Monday

Here is how not to start a new week: when you get up to a cool and wet day, when you know your beloved has a perpetual list of chores and that list is long, and her possibility of riding a bike or walking is remote (as I said, it's wet), when you yourself are prone to stashing weird foods in the freezer, foods that are soon forgotten and left to be shrouded in white freezer burn (think: apple pie purchased twelve years ago), when your pile of stuff "of significant interest" is growing by the couch and on the tiny living room coffee table, when your idea of clearing away used plates is to push them to the side of said tiny coffee table, you should probably refrain from coming upstairs in the wee hours of a Monday morning and saying -- "when are you going to get rid of and use those frozen fruits you bought at the beginning of the pandemic?" It just sets a tone to the morning (and therefore to the day and therefor to the week) that I would call "unfortunate." 

Wet cold uninteresting morning be damned. I'm going for a brisk walk. After feeding the animals of course.

Sometime around 11 Ed comes down -- hey gorgeous, have you had breakfast yet?

By then, I will have fed the animals, taken my 45 minute walk, baked the muffins -- these:

... and read several chapters of a book. And yes, I will have had breakfast. Alone.

Time to resort to the Feedback Wheel -- the device that allows you to explain to your sweetie why you are ready to take a box of overripe blueberries -- not the ones you stashed in the freezer in 2020! -- and dump it on his big clueless head. (You know, the method that allows you to express frustration without arguing: explain what you heard, explain what dumb ideas you thought were festering behind his words, explain how it made you feel, and the denouement -- say what he could do to make it better.)

Ed doesn't really tune into long winded feelings analyses, so keeping it short (all four points, less two dozen words) is vital to getting even a fragment of the message across. He laughs. I wont do that again. We both smile and move on to higher ground. I tell him about my new discovery of this morning: the name of the coffee shop (and apparently food and market place too, all rolled into one) going into the new development near us. Tati of Fitchburg. The place has no ties to the local food or coffee scene. It appears to be a developer's appeasement of the new homeowners' push to get a coffee shop into the neighborhood. In other words -- putting in that coffee shop i's a marketing ploy (they're still building and selling new homes). But I'll take it! A warm space that sells good coffee (maybe) and (maybe) a pastry within walking distance? I'm in!

And now comes ballet. 

I first run a Youtube from the Royal Academy of Dance (for "silver swans!") for a refresher. Then I go to a Youtube that has a whole ballet-ish sequence (for the instructor and her mother!). And when I'm done, I tell Ed -- I loved that. And he says -- you'll be tired of it in three weeks. And I smile, telling him -- it will have been three weeks well spent.

In the early afternoon I pick up Snowdrop and Sparrow at school (they start the school day insanely early and end it pretty early as well; and no, Snowdrop is never cold!).

Food, books, toys. In other words, the essentials for a happy afternoon on a cool and wet day at the farmhouse.

("Snowdrop, am I doing this right?" "You are, Sparrow, you are.")

Dinner of leftovers. A quick bike ride to close my rings. Couch time, because Ed and I can think of no better way to spend an evening than to spread out, watch a movie, doze a little, and maybe reflect on how easy it can be to flip a day, when really, so much is pushing this week in a good direction.

with love...