Life Derailed

Everything has been out of whack. Our city is almost back to being fully operational, which is a good thing. The only real restrictions are for large gatherings. But that doesn’t mean things are back to normal. Of course, there are the usual “new normal” things, like wearing masks and such, but even those things are more or less “recommendations” here and not actual requirements. We’ve never really had a huge volume of COVID cases in our county to start with, so everyone is just being cautious but going about their business. No real fanatics here.

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I Can’t Afford To Play Monopoly Anymore

Photo courtesy Google Images

My husband recently got a promotion at work. Good news, right? Yes. But, it requires that he work the 6 pm to 3 am shift for quite a few weeks. Not such good news. We’ve learned to deal with it and have even developed a routine of sorts that seems to be working for us.

Routine, however, can morph into a rut and nobody wants to be in a rut. In an effort to mix things up a bit, we decided to try playing a game instead of our normal watching tv together thing. (Besides all of the shows we normally DVR have ended for the season and there’s not much on we like to watch during the summer.)

“Wow, I haven’t played Monoply is like a bazillion years,” said I. “Let’s see if we even remember how to play.”

We set up the game, distributed our trust fund money to start the game and rolled the dice. My husband was first to round the board and pass go. But instead of forking over the standard issue $200, we realized that with today’s inflation, the rising cost of health care (not to mention Obamacare) and other such nonsense, we really should only receive $100.

Photo courtesy Google Images

Then I was presented with an opportunity to buy Boardwalk. I was practically salivating to hand over my money for the property until my husband suggested that even if I could afford the property now, I probably wouldn’t be able to afford the proptery taxes later and might lose the lot to foreclosure.

“But I’ll build a hotel on the property and collect rent,” I argued.

“How are you going to pay for the hotel?” he asked, “You just paid everything in your bank account to buy the property.”

I decided against the buying the prime piece of real estate, but on the next move I happily snapped up poor little Baltic Avenue and immediately placed a house upon it. When the time came to collect the rent of the little fixer-upper, I realized that the measly sum wouldn’t even pay to fill up my thimble playing piece with gasoline.

“How ’bout we play something else,” I suggested. “I can’t afford to play this game.”

Next we brought down the game of Life from the upper most closet shelf. After blowing off the dust we decided that game would probably be too depressing so we put it back. Next came Sorry. It was quickly determined that we were both, unfortunately, already winners at that game and put it back as well.

Photo courtesy Google Images

My husband suggested Baulderdash because, “we can just make shit up.” Then I reminded him that I am a writer of fiction and making shit up is what I do all the time. He rubbed his chin and put the game back. We decided against Scrabble for the same reason.  I could make up words all day long and he’d never know if they were real words or not. Of course he could challenge my “dwerger,” but then he’d lose like a million points when I proved him wrong with my trusty dictionary.

Finally, we put all the boxes back on the shelf, shut the closet door and sat our sorry asses down on the sofa to watch re-runs of NCIS. So much for mixing things up. Seems like the rut we’d created was just fine after all.

And what about you? What do you do to step out of your routine? What are some of your favorite board games? What television show are you patiently awaiting the new season of?

Word of the day: Firkin

Fun fact about me: This one’s actually about my mother – she could yodel.

Original post by Jansen Schmidt. August 2013. Photos courtesy Google Images

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