One Quarantined; One Returned

Alison's outrage - or embarrassment - at me calling her RA to check if she was dead didn't last long. Or perhaps it sparked a memory of how good it can be here at Chez Reed because she sent the Captain and me a text last week asking if it was OK if she came home for a weekend visit.

As if she has to ask.

I, of course, immediately answered in the affirmative. Jeff was heading to Maine to spend some time with his father, and I suspected he'd tipped her off that I'd be home and lonely, but they both claim there was no conspiracy.

I wouldn't have cared if they had conspired. I picked her up Friday afternoon as soon as I possibly could.  We called Maine on the way home and Jeff, Jen, Peter, David and James passed the phone around while waiting for their food at the Muddy Rudder.

(Side note: Jeff's dad, Gary, has had a bit of a setback and has been in the hospital and rehab over the last several days. He may have a new or re-inflamed old back injury, and we're hoping he's on the mend after meds were evaluated and treatment given. It didn't make sense for both of us to visit, so Jeff made the trip solo and is glad he did, though he came home sick and has been sleeping in the basement ever since. It's not COVID-19 but apparently he's full of some colorful gunk. I call to him from the stairs on occasion but so far he's been tending mostly to his own self, at his own insistence. Not that I want any of whatever he's got.)

Back to Ali and me on Friday: She regaled me with campus life stories and caught me up on what was happening with her various friends. I gave her the low-down from Maine and Indy. We made a Costco run before we got home. We had just enough room in the back of the Subaru for all our goodies and her laundry.

Once home, we took up our station on the couch with a bag of Taco Bell and more mini tacos to come and found a stash of Chrisley Knows Best on the DVR listing. We followed that up with G.H. Cretors popcorn -- which I'd bought only with her agreement to take whatever we didn't finish back to Purdue with her. I swear that stuff is addictive. the only way not to eat the whole bag is to give it away.

We stayed on the couch until midnight or so watching TV, munching on bad food and comparing whatever we found on our mobile devices when we weren't shouting back at the Chrisleys for their various - and many - crazy antics. We stumbled off to our respective beds until about 3 a.m. when a nightmare woke her up and she ended up with me.

I did not pray or ask in anyway for her to recreate the times when she was little and Jeff was away, but I didn't protest. I woke up way earlier than her and had most of my work done and bacon ready when she emerged.

I had looked askance at her hair when I first laid eyes on her, but I didn't want to be that Mom, so I didn't address the fact that her hair was looking a little, well, off. "Did you have that girl cut your hair in the bathroom again?" I may have asked.

"No," she said. "I did it myself."

"Ah," I said.

The American Hair Stylist Academy does
NOT endorse these as a tool.

She protested a little bit about my honesty. I said it wasn't that bad and beside that it was her hair and it would grow back.

Saturday morning, she comes out of her bathroom and I was a bit more honest. She'd used a pair of scissors that I'm sure we bought for her in her Kindergarten days.  I may have raised my eyebrows.

"What?! You said it needed work," she said.

I pointed out the near-bald spot she'd created. That's when she showed me the scissors she'd used.

"It'll grow back," I assured her as she went searching for a hat. We debated going to a walk-in hair salon but we decided to let it grow a little bit first because the only way to really address it is to buzz most of it.

"Look!" she said. "All I have to do it pull this long part over it. You can't even see it."

She may be the first 18-year-old sporting a comb-over. But, characteristically, she's not overly worried about it. She did wear a hat every time we went out, though.

We spent part of Saturday at a super fun event organized by my friend Betty Cockrum and attended by Karin Ogden, Carey Hamilton, Catherine O'Conner and a bunch of other fun ladies.

Betty had collected a bunch of jewelry that was either broken, out of favor or just extra and worked with the Indianapolis Art Center to create an event where you brought some jewelry and left with some other jewelry. You could break stuff apart, repair things or create new. There were also bagels and mimosas. It was a lot of fun.

I'm hoping to do another event or something similar and highly recommend the place for fun group gatherings. Karin, Carey and I think it would be a fun Book Club venue.

Ali and her friend Nikki went to an anime movie while I went back home to laundry and work. We had to make a Kroger/Meijer run to get ingredients for poutine, and Ali made dinner: french fries drenched in gravy and cheese curds. I did make her eat a pepper while I had a salad.

But mostly it was cheese and gravy. We took a picture and sent it to Jeff, who was at the mercy of airport food. Because we love him.

We got him around 9:30 p.m., and he was just at the beginning of the illness that has him making noises I can hear with a floor between us.

We returned her by 2 p.m. so she could get ready for her week and get re-settled.

It was a perfect visit. Except for the Captain's sickness, of course.

We'll get her back in a couple of weeks. Our Spring Break location is still TBD. I don't really care where we end up. I may have to eat zero-point soup for a week, but it'll be worth it.