And thus begins the final week of my thirties. Now there is a weird thought.
I was up at eleven thirty, a little bit earlier than we have been getting up, and I did my daily routine of walking around the house opening every door and window. It is glorious outside. I stood on the terrace for a little bit enjoying it. So wonderfully nice. In the low seventies (about twenty two Celsius) with sun and a light breeze and a hazy mist hitting the peninsula at Chania to the west off of the Aegean.
With the wind down today, the house is filled with the sound of chirping birds and the never ending sound of distant barking dogs and crowing roosters. For some reason, both of those go around the clock. Very distant, but they are always there. And once in a while you hear sheep talking to one another.
Luciana has not been sick to her stomach for a full day now, but she still makes us keep her “bin” beside her wherever she goes and today she started to develop a low grade fever. She was pretty icky all day and had around a 101 fever by the end of the day. We are guessing that she has the flu, it started as a moderate cough, which I have as well, and had just a tiny bit of nausea and is now a fever and generally achenes.
We all went to bed very early tonight. When I took Luciana up to bed I told her that I would sleep in her room with her if she wanted and unlike her normal response she said, “Well, I would really like you to.” So I moved my CPAP into the girls’ room and slept on the big convertible bed in with Luciana and Liesl slept with Dominica.
Luciana got up and was feeling rather a bit better today. Dominica, however, was fully sick and slept until mid-afternoon, then came downstairs, sat in the chair in the living room and before long, slept for another six hours in the chair and then went to bed rather early, too. She is very much not feeling well.
It was another truly gorgeous day. So sad that no one is getting to enjoy it. We have all of the windows open and fresh air in the house all day. It feels great. I really wish that there was time and ability to get out and explore the island. Maybe we will get lucky and be able to later in the week. But with the way that things have been going, that seems rather unlikely.
Liesl was happy to have the day off from school and used most of her day to play Castaway Paradise, again. For the second day in a row she was able to earn all of her “dailies” and she is learning a lot of reading, logic, math and skills from the game, so I am pretty happy with the time spent.
Yesterday, having been the end of a long weekend that we took advantage of to deal with a sick family, today was a busy day for me trying to catch up while watching over the kids as Dominica was unavailable all day. So I was super busy and never got a chance for any downtime at all.
I worked until three in the morning, Dominica having gone to bed long before them. Luciana asked that I spend some time with her, so we went in the game room and I closed my eyes and sat with her as she played a new game that is perfect for her: Shu’s Garden. She really liked it. It’s just a cute, playful piece of art, no objectives or ways to get hurt. You just play a handful of creatures in a garden that jump around and eat plants and plant seeds and stuff. Then we played a few minutes of Ostrich Island, but she felt that that was a little boring. Maybe if we figure it out more.
Luciana got up sometime during the night and threw up. She isn’t even five and she handles getting sick, going to the bathroom and cleaning up and doesn’t even ask anyone to help her. She is such a trooper. I didn’t even wake up!
It is President’s Day and Liesl knows that her cousins have the day off from school so with Luciana being sick we decided that she could have the day off too.
Luciana spent much of the day sleeping in the game room. Liesl played a lot more of Castaway Paradise today now that she knows that she loves it and understands much of the game mechanics. She did not progress nearly as quickly today as she did yesterday with me helping her but she did spend most of the day reading the words on the screen (the game has no spoken dialogue, everything is word bubbles) so that was very good for her. She managed to do her first day in which she got all of her daily rewards since we understand how they work and she earned the big Fire Badge and was so excited about how well she did. She also built the first bridge to another island. This is really turning out to be a great game for her.
Luciana was sick all day and threw up one more time after having tried to keep down some toast.
The weather was truly amazing today. So nice that when I got up I made Dominica come sit on the terrace with me for a while. Liesl came up to and just ran around. It was bright sun and seventy degrees! Our warmest, nicest day yet in Greece. Maybe winter is over here. This will do wonders for reducing the mould problem.
Dominica spent the day watching the Gilmore Girls again. I was busy posting and writing all day and never got a chance to watch anything or play anything all day.
I went to corner store for groceries as I do every day. There have only been a few days for the past month and a half that I have not walked to the store at least once. I’m sure that my average is at least once per day or higher.
Dominica made tortellini alfredo for dinner tonight.
