Replacing Candy Crush as my new love is the game 2048.  I didn’t really get it at first, so it took me three tries before I really started playing the game.  The game starts with the number 2, and the goal is to get a square called 2048.  To do this, you slide together two 2s, which becomes a 4.  If you slide together two 4s, it becomes an 8.  Two eights becomes a 16.  And so on.

You can only combine two of the same number.  All the tiles slide over in the same direction when you move one, so you also need to manipulate the board so that same numbers are next to one another.

Essentially, to win the game, you need to create two 1024 squares, get them next to one another, and slide them together.  Just to give you a sense of how many combinations you’ll need to make to get to that 1024 square:

• 2 + 2 = 4
• 4 + 4 = 8
• 8 + 8 = 16
• 16 + 16 = 32
• 32 + 32 =64
• 64 + 64 = 128
• 128 + 128 = 256 (this is the highest square I was able to form after 3 tries)
• 256 + 256 = 512
• 512 + 512 = 1024
• 1024 + 1024 = 2048

Got it?  So you essential build 10 layers to create this one square.

You can also play online if you don’t have a mobile device.  A note: you need to use the arrow cursors, not your mouse, to make the numbers move left, right, up, and down.  Also, remember, all the tiles slide in the same direction, so if you move one tile, you may be moving all the tiles.

Good luck.  I think it is the most brilliant way to introduce the concept of multiples to a kid in a fun, hands-on way.

I’m going to take a moment to brag about my virtual pet and my actual child.

First, my virtual pet.

Hay Day recently released a virtual bunny that could be purchased for a lot of vouchers.  I had zero vouchers because I spent them all on a fishing event, but I filled boat orders like mad until I was able to afford a tiny white bunny.  I named him Dark Lord Baltimore, though we call him DLB for short.

Dark Lord Baltimore combines my two loves: the Harry Potter universe and Maryland state history.  He’s named after The Dark Lord AND the first Lord Baltimore — George Calvert.  I’ve already decided to name all the virtual dogs after the subsequent Lord Baltimores: Cecil, Charles, Benedict Leonard, Charles in Charge Again, and Frederick.  Though I only plan on getting three dogs so… Cecil, Charles, and Benedict Leonard.  And I plan on naming my future three cats after three of their wives: Anne Arundel, Mary Darnell, and Charlotte Lee.

I cannot put into words how much I love Dark Lord Baltimore.

I get that he’s a virtual pet purchased with fake currency, but knowing he is in my pocket brings me infinite happiness.  So much so that I’ve started calling anything that makes me happy a DLB.  My Newman’s Own Cinnamon mints are DLBs.  A good book is totally DLB.  Going to Chinocteague is a DLB trip.

Hobbes was right.  Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.  We need to take our happiness wherever we can find it, even if it takes the form of virtual animals.

What is making you happy at the moment?

*******

Josh wondered aloud while we were driving to the baseball game this past weekend how Maryland got its name.

“I don’t remember,” I admitted.  “Jamestown was named after King James I.”

“Maybe Maryland was named for his wife?  For his mother?”

“ChickieNob, who was King James’ mother?” I called into the backseat.

“Mary, Queen of Scots,” came the bored answer.  She is so tired of us.  This is how I imagine Wikipedia feels when we Google things.  When we first started asking Wikipedia our questions, it eagerly returned the answers, happy to help.  But by now, three trillion questions later, Wikipedia is wondering why we are collectively so unknowledgeable.  Sometimes I get the feeling Wikipedia would like to include an exasperated, “don’t you remember anything from school?” at the bottom of each article.

Having the ChickieNob is like having a human external hard drive.  I don’t have to memorize things like the lineage of the royal family or the mother’s name of every US president.  I don’t have to remember obscure science facts or the characters in various books.  I like to call her “the brain for my brain” from the song “Washington.” (I’m aware that isn’t the line in the song, but it sounds like it sort of goes along with the song.)  Since she is usually with me, I can access her massive quantity of memorized knowledge simply by calling out questions into the backseat.

It turns out that while the ChickieNob was right, we were wrong in our assumption that the two nearby settlements were connected.  Maryland was named for Henrietta Maria of France.

“Do you mind,” I asked the ChickieNob as we walked into Nationals Park, “if I write about how I call you the brain for my brain?”

“And post it on your blog?” she asked.

“Yeah, if you mind, I won’t do it.”

She considered the question for a moment and then nodded, “Sure, you can tell people.  I think I’d like that a lot.”

So, yeah, Chickie is a very smart girl.  I hope hearing that makes her happy.

If you Google to find out who is the Nationals’ biggest fan by Googling “Nationals superfan,” I am the first hit.  This is because I am the team’s biggest fan.  There are other fans — I’m not denying that.  But I am the biggest one.

How do I know that I’m the Nationals’ biggest fan?  I don’t know.  How do you know the earth is flat or that the sun orbits the moon, the center of our lunar system?  It’s just freakin’ science.  There are people who study these sort of things — fandom — and if they ever turned their keen eye to the Nationals, they would discover me, cheering on our boys.  And those people would name me the biggest fan.  But since they seem too busy researching the Kardashian family, I had to do my own research.  Guess whose name bubbled up to the top of the list?  I can sure as hell inform you that it wasn’t Joe Smith in section 202.  It was me.  Melissa Ford.  Nationals Superfan.

