downloaded and ready to watch. And we still had the volcano eruption we were going to do. It is finally dry and ready to be painted after taking it out of the mold. So we did have stuff to do. But first, it was JOhnnie that actually asked if we could eat at Elysee for breakfast today. How can I say no to that?! We actually hadn't eaten here in a little while and so I looked forward to the usual scrambled eggs and bacon <this time>. There may be different people manning the front and taking orders. But a couple of the usual patrons were still there and still said hello to Johnnie. I even showed the new girl in the front a picture of Johnnie eating an identical breakfast from 3 years ago. I'm pretty sure I have pictures from even earlier than that. And so it was that we had our breakfast and then went to Target. Except we went to the one on Santa Monica Blvd. That one had pants Johnnie's size. I practically had to throw away all of his long pants because he had outgrown the XS 4/5 ones. Now I had to find 5/5A ones of 5/6 ones. And then after getting his pants, I drove us to Daniel Webster Middle School so we could pick up a couple of at-home COVID test kits that LAUSD was distributing to all students. I mean I had gotten a negative test for Johnnie to go back to school next week. But this one was for the future just-in-case. And so after all that we finally got back to the house. It was already 10:30 AM. And so I got Johnnie started with painting his volcano mold. After all, he still has to let the paint dry before we're actually able to do the explosion/eruption.  

I told Johnnie he could watch SING 2 after lunch. He actually wanted to take the scooters to Panda Express, remembering that we used to do that. That was during the summer though and this time, I didn't feel like getting the extra exercise. Anyway, since it isn't the holidays anymore, parking at that Westwood strip mall is back to being easy-peezy. And while I mulled over eating inside at Panda Express, they actually made the decision for me. The inside area was closed again, and I think LA collectively is starting to react to the recent omicron surge. I am still not nearly as concerned with it as I was with COVID a year ago. Last year, I got my first vaccine shot almost to the day. I was still playing golf with Greg and Chris and Scott. And we actually had dinner with Dexter and Yadira a year ago. So see? It wasn't like we weren't seeing people, nobody was vaccinated yet and we just simply kept our distance. The funny thing was that I took a pic of Johnnie on the couch at my feet watching TV and it was nearly identical to a picture from exactly a year ago when I had him the first Saturday of the year. This time he was watching SING 2 and I was taking a nap since I had already seen the movie. I made sure I was up when our favorite scene came, which was the fight scene between Johnny and his instructor to Coldplay's "Stars In the Sky".  And finally later later on, we actually did his volcano experiment. I took a picture of the thing while I mixed the citric acid, baking soda and water and voila: a volcanic eruption. I mean it had red food coloring on it of course so it actually looked like molten lave. It WAS pretty cool though not quite as captivating as I would have thought. So tonight Lisa did not pick up Johnnie until it was nearly 8 PM. I didn't care. We got to eat at Elysee, we got routine stuff done, we got to watch a movie, and we got to play volcano. AND I got to catch up on my journal throughout the whole thing even. Not lost on me was that this was Johnnie's last weekend until he goes back to school next week, though actually he has 2 straight Mondays off. It is a pupil-free day at school tomorrow, and then the following Monday is MLK holiday.  In the meantime, I'm already seeing invites from work about reinstituting Business Continuity, as it were before we all went to work from home nearly 2 years ago now. I guess we're reacting to the surge too. In the meantime, I know I need some alone time to sort out some stuff for manifestation. I mean, it's always some energy of the past, some programming, some emotional thing that has stuck that has prevented me from going forward and I want to find out what that is, or at least work on releasing whatever it is. Everything is all about ALLOWING YOURSELF TO RECEIVE, REMINDING YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE SAFE, and that everything comes from your thoughts. And so all that stuff I got to do when Lisa finally picked up Johnnie. After I cleaned up the dining table and kitchen of course. I had gotten a chicken sandwich and a couple of tacos from Burger King for dinner though and I wasn't feeling particularly light and healthy. More like full and bloated again like when I overate a couple of times this week. I reminded myself I am not trying to fix me, just trying to release old energies, and trying to focus on new information, new programming.  And when I did that, I seemed to fall asleep easily and quickly this evening. It's all good. I had a good day with Johnnie. And I think he did too with me.