Luciana went to bed very early, as did Dominica. Liesl I got off to bed at two. I went to bed myself around four.
Got up at six thirty this morning. Just was not tired and was not getting any sleep. So went down to the “office” and wrote for a while.
Happy sixteenth birthday to our niece Madeline today!
I got to play The Stanley Parable this afternoon, which is a game that I have been interested in for some time. I played it for only half an hour or so, essentially “beating” the game.
I was at my desk until ten, then I went upstairs and went to bed and managed to sleep for two hours before Liesl decided that I had “slept too long” at two hours and tore the blankets off of the bed and made me get up. So I was pretty sleepy all today.
It is Sunday today and we had planned to get up and go travelling today but Luciana said that her stomach hurt and so we decided, yet again, that we cannot go anywhere (we would later be very justified in this.)
I did a little writing this afternoon but not much. Dominica made it a Gilmore Girls marathon day for herself and we really did not see her all day. She was watching it when I got up and she was still watching it when I went to bed at night.
Liesl decided that she wanted to play The Stanley Parable today and she put way more time into it than I did. She knows it from her YouTube gamer shows and knew a lot about it. What a bizarre game for her to play. She did a great job with it, though.
I set the girls up with a new Sega racing game today which turns out to be way better, better looking and more fun than the famous Nintendo racing game that we don’t have access to any longer. Luciana has an easier time playing the Sega one and it does up to four players on Steam which is awesome. So the girls can race against each other.
Look who won the race.
I spent the majority of the day camped out in the game room with my girls. It was a daddy daughter evening. We piled blankets onto the one bed and we made a blanket for, more or less, and called it our magical snuggle carriage. We had a wonderful time just hanging out together. Luciana was not up to doing very much and would sometimes watch Liesl play a video game and would sometimes watch something herself on her Kindle Fire. Liesl spent most of the day playing Castaway Paradise. She had played it before today but had not figured out how to “really” play it and had not really gotten into it. Today I worked with her and showed her how to play and now she is completely in love with it. She made it from level four to level nine and earned several badges.
I really like that Castaway Paradise teaches good values like getting experience points for helping others and cleaning up the island. It also teaches about interest in banking and how the stock market works. And it teaches about saving money up to buy things that she wants. We played it for just hours and hours.
Tonight I got to play just a tiny bit of a game myself. I literally waited the whole day and didn’t play anything until around two in the morning! After hearing all of the hype around this week’s release of XCOM 2, I decided that I should try out the original XCOM. I managed to get through the tutorial mission and the second mission (I chose to rescue Seattle) and I must say that it is looking like it is going to be a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the first little bit that I got to play. The story portion looks like it is going to be very enjoyable.
I got up to bed a little after three. After getting so little sleep this morning, we made the girls sleep on the floor so that we would sleep better. Liesl says that we really need to make sure that our next home has a bigger bed than this one. Only have a double bed is not enough for our family.
Luciana went to bed long before anyone else. She was not feeling the best all day.
We all slept in a lot today. I got up and wrote for about an hour and was just headed to the game room to play something, I had not decided what yet, when Liesl beat me to it my thirty seconds and she spent the afternoon playing The Sims 3. So I went to my desk and wrote for about seven hours hoping that, at some point, the room would be free.
The girls and I played some reindeer catch today. It’s become one of Ciana’s favourite activities. They have both improved a lot and are getting far better at catching.
Luciana asked to play Goat Simulator tonight. Boy am I getting tired of that game. We have logged twenty seven hours on it! But it is one of the few games that we can play together. She is actually quite good at it and does lots of the achievements on her own.
I played a tiny bit of Bookworm for a bit while we ate dinner. Dominica and the girls were each watching their own shows so there was no family dinner, specifically. Dominica made a corn and potato soup that was awesome tonight. She and Liesl baked cheesy biscuits together, too.
The girls came in the game room after dinner and sat on the bed with me while I played Bookworm.
Then Dominica joined us and we played a little bit of Bookworm Adventures which is supposed to take place in ancient Greece, so it was perfect.
Then we played the last episode of the Blue Toad Murder Files and have finally finished that game. We really enjoyed it and hope that they decide to make a second season of it, but it has been long enough since the original that that seems like it is not too likely.
