Most people, at least many people, are following the recommendations of our Provincial Health Officer Dr Bonnie Henry and are self-isolating, quarantining themselves and their families, or at the very least, “social-distancing”.

However, it seems that large numbers of people are continuing to congregate in city parks – large numbers of people congregating in close proximity to one another is a very bad thing at this time.
I’m usually of the mind of “let them reap what they sow” when people do stupid things but in this case, it is the collective, the “herd” who will suffer from the large gatherings of people. Perhaps it is time to put on the sprinkler systems in parks to let people know not to congregate?
However, the quarantine, self-isolation, social-distancing – whatever you want to call it has brought back more traditional activities in many people’s lives – examples being, baking bread and playing board games.

Lots of people have started sharing on Instagram photos of the really ugly bread that they have baked. Interestingly, very few people talk about actually eating it or how many teeth they broke while trying to bite through the rock hard crust that they ended up with.

Random picture of what the fires of hell probably look like.
And for loads of family fun, board games have become all the rage again.
Last night in our house we played a revised version of Trivial Pursuit. What a wonderful opportunity to bond as a family. Board games provide many hours minutes of family fun.
Of course no matter what the written rules of the board game say, everyone knows that the game is over when one of the players gets so upset at the success of another player that they flip the game board over thereby spilling all the game cards and pieces onto the floor.
Typically, the game is officially over when at least two players are in tears and at least one door is slammed with enough force to awaken the household cat.
In our home it is still unclear who is responsible for picking up the pieces after the calm has descended on the house. Similar to the “who didn’t turn on the dishwasher” routine – who actually is responsible?

Another fun activity that we have started is “home improvements”. I figured I would start outside and mow the lawn – you know, fix up the public face of the Robinsmith estate.
Of course the fact that the lawn was still mostly covered in snow meant I had to clear the snow off it before mowing.
Thankfully when everyone else was buying and stockpiling toilet paper, I went out and bought a flame-thrower. It worked really well at clearing the snow off the lawn in front of the house.

And then I mowed to clean it up all pretty. Even if I have to say so myself, it cleaned up pretty nicely.
Of course there are many other fun activities we have been doing. Having kids watching one another to report out when they see a sibling touch their face in the “you touched your face game” makes for loads of laughs tears.
And the “who used the last tissue from this box” mystery game is similar to the murder mystery games people used to play. In fact, if we don’t get out of this quarantine, self-isolation thing at some point soon we may actually be playing the murder mystery game.
At the least, we may start to escalate from giving each other the nasty side-eye looks that result in screams of agony to physical confrontations.
The funny thing is, the household cat (I call it The Orange Cat) just continues to look/glare at us as if saying, “yeah, now maybe you understand my reality”. And I am beginning to.
Ah yes, the joys of family time.