On Sunday, we eased into the second day of a nice, quiet weekend at home. It was a nice morning, with a hint of fall in the air. Asta was pretty wound up and hyper, and I was feeling like getting some fresh air, too, so the two of us went out for a little “run.”
I do put “run” in quotes because when you’re “running” with an 11 pound dog, it’s not like a steady marathon pace. Basically it’s a run/walk with bursts of incredible sprints when she sees a rabbit or squirrel.
Back home, the kids were playing with a new toy, that is really an old toy that long ago fell out of rotation. One interesting thing in this age of quarantine, when we are often home bound, sometimes old toys that never got played with years before can re-emerge and cycle up. Such it is with everyone’s favorite astromech, R2-D2.
This is a super cool motorized R2 that joined us at Christmas, I think 3 years ago. It’s controlled by an app, and when we got it, as impressed as I was by it, the kids were kind of freaked out by it. So I think we used it maybe twice before it was relegated to a corner in Henry’s bedroom.
Well, one of them all of a sudden thought it would be cool to try it out today, and do you know what? It WAS cool to try out. I reinstalled the app and the kids loved moving R2 around.
That created plenty of entertainment for a decent chunk of the morning. It was also the opening Sunday of the NFL season. In the years before kids, opening day was among my favorite holidays of the year. I would get together with friends to watch the Packers take the field for the first time, and some years I’d park myself at a sports bar somewhere and just watch games all day long.
With each passing year of busy weekends and kids dominating the TV in the house, I’ve watched less and less football. On the plus side, it has probably been good for my mental health because I don’t get so stressed when my team sucks. On the flip side, I kind of miss the excitement and fun of being engaged with it.
This is the first year in a while I have gone without DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket. I haven’t been watching enough to justify it, so I figured this year I’d just watch when I can. I have paid zero attention all offseason, but did see that the Packers/Vikings game was on local TV, so Erin and I figured we’d watch. We downloaded an app called Locast to watch local shows, and we pulled up the game.
Much to our surprise, the game broadcast on the app was in Spanish. We checked all the settings, which were English, and the commercials were in our native tongue, but the game? Espanol.
I have to say…I kind of liked it. It definitely ramped up the excitement, and I don’t know that I was really missing much in terms of insight, due to the language barrier. I heard the commentator describe Rodgers as “Un quarterback muy inteligente.”
Claro que si.
We did eventually figure out how to watch an English broadcast, and Erin and I sat outside watching on my iPad. I have to tell you, I was totally and pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed having football back. It felt like fall, and it felt like something normal in these insane times we’re living in.
Yes, it is weird that there aren’t fans, and that coaches are wearing masks. I still don’t know if it is going to work to play a sport like this in a pandemic. But for those few hours, I was all in and loving the security of blanket of a little fall tradition. And maybe a Wisconsin old fashioned or two.
And for an additional dose of normalcy, Amelia’s best friend came over and had an outside play date in our backyard. They laughed, played games, and Amelia got to show off her new Barbie camper.
It was a really nice afternoon, and for a while, all felt right in the world. The Packers won, the Vikings lost, the kids got to have some fun, and R2-D2 was dancing around our house. Not a bad Sunday.