We went on Easter Sunday to see the Nationals trounce the Cardinals.  I wore long underwear because I am incapable of ever feeling warm.  I refrained from asking all the people around me wearing t-shirts if they were freezing because I’ve been told that strangers do not enjoy a random woman coming up to them with a look of concern knitting her face while she reaches out a mittened hand and says, “aren’t you cold?”  You can see said long underwear in the picture above.

You can also see my ugly sunglasses.

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t think my sunglasses are particularly ugly.  But I recently went into an eyeglass store to purchase new prescription sunglasses.  I showed the man the sunglasses I already had — glasses that I purchased about 20 years ago.  What can I say?  If I like something, I like something.  And I want to keep wearing it indefinitely.  I do not believe in getting new, stylish stuff every year.  I believe in lazily replacing the prescription in my current sunglasses for 20 years until the employees at the store inform me that the frames are beyond repair.

So I showed the man my sunglasses and told him that I really passionately loved my glasses.  Did they have anything similar to my existing sunglasses?  He informed me that they didn’t have anything like them because my glasses were ugly and unstylish.  He proceeded to insinuate that everyone is thinking this as they pass me on the street, turning away in revulsion from my hideous eyeglass frames.  Finally, I felt so shitty about myself that I didn’t have the energy to look for glasses, so I left the store.

But that is all I can think of now when I wear those sunglasses.  I feel like shit, but that’s not enough to make me stop wearing them.  My laziness wins out over my self-esteem every day of the week.  But I apologize if my sunglasses in that photograph made you throw up in your mouth.

*******

Josh wants me to correct the statement above and tell you that the Nationals didn’t trounce the Cardinals.  They won by a single run in the 9th inning.  But a superfan like me knows that was all an act.  They just pretended that the Cardinals had a chance.  If they had wanted to, they could have run up the score 80 – 0.  But they didn’t want to.  Because the Nationals are nice like that.

We saw the Presidents right when we came into the stadium, and the ChickieNob needed to go by and meet them.  While we were cuddling up to Taft, Jefferson came by to give his fellow president a warm embrace.

I was able to capture this intimate moment of pure love between former POTUSes.

Even mascots need affection.

Of course, the best moment came during their race when the Easter bunny came out of nowhere and tackled four of the five presidents.

*******

Now a non-baseball story that totally proves I’m the Nationals’ biggest fan.

On Saturday morning, we were listening to Dolly Parton in the car (I’ve been campaigning hard for Dollywood), and the general topic of bluegrass music came up.  I told Josh about how I used to be able to get free tickets to D.C.’s biggest bluegrass band because I worked with the wife of one of the players and their daughter was my camper.  I hadn’t thought about this family in years.

Later THAT NIGHT (I need to stress those words because this is what made it so bizarre) we’re watching the first season of HBO’s Newsroom.  First the gossip columnist seemed familiar, so I Googled her.  Then the roommate looked familiar, so I opened up IMDB again, AND IT WAS MY CAMPER.  The camper I had brought up that morning in regards to the bluegrass band.

I hadn’t seen her in about 20 years.  She would probably remember my sunglasses from when I first purchased them and ran around camp in them, shouting, “look at my stylish sunglasses!”  I had no idea that she had turned into an actress.  She was a very sweet camper, and her mother rocked.  She was the camp nurse, and she had this totally gross story she told us one year (that we begged her to repeat every year after that) about a child who got a stick in his eye.

I have no idea how this second story ties into proving that I am the Nationals’ biggest fan.  But it does.   As we say in baseball and scientific research: game, set, match.

It is hard to walk away from a blog.

Not at the beginning when you’ve only scrawled out a few posts.  Not at transitions when it makes sense to close up your blog and move onto the next expression of your thoughts.

But it’s hard to walk away from a living, breathing blog, even one that has grown thin and mangy, with matted hair on the underbelly.  Maybe it is even harder to walk away from a blog when you feel as if you’ve already neglected it, allowed it to become overrun by weeds of thoughts.  This isn’t how I wanted to treat you, you want to explain to it.  I love you.  You were there for me when I really needed you.  It makes you feel guilty, to see the big gaps of time between posts, like peering through overgrown grass.

Even if you vow to do better, it is hard to keep that promise.  It is hard to force yourself to sit down and write, especially if in writing your blog, you are no longer getting what you need out of it.  Then it is just another chore, like wiping down the kitchen table or vacuuming.  It is hard to keep that promise even if you are getting what you need from your online space.  Time feels as if it moves so quickly; by the time you sit down to write about a situation, it no longer feels worthy of being put into words.  Problems shrink as you walk towards the computer screen, celebrations dulls, memories become tongue-tied.

