Saturday Rituals With Johnnie

I woke up early this morning not having any time at all to sleep in. That's because Lisa is working at 7:30 AM this morning and so I'm at her house at 7:15.  Johnnie is starting to get a real feel for our routine especially Saturdays. He was the one that told me to get my car washed before we did anything else. Who am I to disagree?  And then he requested to simply pick up breakfast from McDonald's instead of going to Elysee. I'm afraid the Elysee routine is probably dying out. Hey it had a 6 year run, it couldn't last forever. Anyway it felt like a weekday morning with the familiar breakfast. I was actually in favor of it because Lisa scheduled a swim class for Johnnie with Stacey this morning at 10:30. So all we had time for was a quick trip to the grocery store and then back home until it was time for the swim class. The pool was empty for that time in the morning and this morning, Johnnie was not as motivated as he was last Friday. Maybe it was because he didn't have his wetsuit on so he may have been cold right off the bat. He kept whining and complaining and so I played tough guy and literally pushed him back into the pool whenever he approached the side after just a couple of strokes. It's like he had forgotten he knew how to swim.  He did manage to settle down after a while and so Stacey had him learning side-of-the-face breathing. I will say that in spurts, when Johnnie remembered to move his feet to propel himself, he looked pretty fast.  I let the slight regression of today go. We'll see how he does next time. Anyway by the time he got done it was well past 11:30 and it was already close to lunchtime. Hey he earned it today.  Today Johnnie decided he wanted to go to Panda Express in Westwood. Hey we hadn't gone there in a couple of weeks. And to my surprise it wasn't all that busy. It was a perfect opportunity to eat there like we hadn't done in a long time. We ate at the same table top we would usually eat at more than a year ago before the pandemic. And it was right there that Johnnie and I had lunch. And when we got home Johnnie went through all the stuff he usually does to occupy himself. There were Wild Kratt videos of course, then whenever he found an interesting thing he wanted to draw, he drew it out. Oh and we had to go to Staples to buy regular and colored paper. Then he had an ice cream sandwich AND another bowl of ice cream after that. Considering how skinny he is, I thought there was absolutely no harm in filling him with calories, no matter how sugary they may be. Anyway I thought maybe I could have a little nap in the afternoon. I mean I had less than  6 hours of sleep last night after all. But Johnnie jumping on my stomach took care of that. The funny thing was that I didn't really even care. And then afterwards, yet again because of Johnnie's urging, we played a little baseball too. Yes I let Johnnie pretty much call the shots all day today. Lisa did not actually pick him up until 5 PM. By then I had given him a pizza pocket for dinner too. And I realize I spent the entire day with him when all was said and done. By that time, the urge to get irritated with Lisa and the impulse to feel like she was taking advantage of me and my generosity took over the feeling of having been with Johnnie all day. I called her twice to pick him up and told her to clock in with her other job. That would be being Johnnie's mom of course. She has worked too much for the day and I don't care where she's at with her notes. Time for me to have some ME TIME too. Not that I didn't enjoy the day with Johnnie but I did have stuff I wanted to do starting with cleaning the house and then doing some research on my own accounts at E*Trade. Time to do some consolidation and time to figure out if I need to move some money into a ROTH IRA to  save taxes. Yep, I have gotten into that range of assets where I need to pay attention to avoiding being moved into the highest tax bracket. Ahhh taxes. I told Johnnie I would see him Monday as mom and son drove off. I realized I still had plenty of food in the fridge so I made myself dinner. Beef and spinach casserole over rice. How many times did I make that for Lisa and I? I thought of other June rituals too for some reason. Like the annual Steve Deutsch birthday lunch. Not this year I'm afraid. Not when Philma no longer works for him and no longer works for Cedars-Sinai. I'm going to miss that ritual too. But again, nothing lasts forever. I needed to go to bed earlier than usual today because of golf tomorrow. Now THAT is one ritual I'm going to try to keep going as long as I can. It's now 13 years and counting and has gone through many iterations in terms of partners. Or maybe I'm just being a little sentimental because we're about to lose one when Greg leaves in a month. Hopefully we can find someone who will stick. In the meantime, I spent my Saturday night watching Indian Summer... that camping movie I used to usher in the summer season with by watching it on Memorial Day weekend back in the day. One of MY personal rituals.  Took a couple of weeks longer but this ritual continues for at least this year. It is all good.