a different kind of Friday

Well, the young family is down with a bug. All of them except for Sparrow, who notably had this same bug earlier in the week. So far, Ed and I are unaffected. Cross your fingers!

It does mean that my plan for the day changes. 

Not the get-up-early-and-feed-the-animals-in-the-gloom-of-a-November-morning part. That stays the same. There is color though: the red crab apples still dazzle.

But after my morning walk -- you could say that the day oscillates and moves under the power of the full moon. It is unpredictable. It has a bit of magic too.

First, the mundane. An eye doc appointment. Yawn...  So long as I am in the area of my favorite grocery store, I restock afterwards. With sunglasses on because the glare from the appointment stays with me way too long.

All this means we eat breakfast... after 11. That is significantly late for me. But I do get Ed at the table, and a hungry Ed at that. Both of us devour our sweet rolls.

The skies clear. Yes, it's chilly, but I do not have kids here today and so when Ed proposes we go for a bike ride, I throw him a thumbs up sign. When he suggests that we bike over to the town of McFarland and get a late lunch/snack at the cafe there, I go for double thumbs up. It's a splendid idea!

We set out in mid afternoon, but of course, the mid-afternoon in mid-November leaves us with few hours of daylight. No matter. It's a forty minute ride to the cafe.

We linger there. A long time. So much to review! His machine design work, the elections, travel. They're all related! We want to step back from politics, but we cannot. The mind keeps spinning back to November 5th, when most of Americans voted for what we have now. And so small business owners, instead of discussing product development and technological upgrades, are scrambling to figure out how to remain afloat. In planning my next travel, I tell him I'm rethinking the way I go about my decisions on where and when. If I avoided countries with extreme political regimes in place (either in past decades, or now), I'm thinking -- wait a minute. That's who we are now!

Eventually we bike back. The long way.

The sun is almost down for the day. Deer in the harvested cornfields, ducks settling on the still waters of a pond. Lovely stuff. And eventually, we spot the moon.

It's a super moon: full at its closest orbit to the Earth. The beaver moon. A beautiful sight. Makes you feel hopeful somehow. Reassurred. The next super moon comes in October 2025. Between now and then, there will be laughter, there will be love.