we will celebrate everyday

The student is home... for the weekend, at least. This is such welcome news after all the drama of the last few days. On the days leading up to her leaving for Pittsburgh, she put Vesta Bye Bye Day on our shared calendar in the kitchen. This is a small whiteboard I have stuck to the fridge with magnets and it allows the entire household to share their weekly schedule. It's how we manage drop off and pick up schedules and duties, how we remember to bring our instrument when there are rehearsals or lessons, and how we keep updated on the student's schedule once she learned to drive. Sometimes, I even put the menu on there, or a reminder to EAT THE YOGURT because it will expire on a certain date. 

My daughter's name is not Vesta. Animal Crossing Wiki says this about her. "Vesta is a normal sheep in Animal Crossing series that appears in all versions of the Animal Crossing video games. Her name comes from the piece of clothing vest, an item of clothing sometimes made out of the wool of sheep, her species, and possibly the Roman goddess of the hearth, Vesta, though this may be a coincidence."

Vesta, image from the Wiki 

To explain the reference, first I need you to understand that we are a gaming family. We all play video games. Just like my love of YA fantasy and teen science fiction, I play video games that are designed for children ages 9 and up... or below. Nintendo's smash breakout game Animal Crossing New Horizons was a game that helped us survive the pandemic. It resulted in the acquisition of not one, not two, not even three Nintendo Switch consoles but 5. The reason for the additional consoles? Someone wants another island. 

If you've never played this game, or much less heard of it, I won't go into incredible detail like I did with Pikmin Bloom, but basically, it's a simulation game where the player, a human, you, are joined by a series of animals in your village or island, depending on which version of the game you play. You engage them, invite them to live on your island or village and you have regular interactions with them that involve funny dialogue, cute clothing and furniture for their homes. The animals can be male or female, from several species that include dogs, cats, horses, mice, birds and sheep, like Vesta. They also have personalities, which can be any of 8 different types. Usually, you may want a whole variety of these personalities on your island (for New Horizons, you're all on an island so we will stick with that) but given that there are 8 different kinds and you can only have 10 of them at any given time, residing on the island, it can be frustrating when you're stuck with maybe 8 that have "normal" personalities, just like Vesta. 

My daughter decided that she would like Vesta to leave so that she can have room for some other personality on her island. Honestly though, it's not like you can just go up to them and say, "Be gone!" You just have to get the game to determine that it was time for one of the animals to say that they would like to leave and you pursue the dialogue option that is right for you. That is, you can "tell" them that you want them to stay, or you can wish them well and allow them to leave. So anyway.... this game, it takes patience. It's real time. You wake up, you play, you go about your day. Tomorrow is another day. No one is time traveling! We will not do that! Finally, one day, Vesta had the thought bubble over her head as she walked around the island and upon interacting, we learned that she was now thinking about exploring other places. Yes, Vesta! You must do this! We wish you the best. Vesta Bye Bye Day arrived. She could move on with her game, her life. We celebrated. 

When the student announced that she was coming home for the weekend, my husband declared that this day would be... Vesta Hi Hi Day. My welcome back banner did not say this, a fact that was questioned by the student. I had to explain that I ran out of letters and how her true nick had more letters in common with Happy so it was less work for me to create that banner instead of Vesta Hi Hi Day. But we would eat all the things she missed while she was here and we will celebrate everyday. 

The most surprising thing to me wasn't that she asked about Eataly. We were sure to have our first dinner together over there but what she missed was... fruit! It seemed that The Perch menu got a bit boring with the constant fried food offerings and she just wanted some good, proper, healthy fruit. So off I went to Wegmans, first thing after drop off. Oh, you saw me? Wearing all black sweats, Crocs and glasses... wiping snot off with the long sleeve of my shirt... uh, no. That wasn't me. I always carry tissue and I would never wear Crocs outside. <cough cough> Oh, sorry, I think I'm coming down with something. Gotta go! Bye! 

I brought all the healthy things home. Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, bananas, 2 containers of beautiful Campari tomatoes, a green bell pepper... She can have all the berries with her yogurt and fancy granola and I'm going to make my special pizza with the Roman-style crust, all the veggies... <groan> I forgot the olives :( that's ok, I'll go with the tomato basil sauce and we can skip it. Tomorrow, for breakfast, I'm going to make my ginisang corned beef with potato, served with rice and eggs. It's gonna be scrambled, I guess. I'm the only person who wants boiled eggs. It's scrambled for the rest of the fam. 

I'm starting to get hungry just thinking about all that food but I didn't want to forget to share something about this morning. As I left the house, running a little bit later than usual so I didn't have time to press all the buttons and start up a playlist, I decided to try AI DJ's reco and hit "Favorite Mix" and it was like witchcraft, I tell you! The songs on this list, whoa. How could she possibly know what my favorite song is? Are there hidden microphones? I don't even play these songs that often. It's crazy. There's like a story for each one. Maybe tomorrow. 

Playlist Recommendation: The Remedy (I Won't Worry), Jason Mraz