A Pretty Square Weekend

So, suddenly it's March!  I'm not quite sure how that happened, but after a windy and snowy end to last week, it looks like the weather is getting on board with the new month because it's going to be above average warm (well, "warm") pretty much all week.  This winter has been super weird.  We're leading the country in snow (85 inches, I think?) which is about average, but it seems like everywhere else has been well below.  Heck, I just realized I don't think I remember hearing much about any crazy nor'easters hitting NYC or Boston with two-plus feet this year.  Weird.  The oddest thing about it, though, is that despite all that snow, it barely sticks around for more than a couple days at a time this year.  It snows a bunch and then it gets warm and rainy two days later.  It's been like that all year.  We have to be above the average temperature by a bunch, too, because it's hovered between 35-40 most of the winter.  We've hardly had any single digits for more than a morning, and even sustained days-long weather in the teens or 20s has been rare.  It's so odd.  And with warmer weather in the forecast, I can't help but wonder if we're just going to get off easy this spring, to make up for the abysmal year last year when it was legit cold until June.

We had a pretty good Leap Day weekend.  It was actually a pretty relaxing one, which was nice.  I'm trying to enjoy it because it won't last long.  Now that Jacob's town team is done, we're just in a waiting period for his travel team.  Practice starts this week and then in a few weeks we'll have a tournament locally before more travel starts.  We already have our schedule, though, and we'll be getting a nice tour of New York State over the next few months, on average every other weekend.  I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I guess we'll make it work.  Craig only has a few major conflicts, but luckily his roadtrips are almost done--one biggie this coming weekend, one shorter one after that, and then one really quick one to Toronto.  Other than that, just home games and he should be done at the end of April.  I guess there's a bright side to life moving fast--it'll be here before we know it!

So, this weekend Craig had a home game.  That took him out of commission for most of Saturday, but he did get Jacob to and from basketball training in the morning before heading off to work.  Shortly after that, the rest of us headed out to Carter's basketball game.  His team still hasn't won a game and this week was another rough go.  They lost by about 10, which was shocking considering the number of times they gave away the ball to the other team.  I think Carter touched the ball once or twice, but every time someone tried to pass the ball up the floor, they did some crazy long pass that got intercepted.  The other team had a kid who wasn't shy about flat-out stealing the ball, either, so it just made for a really frustrating game.  It was honestly really annoying to watch the same thing happen over and over, and I normally consider myself pretty low-key while watching games.  This was bad.

After that, I'm not quite sure how it happened, but we had a peaceful afternoon at home.  The boys started collaborating on a Minecraft build, and peacefully kept themselves occupied with that all afternoon.  I know, screen time is bad, but they were talking and peacefully communicating and not arguing.  For extended periods of time!  That NEVER happens.  So I went with it.  It worked out well, since I needed to un-Valentine the house (not to mention a couple of winter stragglers).  It felt a little early for spring and Easter, so I had to track down as much generic décor as possible for the next few weeks.  I also managed to bake a cake (to use up some frosting) and hard boil some eggs in the Instant Pot, to use in a recipe with leftover asparagus and to make Carter some egg salad (which he loves).  After all of that and two loads of laundry, I finally got to sit down and start my new project: a diamond painting!

If you've never heard of it (I don't think most people have), it's basically a paint-by-number that uses little plastic pieces (a.k.a., the diamonds).  They can be round or square (mine are square) and cut to look sort of "jewel"-ish, which makes them shine and sparkle a bit.  They are tiny--smaller than an eighth of an inch wide.  They give you a canvas with pre-applied adhesive, and the picture under the adhesive is broken down into pixels.  Each pixel is marked on the canvas with a symbol, which corresponds to a color.  You use a little pointer instrument with a wax tip to pick up the little squares and place them on the canvas, one at a time.  There is a tool that can do more at a time, but that seems like more trouble to me than it's worth.  It takes a good eye and steady hand, and lots of patience.  The end result is part mosaic, part needlepoint.  Up close, the final visual effect looks like a mosaic, but from mid-range it looks more like needlepoint because of the pixelization.  However, the added sparkle makes it a bit cooler.  From afar it can look just like a regular picture.  I picked a very colorful, somewhat abstract picture, When Dreams Come True by Leonid Afremov.  I got a rather large one, 40x60cm, because smaller ones tend to look more pixelated and lose detail.  So, I figured, go big or go home!

Big it is...and look at all of those colors!

