In no surprise to anyone, that time of year came earlier than usual to our household. In Michigan, the winter weather often leaves us cooped up inside for days at a time with too much sitting and too much eating leaving us feeling crappy and unfit. Unfortunately, the pandemic has had much the same effect, with my husband working from home, one zoom meeting after another and me tiptoeing around upstairs or sitting for unhealthy lengths of time as I try to remain quiet.
So what do we do to break the cycle you may ask? We ping pong! Our basement is not really conducive to it with one end covered in weightlifting equipment and the other filled with a stereo cabinet and boxes of abandoned toys. But with a few modifications, we make it work. Rule number one? Do anything you can to keep the ball on the table and not have to go hunting for it in the crowded and/or spidery corners. That means you play it off the ceiling or the heating duct, off the double bounce or the over-hit. Of course that means that rule number two is don’t keep score. Why wouldn’t it be?
What those rules bring though, in addition to truly mediocre ping pong, is laughter and the freedom to experiment! How can you not laugh when the ball comes zinging at you off the elliptical machine and you manage to put it back on the table? And what about the freedom to practice every kind of back-handed, wildly spinning attempt to send the ball flying in a new direction?
But you want to know the real secret, the magic that keeps us moving and playing in spite of the weather or the pandemic? He’s an amazingly good sport when I gloat! And I have to confess. I gloat. A lot. And he lets me. There are a lot of definitions of love but I swear, that has to be in there somewhere. I hope you and yours are able to find your own kind of magic in these tough times.
(All of this is on pause while my husband recuperates from surgery but I still think it rings true… We’re currently in the process of rewriting the rules to Scrabble!)
All quiet for now…