Can't Sleep

March 24, 2020

Well, I can’t sleep again. I should probably get up before 11:00 if I’m going to try to go to bed at a normal hour at night. I’m so used to waking up at 5:30 for school. I can’t believe they actually called off school for this virus that is going around. I guess since I can’t sleep, I’ll write in this journal my grandma got me for Christmas. I haven’t had time to write in it ever since she gave it to me. I think this whole time is going to be like a vacation, but Mom says there’s a lot of homework I’ll still have to do on my laptop. She was the one who suggested I start writing in this journal every night, so I’ll remember what the big quarantine was like when I’m older. I hope it goes by quick. They said we can’t go back for two whole weeks. That seems like forever.

March 26, 2020

Still haven’t gotten back on track with my sleep, so here I am. I’m not going to worry about it. I’ll just have to get used to my old sleep schedule when school starts back up. There’s not any real reason to make myself get up early, so it doesn’t matter so much if I stay up late, I guess.

It’s weird having Mom and Dad both home all day. They’re both supposed to be working from home, I guess, but mostly they kinda wander around the house and get on their laptops. Dad makes a bunch of phone calls in the afternoon, and that’s about it. We all went on a walk together this afternoon, just to have something to do. It was nice, I guess. It was kinda cold,but the daffodils and tulips were really pretty. I didn’t know we had so many of them in our neighborhood.

March 27, 2020 

Dad actually made pizza for dinner tonight. It wasn’t as good as Steve’s Una (my favorite) but it was really good. Mom said he used to make it all the time, but I don’t remember him ever making that before. It was cool, he let us each pick out a part of the pizza and put whatever we want on it. I put pepperoni and green peppers on mine. Green peppers smell different when they’re raw, instead of having no smell when they’re cooked. 

I still haven’t done any of my online homework. I guess I spend too much time on the phone, but it’s like there’s not really anything to talk about to anyone right now. I mean, there’s no where to go, and nobody is anywhere. Not much changes from one day to the next. There’s nothing to take a picture of to post. I also had my phone taken away all day after I got into a fight with my sister, Lauren, over who got the bathroom next. She just thinks since there’s no school, she can just go in whenever she wants and she doesn't stick to the schedule.

March 28, 2020

I think I could sleep better if I didn’t miss soccer so much. Most of the time when I have soccer practice or a game I come home and I can barely keep my eyes open to do homework. I remember one time I got home and I fell asleep at like 8:00 and I slept all the way until the next day. I had a bunch of crap I didn’t get done and I got in trouble for not turning that stuff in on time. I wish it was that easy to sleep now.

March 29, 2020

They cancelled school all the way until the end of April. I can’t believe it. They ruined the whole season. I’m so pissed.

March 31, 2020

Mom and Dad quit working this afternoon and made us all play board games so we had something to do. I guess it was pretty fun, we hadn’t done that in a long time. At some point I lost my phone in the couch and didn’t find it until this morning. 

April 2, 2020 

I got my bike out today. I haven’t ridden it in a really long time, I guess. It was covered in cobwebs and gross stuff. I got it all washed off and I rode around our neighborhood for a few hours just for something to do. It turns out there is a creek that cuts through between some of the houses about four blocks away. There were a couple of younger kids playing around by the creek, building some kind of fort. They are a couple of years younger than me, but I hung out with them for a while, anyway. There’s this one kid, Chase, who’s always in trouble in school for all sorts of stuff. He was kinda fun to hang around. He kept climbing up trees, and he and I got up in the tops of them with some pine cones and were trying to hit the other kids with them, like missiles. I think we’re gonna build a platform up there if we can find a few more pieces of flat wood. There are a couple of good boards in the garage that I can take over there. Maybe I can take a couple of camp stools, too.

I got in trouble for getting my good shoes muddy. There was more, but I’m pretty tired now, so I’m going to go to bed.

April 5, 2020 

Sorry I forgot to write the past couple of days. I went out on my bike and Chase and I found some more kids a couple of streets over, and we set up a bunch of games of Capture the Flag in the neighborhood. I keep forgetting about the time change and I got in trouble for being home late for dinner. I guess I forgot to take my phone and Mom couldn’t find me. She made a pot roast and it was really, really good. I’m so tired now I’m going to bed. Night.

April 6, 2020 

So we all went for a walk today and I got to show Mom and Dad the spot where Chase and I made the fort. It was weird taking them there, I guess because it’s only been kids there this week. We have the spot up at the top of the one big maple tree, but we never loaded it up with pine cones or the mud balls we planned on making. But we did stash some drinks up there for emergencies. 

After dinner we had to stay in and Dad built a fire in the fire pit in the backyard. I don’t think we ever did that before. It’s never been used. We had marshmallows and Dad taught us how to make s’mores, which are really good but kinda messy. Lauren kept catching her marshmallows on fire and they were like big torches. She wouldn’t eat them, but I think they’re good when they are burned black on the outside. I made her one that was perfectly brown all the way around so she had one she liked. Dad poured gasoline on the light to make it jump up really high a couple of times--that was really cool. He let me pee outside, too, over by the fence. I didn’t tell him I’d already been peeing outside all week in the creek.

When I was standing over by the fence taking a leak, I looked up and there were a ton of stars in the sky. It was really, really clear and the moon hadn’t come up, and outside the ring of light from the fire, I could see all kinds of stars--big ones, small ones, little winking ones. There was one that was moving across the sky really fast. I thought it might be a UFO of some kind, but it went out of sight super quick. I wonder if aliens are watching our quarantine? And what do they think if they are watching? The sky was so cool I could have looked at it all night, and I had so many ideas about where aliens might come from and what it’s like in outer space, and a new game Chase and I can play tomorrow. I want to write them all down, but right now I’m too tired. I’ll write them down later.