It is hard to walk away from a blog when it still has life left inside of it; when the author of the blog still loves to write.  That is what I mean by life inside of it.  When the author still thinks of her life in words, when she notices perfect phrasing, when she thinks, “I have to write about this moment” while she is living it.  It is hard to walk away from a blog that has held you up when you were emotionally sagging.  It is hard to walk away from a blog that once fulfilled you; that enhanced you.  It is hard to walk away from a space where people got you; where people saw you how you saw yourself unlike those other pockets of life where your words or intentions don’t match up inside and outside of your brain.

There have been a rash of blog posts lately of people apologizing for neglecting their space, explaining long absences, trying to make sense of why they can’t seem to get the words out.  Time constraints and feeling silenced and not knowing where one belongs anymore or whether there are people out there who still care.  Or confusion: dropping blog stats or a sudden lack of comments.

All of them come to the same conclusion: it is hard to quit a blog.  As hard as it is to write it, it is harder still to leave it.  Because a blog has a hold over the writer, making them feel a little technicolour in a black and white world.  If you’ve ever loved your space, then you know that it is hard to leave a space, just as it is difficult to end any relationship where you still feel a huge sense of fondness underneath the difficulties on the surface.

I’m always thankful when a person ends their post by saying that they’re not going anywhere.

“Do you know what hot cross buns are?” I asked Josh as he made coffee on Friday morning.

“They don’t seem like something good to eat right now,” he pointed out.  In addition to being Good Friday, it was also the Jewish holiday of Pesach.

“No, I just meant, do you know what they are?”

“They’re a pastry that doesn’t have a set price.  Sometimes you get them for one penny, but sometimes you need to pay two.  No, Melissa, I  have no idea what they are.  I think they’re rolls with some sort of cross on them.”

I’m reading the Husband’s Secret, and Easter weekend in real life has lined up with Easter weekend in the book.  That rarely happens; that you’re reading a book and the characters are living the same day that you’re living.  All the characters in the book are incessantly talking about hot cross buns.  It’s a multitude of individual stories coming together, and each character has their own discussion about hot cross buns.  And then I went to read blogs this weekend, and real humans were mentioning eating hot cross buns.  This food that I’ve never seen or eaten was suddenly everywhere.

“Do you think they’re sort of bad and something people just endure?  Because if you have no neighbours to pawn them off on, you give them to your sons.”

Josh filled up the coffee carafe with water and paused.  “I think it’s daughters.  If you have no daughters, give them to your sons.”

“Oh.  I thought it was neighbours.  If you have no neighbours, give them to your sons.  Daughters makes more sense.*  Well, that rhyme now depresses me.”

Who wants to chirp on about having no daughters on Easter?  I went upstairs and Googled the words of the rhyme:

Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns!
One a penny, two a penny – Hot cross buns
If you have no daughters, give them to your sons
One a penny, two a penny – Hot cross buns

Josh was correct. I also learned that the rhyme was essentially a 19th century commercial. Street vendors would stand on the corner, hawking their hot cross buns to women walking past them to do the shopping.  And they would sing out rhymes like this to get them to buy their buns.

So even in the 1800s, people found it completely within the confines of polite conversation to comment on your family building.  Don’t have a daughter to eat these buns?  Then surely you have a son you can shove them into?  No?  Well, why haven’t you had children yet?  When are you going to have children?

As much as I understand that Christmas is a difficult holiday when you are encountering infertility, as someone who has only experienced a more closely aligned symbolic-laden holiday in spring,** I’ve always found the theme of babies much harder to sit with than the inclusion of babies or the discussion of a particular baby.  In the same way that certain babies don’t phase me, but sitting at a party, surrounded by women holding random babies does.  And Easter (and Pesach) are both about birth and babies and the renewal of life.  Eggs play a large role in the celebration of both holidays.  Freakin’ eggs.  They’re not even tucking away the imagery in something innocuous like baby animals or pastel colours.  They’re sticking the egg front and center.  Helps you to remember your own.

So my heart is with you today if you’re struggling with Easter.

So rather than focus on the egg hunt and the pretty pastel dresses while you are in church or at Easter brunch, consider — seriously — why the vendors couldn’t settle on a single price for their buns.  Were they one for a penny?  Two for a penny?  Did you have a choice how much you paid?  Were they one penny at the beginning of the day, and two as you got closer to the end of the day when the unsold wares would have to be turned over to the dogs anyway?  Use this thought as an anchor when you feel yourself becoming overwhelmed.

And know there are a bunch of us, only one email or so away, who have your back.

Happy Easter.

* I’d like to apologize to the twins for teaching them the wrong words of “if you have no neighbours” when they were little. I feel like I failed you in the nursery rhyme department. I’d also like to apologize in advance to the family as a whole for continuing to sing the song wrong all day since it is now stuck in my head.

** Chanukkah is nothing like Christmas.  Chanukkah is a memorial marking a war.  Christmas is the birth of Jesus Christ.  The only thing those two holidays have in common is that they fall near each other on the calendar.  But Pesach is part of the Easter story (the Last Supper), and both holidays contain loads of references to birth.  In other words, babies feature heavily in both spring holidays.