Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

One of the joys of summer is being outside, whether it’s gardening or visiting the zoo or having a picnic with friends. Some of that is outdoor exercise – in my case, mulching or walking through the neighborhood, which are both easier to do in the summer. So far, this summer has been a little different. First we had a couple warm, dry weeks, where we avoided going outside after the early morning because of the heat. Now we have air quality concerns in Chicagoland because of smoke blowing down from wildfires in Canada: the last three days have had an air quality index over 200 (the annual average is 23). I’m a huge fan of breathing, so I’ve been staying indoors as much as possible.

The remains of my mulch pile sits on the driveway, waiting for that number to drop. My Pokémon Go mileage has dropped, though not all the way to zero because I do have some indoor options that involve the right type of movement for my tracker. Those are options I usually reserve for colder weather: Beat Saber on my Oculus, using the treadmill or elliptical (which help my Pokémon Go mileage), or a Centr.com workout. They’re all valid options year round, but I hate to waste good weather by being indoors.

That said, I know I have to move; I know from experience that sitting all day for work causes my muscles to tighten up, and the pain from that is comparable to the hip pain that sent me for an MRI earlier this year. I need to stick to low impact exercises, which still means doing some kind of exercise. And I know there are many unexplored options online still that would serve me indoors.

When I was in high school, my father attended the curriculum night every year, meeting my teachers and getting an overview of what I would be studying that year. My last year there, I signed up for the Introduction to Poetry to class. I’ll be honest, I’ve never enjoyed analyzing poetry, but the teacher, Mr. Dan Bowden, only taught that and AP English. Mr. Bowden was a distinctive figure at my school, popping his head into our English class to ask a question, then reciting from whatever Shakespearean play we happened to be reading at the time, or stepping into the auditorium and joining the girls’ gym class for a minute or two as we attempted aerobics. After two years at the school, I knew I wanted to take a class with him before graduating.

My father, as I mentioned before, had a degree in English Language and Literature. It was still a bit of a surprise when he handed me a book of poetry the next morning with a page marked to show to Mr. Bowden. The brief poem was Lord Finchley by Hilaire Belloc, who seems to have been a fascinating character, and reads as such:

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.

While I am by no means wealthy, I have kept this poem in mind mainly in the last decade as I’ve navigated home improvements and repairs. And so this morning, when I walked into the garage and found water emerging from the newly installed water softener, I immediately rushed to fix it. And by fix it, I mean call the water softener company to repair it… you did just read Lord Finchley, didn’t you?

While there are some projects I’ll handle inside the house, I have a strict rule about not messing with any appliances that integrate with the utilities: water, natural gas, or electricity, and the water softener touches two of those. For now, I have a towel down in case it leaks again – it appears to be related to when it cycles, which is about once a week. The towel is dry enough that Zuko sat on it for a while.

I’ve said it before, nobody likes chores. There may be a specific one you enjoy (hanging laundry on a nice day, for example), but overall, they’re something that just needs to get done. And then there’s the matter of distributing chores evenly among household members. I had looked at chore apps before and hadn’t found one that was customizable enough to suit our chore list and that seemed fun.

That all changed this week, when someone mentioned Chore Wars on a group chat. The basic premise is that each household or party member creates a profile, and the Dungeon Master sets up the “Adventures,” allocating experience points (XP), chances of finding treasure or a wandering monster, as well as setting the relevant stats (standard gaming attributes based on Dungeons & Dragons or similar games). The gold pieces accrued for each chore are between a range of numbers, also customizable. There’s even a quick start for the Adventures that will create a set of common chores pre-loaded with all of that information.

I used the quick start for our initial set of Adventures, removing the irrelevant ones (ironing?) and replacing them with house-specific items like cleaning the litter boxes, taking out the compost, and refilling the bird feeder. And, after finding one the hard way this morning, cleaning up hairballs.

Our adventure has just started, so we’re still figuring out the website and haven’t decided if we’re going to exchange gold for real life rewards. Maybe once we reach a certain number of gold pieces between us, we’ll cash that in for a nice dinner.