I'm pretending it's spring and that I am train hopping on some complicated trip. That is my morning. The season deceit is easy -- we have this weird day, where suddenly the temps shoot up ten degrees above freezing, before being pushed out by the coldest front of this century, coming at us from Siberia this weekend. Thanks, Siberia. The train hopping? Well it's time to finalize some travel for spring and somewhere in the middle of the night I finally decided on how to handle a complicated travel trajectory. More on that in March. Suffice it to say that I devoted many hours to familiarizing myself with another country's train reservation system. Each country is different and though you can simplify things for yourself by merely reserving on some platform that gathers them all under one umbrella, why would you do that, when you can have fun imagining yourself in that country and figuring out how to do things like a local!
All this after a walk to the barn to feed the animals...
And a breakfast with a still sleepy Ed...
By noon, I slam down the computer and say "let's go!" There is no way I'm going to skip a walk today. We head for our county park. Blustery winds, but who cares! It's a glorious day for walking!
The sky, with a few delicate clouds, is at once delicate and stunning. We pause several times to admire it.
And then it's time for me to pick up the kids.
I can tell it's Friday: they're not tired, but I sense this need to just let loose a little. Away from the demands of school, of anyone really.
I dont start in on a new book. Eventually, Snowdrop wants to reread a few chapters of a war story. Sparrow is glued to his Lego figures.
And so ends this transition week -- from a confusion of illness and isolation, to our usual days of walks, kids, and yes, evenings: time for a movie for Ed and me tonight, on the couch, together, over bowls of hot veggie soup.Well, that's sort of how it's supposed to go, but he's not yet fully with an appetite, so no soup for him, and the movie -- one I'd been saving, because it felt so up my alley (A Real Pain, about these two guys, cousins, who travel to Poland to get to know the country their beloved Jewish grandmother had once called home). Half way through, I propose that we finish it another time. It may have been right for me, for obvious reasons, but not so much for Ed. Two guys grappling with their relationship to the past, to the present, to each other? No, I decided I'm better off watching it at another time, on my own.
I turn it off, I go to the kitchen to wash up my few dishes, I come back. He's asleep already. So yes, it's still really a transition week. We're past Covid, but we're not totally back to... well, the way we were before the new year set in.
with love...
