My wife and I play chess and or cribbage. Often a few games a night. It gets my head out of the things i need to deal with at work, and home.
We started doing this about 5 years ago. I was playing chess on my phone while waiting at the airport, my wife asked about it, I taught her and away we go.
If I have to be away for a few days, we also will play online at chess.com . It’s not all just playing the game, of course we talk about our day and whatnot.
It’s actually easier because you use so many of the letters that by the time you get to the last few words there isn’t a lot of guessing that has to be done.
Having a good variety of options is important, I think:
Post here
Watch sports on TV - mostly baseball or american football
Read books (the old fashioned way) Mostly history, some sci-fi and mysteries
Play chess against my phone. Sometimes the phone lets me win!
Jigsaw puzzles. This is new thing for this year. It’s very relaxing.
Walk through a garden or park
Happy opening day! Who’s your baseball team?
On chess: I wish I had the patience to sit and learn real strategy. I get really bored and lose focus after like five moves against the computer because I just know I’m going to lose.
Take walks
Do jigsaw puzzles, often while watching something mindless on TV. (That doesn’t limit me much, does it.)
Read
The odd thing is that my wife and I just turned in our book to the publisher for copy editing and production, and we have some weeks before we get it back to check on. We’re going crazy not having anything to write. Writing under deadline was actually relaxing, oddly enough.
Happy Opening Day to you too
Washington Nationals - Not a great result today, but 161 games to go
It took me years before I could beat my phone on anything but Super beginner mode.
Hey I’m a Cincinnati guy, so I’m smiling pretty big tonight. (I’m sure that’ll change this weekend…)
The Pirates are unbeaten!
How do they play ball wearing those eye patches?
Sometimes they play as though…
Pittsbaaaaaargh!
I bake. I watch other people bake on TV. I look up recipes online. I peruse Amazon for baking pans, utensils, ingredients.
While things are baking, I always have a jigsaw puzzle to work on.
Fun fact: We had an all-school art show in college. The pre-med students were far better artists than the art majors.
Fun fact #2: My uncle the doctor retired, and started having gallery shows of his paintings.
There is a connection between medicine and art…
That’s interesting. My mom was an art major. I was recently going through her old drawings from college. Lots of sketches of bone and muscle structure from all angles and positions.
Michelangelo da Vinci did similar things I think. Studied form from inside out.
Hide from my wife and kids.
Look, I love my family and all that. But I can’t relax while they are around and they’re always around. No matter what I’m doing, at least one of my kids is going to bust in and ask for something or my wife will start coming up with tasks and “honey do-s” or they’ll all start bickering about homework or some other bullshit. So it’s tough to actually relax because I’m constantly waiting for the next interruption to happen.
I had a couple days “off” from the family last week while the family was at our other house (near my stupid inlaws who just make every situation worse). It was really nice. I went and watched Dune: Part 2 in a theater. The next day I went to my local steakhouse to enjoy a burger, a martini, and some live piano music.
The weather was sort of crappy, so I didn’t take a walk along the Hudson River or venture into the city.
I also like going for a job to relax. I mapped out several routes around where I live Hudson County, NJ where you get some pretty dramatic elevation changes along the Palisades with nice views of the river and NYC behind it.
I get it! We don’t have kids at home anymore but we do have 3 dogs. AND my husband is retired. So like you said, they’re always around. The dogs love me most so they are always behind me if I’m walking around the house or they’re on top of me if I’m on the couch. One time for “fun” I just kept walking around the house in circles to see if they’d give up. Nope! They tapped along behind me the whole time.
If I’m watching something on TV my husband will ask me questions so I am continually pausing the show. Sometimes it takes me an hour to watch a half hour show.
I’m not a napper, but once in a while it would be kind of nice to just close my eyes for a minute or two. My husband is always napping in his recliner. And when he is, I leave him be. I don’t tiptoe around but I don’t talk to him. One cold, gloomy, rainy Saturday afternoon I was on the couch watching something and my eyes began to get heavy so I slid down (as far as I could - there were two big dogs on the couch with me!) and put my head on a pillow. It wasn’t more than 1 minute later, my husband is talking to me. I ignored hoping he’d catch on. Then someone walked down the sidewalk in front of the house so that got the Great Dane bellowing. I gave up.
So I like going to work. I’m in my own office that I’ve decorated nicely. It’s quiet, I rarely get interrupted, and I stream something on my computer during lunch. An hour later, I go home.
I like walking in the woods to relax too, but it’s not too relaxing when you’re wrangling 3 goofy dogs. So I like to sneak out on my own once in a while.
Last time I took a nap, I woke up with my 7 year old daughter looming over me and surrounded by her army of stuffed animals.
One thing I sometimes do is when we order food from one of the nearby restaurants (within a block or so), I will go and pick up the food. 1) so it doesn’t get cold but 2) so I can grab a martini or a margherita or a beer and just chill for 30 minutes or so while the food preps.
Funny thing is, my wife overheard some other wives on the bus complaining about their husbands “picking up dinner” and doing the same thing. Only they would do it for hours. I told her that was “ridiculous” and the “kitchen probably just got backed up”.
So it’s kind of a running joke when I go out to get the food my wife will be like “kitchen get backed up again?”
Oh my GOD do I relate to this. Plus, add a dog onto that.
Sometimes I’ll sit down, and if it’s not me sitting down locked in the bathroom, I feel anxiety creeping up because I just know in a few seconds/minutes there’s going to be someone (or some-dog) crying out for attention or needing help with something. And I have this odd compulsion of always sacrificing my own wellbeing and peace to go out of my way to make others happy.
Sometimes, I wish I were more selfish.
I do what msmith537 does…
Hide from his wife and kids.
Have you ever met them? You would, too.
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(Sorry, just read through the “old one-liners” thread and couldn’t resist…)