It's not the cheapest hobby, nor do I think I want to decorate my whole house in these, but I'm finding it quite addicting.  It's rather relaxing, even with having to change out the colors of the diamonds every few minutes.  There's a paper covering the adhesive, so you only want to take that off gradually so it doesn't get dried out or fuzzy.  That means that you can work on a small area, fill in everything of one color, switch to another, fill in those, and gradually peel back as you run out of space or realize there's more of the same color just beyond the paper's edge.  There have been spots with only one or two of a certain color, so that part feels a little tedious, but for whatever reason it's not at all boring.  And because you're just sort of moving along filling in holes, there's never really a clear breaking point.  It's easy to say, "Oh, just one more color," and then have another straggler color sucker you in to do more.  It's fascinating.  I love watching the colors come together and pick up details in the picture, like the bluish glare on a black lamppost, or how the light shines off the pavement and presents as countless different colors.  Sometimes you wonder how important the subtle color differences are, or you place an odd color in the middle of a completely different one, and then you see the end result and realize, "Oh, yeah, that does work!"  The subtle differences in color are amazing--there are four different whites alone, and each one definitely has its own purpose.  When you see images emerge from the picture, one color, one pixel at a time, it's pretty amazing.  So, I spent a solid chunk of time on Saturday and Sunday working on that.  I got maybe 1/12th of the way done, so I still have a long way to go.

The beginning

Midday Sunday--a tree trunk, lamp post, and park bench

In the meantime, the boys kept working on Jacob's epic Minecraft basketball arena.  He'd worked on it a couple other times previously, but he and Carter really tried to add some finishing touches this time.  Jacob did most of the work and Carter was content to observe, but then yesterday Jacob offered up some opportunities for him to help, which went pretty well.  There were a couple minor issues as the day went on, but for the better part of both afternoons they peacefully collaborated.  It felt so normal and yet completely miraculous.  That's probably how it's supposed to be, with two kids keeping each other occupied, but we get that so rarely.  Bonus points that it gave me time to do my stuff both days and gave Craig time to chill on his own on Sunday.  And like I said, while the extreme screen time wasn't ideal, the mere fact they were getting along felt far more important to me.  They need more positive bonding like that to remind themselves that maybe they could like each other.  So I'll ride this horse as long as we can before it inevitably breaks down.  Oh, and if Jacob ever calls this project done, we'll probably do a ridiculously long video tour of it because it's super duper impressive.  It was so good that when I baked that cake to use up birthday frosting, I decorated it for the "grand opening" of the arena.  It's definitely not up to my standards, but I was doing it fast and doing some experimenting that mostly didn't pan out.  Oh, well.  But it was sort of funny when the boys saw what I did!

As we all worked away on our respective projects, I couldn't help but appreciate our parallel existences.  After all, they were building an arena one cube at a time, and I was building a picture one square at a time.  Lots and lots of pixelated cubes and squares in our house this weekend!  We were also similarly struggling with stopping ourselves.  As I said, there was never a clear stopping point with mine, and Jacob was always finding one more thing to build onto when it was time to leave the house or go to bed.  I guess that apple didn't fall far from the tree!  When we set our minds on something I guess we just need to complete it!

Speaking of leaving the house, the other highlight of the weekend was going to the Knighthawks game.  We hadn't been to one since the opener due to a number of factors, so it was time.  It was Military Night, so Craig's parents came in, and we got to spend the evening in a suite with them.  Craig went all out getting us a nice setup, complete with fancy food and a Knighthawks pullover for his mom.  For all the years I've been around that arena, my time in suites has been limited, so even I enjoyed it!

Craig's dad is so proud of his veteran status, and I couldn't help but snap this picture during the anthem, as he saluted the giant flag on the field.

Craig submitted a bunch of old family photographs for a scoreboard segment honoring service men and women during a break in the game, and the look on his dad's face as he saw more and more pictures he recognized was awesome--himself, his dad, and his uncles!  It was also neat to watch his parents get excited to see Craig on the in-house TV feed and hear his play-by-play.  They were clearly so proud and it was nice for them to get a chance to appreciate in person how good he is at what he does.  Craig also took them out to the postgame party and they got to meet players and Craig's co-workers.  They even had a nice hotel room to go back to, and I'm sure they enjoyed the solitude since they have a full house these days.  I think it was really a treat for them, and from my perspective it was fun to watch since they don't get to see Craig in his element very often.

Overall, it was a great weekend.  It had a little bit of everything--fun, relaxation, self-care, and a distinct lack of yelling!  Not that it made it much easier to go back to work today, but it definitely felt fulfilling in a way weekends usually don't!  Yay for a little bit of normalcy.