I don’t get the house to myself often enough.
I’m a stay-at-home mom, so logic tells me that I should probably be sick of being at my house, and I am sick of being at my house … with my family. What I miss so much is the experience of being home BY MYSELF. The quiet, the freedom to clean without little people coming behind me and immediately dirtying it all up, the joy of cranking up Rihanna without worrying about the lyrics, and the simple pleasure of walking into my bedroom without an entourage.
I miss that.
As I’ve muddled through the summer, I’ve been vaguely aware of my eldest child’s obsession with Pokemon; he begs for a pack of cards every time we go to Target, and every time I balk at the price and tell him to save up for them if he wants some. $14.99 for a pack of cards?! Not happening.
I know my kids watch the show on television and play Pokemon games on the tablet. I know there is a small yellow creature named Pikachu that everyone seems to love, and that is the extent of my knowledge about Pokemon. It’s quite limited, obviously, so you can probably imagine my confusion when all of the sudden my husband became obsessed with it.
I was like, wait a second. Hold on. A 34-year-old man — the other adult in this house — is suddenly wandering around the house talking about catching something called “Vaporeon,” and I’m not sure if that is a Pokemon character, or a bacterial infection. I literally looked up from cooking dinner one night and my children and my husband were crowding around a Smartphone talking in an entirely different language. I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, but it didn’t matter, because they LEFT THE HOUSE FOR AN HOUR.
An hour.
It was glorious.
I changed clothes without the sound of wailing on the other side of my bedroom door. I lit a candle and made the house cozy. I had an entire telephone conversation without interruption. I made brownies without having to say, repeatedly, “No, you cannot lick the spoon because I don’t want you to get salmonella.”
Then there is the whole car thing. All five of us were driving to my in-law’s house when my husband pulled into a random park, clicking excitedly on his phone and yelling to our kids about something called a “Poke stop.”
“WHAT IS THAT?!” I asked.
I didn’t understand the answer at all, but decided I didn’t care, because guess what? Starbucks is a Poke stop! Everyone was unanimously excited about that. The kids don’t whine about errand-running anymore, because we can turn it into a Pokemon GO adventure. I can go on auto pilot while my husband leads the hunt. No one cares what Mommy is doing — and it’s amazing.
When my family returns from a hunt talking about all the Poke things they caught, all I can think about was how nice it was to be alone for 60 full minutes, thinking uninterrupted thoughts and getting sh*t accomplished. It is truly magical, which is why as they relay to me what virtual creatures they’ve captured on their outing, I smile from ear to ear and say, genuinely meaning it, “THAT IS AWESOME!”
I have no idea what they are talking about. And I hope it never stops.
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