What a curious day! Do you have them? Days that are filled with the great, the banal, the disappointing, the unavoidable, the dreary, the sublime -- but when you sit down to write about it, you think -- well now, it all sounds rather ordinary, doesn't it?
But it's not ordinary at all! Or rather, it's grand that at the end of the day I can sit back and say -- hey, my life is as good as it was at the start of the day and perhaps maybe just a tiny bit richer.
Before I fill this page with details that probably will make no great impression on you, let me alert you to something that should make an impression: it's a film I watched early in in the morning. It's a documentary short, but it runs close to 25 minutes, so don't click and expect something the length of a tweet. The film is in Polish, but with English subtitles. It is nominated for an Oscar (category: documentary short subject; you might be interested to know that TWO of the five films in this Oscar category are Polish -- the other, "Joanna," is about the beautiful blog of a young woman/wife/mother who is in her last months of life and it is also stunning and I think likely to trump in this category).
The film I'm posting here is unforgettable. It is so deeply moving and so well done (in my opinion), that I may have posted a link to it even if it wasn't Polish. It's called "Our Curse" and it's made by a young couple about their first months with their child -- a boy born with a significant breathing disorder. But honestly, even if you are not particularly fascinated with the topic, watch it for its greater theme. I wont tell you what that is. You'll want to draw your own conclusions.
And now to the threads of my day.
Breakfast. Let's start there. It is predictable, satisfying and gentle. Yay breakfast.
And let's include the cheepers. It's a bit warmer today -- in the twenties and so again they are tempted by the outside world. I'm there, with treats! Such a simple thing: it's cold, but partly sunny, they're wistful, I reach out with cornbread, they are satisfied.
The clouds come and go all day and yet it feels as if the sun is always with us.
Next, I book a spring flight to San Francisco. These days, the entire enterprise of finding good, inexpensive connections on the best possible days that are satisfactory to all concerned is no small task. It takes forever!
As does my continued search for a replacement car. The one in Green Bay was too good a deal. I put off going for it until Monday. Ed said that was a mistake. He was right. The car sold.
Two mammoth tasks follow: weekly grocery shopping and farmhouse cleaning. I should never do them back to back. They take too big a chunk out of the day and they leave me with the feeling you would get from watching too much TV: where did the hours disappear???
I've saved the best for last. Because my daughter is, today, celebrating an enormous professional accomplishment, I agree to stay with little Snowdrop all evening long until a very, very late hour. Normally I'm good for baby sitting until 10, at the latest. You know how it is, once you are retirement age -- you get sleepy earlier every year. But tonight is special for the young couple and I want them to indulge themselves in all forms of celebration and so I pump myself with many macchiatos and I welcome this darling little girl to the farmhouse. Ed is unsure if he had a tiny cold the last day or so and so we decided he should use this evening to stay away from the precious one and work on his projects in the sheep shed. And so it's just me and little Snowdrop. And Isie the cat, who disappears upstairs when Snowdrop utters her first baby sound.
(with lily the rabbit)
I'll post now. The evening's young, but we have a lot to explore!
(with dancing mousie)
But it's not ordinary at all! Or rather, it's grand that at the end of the day I can sit back and say -- hey, my life is as good as it was at the start of the day and perhaps maybe just a tiny bit richer.
Before I fill this page with details that probably will make no great impression on you, let me alert you to something that should make an impression: it's a film I watched early in in the morning. It's a documentary short, but it runs close to 25 minutes, so don't click and expect something the length of a tweet. The film is in Polish, but with English subtitles. It is nominated for an Oscar (category: documentary short subject; you might be interested to know that TWO of the five films in this Oscar category are Polish -- the other, "Joanna," is about the beautiful blog of a young woman/wife/mother who is in her last months of life and it is also stunning and I think likely to trump in this category).
The film I'm posting here is unforgettable. It is so deeply moving and so well done (in my opinion), that I may have posted a link to it even if it wasn't Polish. It's called "Our Curse" and it's made by a young couple about their first months with their child -- a boy born with a significant breathing disorder. But honestly, even if you are not particularly fascinated with the topic, watch it for its greater theme. I wont tell you what that is. You'll want to draw your own conclusions.
And now to the threads of my day.
Breakfast. Let's start there. It is predictable, satisfying and gentle. Yay breakfast.
And let's include the cheepers. It's a bit warmer today -- in the twenties and so again they are tempted by the outside world. I'm there, with treats! Such a simple thing: it's cold, but partly sunny, they're wistful, I reach out with cornbread, they are satisfied.
The clouds come and go all day and yet it feels as if the sun is always with us.
Next, I book a spring flight to San Francisco. These days, the entire enterprise of finding good, inexpensive connections on the best possible days that are satisfactory to all concerned is no small task. It takes forever!
As does my continued search for a replacement car. The one in Green Bay was too good a deal. I put off going for it until Monday. Ed said that was a mistake. He was right. The car sold.
Two mammoth tasks follow: weekly grocery shopping and farmhouse cleaning. I should never do them back to back. They take too big a chunk out of the day and they leave me with the feeling you would get from watching too much TV: where did the hours disappear???
I've saved the best for last. Because my daughter is, today, celebrating an enormous professional accomplishment, I agree to stay with little Snowdrop all evening long until a very, very late hour. Normally I'm good for baby sitting until 10, at the latest. You know how it is, once you are retirement age -- you get sleepy earlier every year. But tonight is special for the young couple and I want them to indulge themselves in all forms of celebration and so I pump myself with many macchiatos and I welcome this darling little girl to the farmhouse. Ed is unsure if he had a tiny cold the last day or so and so we decided he should use this evening to stay away from the precious one and work on his projects in the sheep shed. And so it's just me and little Snowdrop. And Isie the cat, who disappears upstairs when Snowdrop utters her first baby sound.
(with lily the rabbit)
I'll post now. The evening's young, but we have a lot to explore!
(with dancing mousie)
