Friday

Hey, did I just run a marathon? It seemed that way: a blur of movement from point A to point B to point C and so on. The good news? I made it to the finish line!

Initially, I did not think I'd be speed racing through the day. Such a normal beginning!

A leisurely (albeit early) fruit breakfast with Ed and two cats...

And a wonderful second breakfast with my friend who is in town and who just makes my day when she carves out time to spend over a coffee and, in today's iteration -- an almond croissant.

But after that, it felt like I had been sprung from the starting line of a race. I came home. I rushed to finish the poster boards for the kids' school. Deadline? Now! They need to be ready!

This is when I remembered, too that I need blueberry muffins -- for today, and for the freezer, so that they are ready for when I next have the kids here. I zipped through that recipe, while taking care of some details of my mother's care over the phone...

And then an errand rush: to a shop that had a certain item needed for next week. From there -- to the kids school.

(school-wide pajama day today!)

And back to the farmhouse.

... where I wanted desperately to finish reading a long and great chapter of the spooky book we're on right now (we did it!). Next,  I hurried the kids into the car, dropped Sparrow at violin and got Snowdrop's hair ready for dance and pfft -- in she goes to her class, while I go up to the grocery store because though I did a restock yesterday, I forgot tomatoes. Ed cannot live without tomatoes.

That was my finish line. I'm home now, cooking up a huge pot of chili for today and for next week.

Amazing that I'm not panting! Indeed, I'm relaxed. How can I not be? I made it! Yeah!

with love...

Thursday

And now comes the string of sunny days. More typical for our February. What else is more typical? Waking up to this:

Of course, it's an insignificant dusting and it will melt. I do believe this has been our warmest, most snow-free winter yet. For us, this kind of a winter is a disappointment, but for anyone involved at a serious level with snow-related activities -- it's nearly a disaster. I heard that the US is holding (for the first time in 20 years!) the cross-country skiing World Cup races in Minneapolis, beginning this Saturday. Yes, they were prepared for the possibility of little snow. But they could hardly operate their snow-making machinery, because it's been too warm this last month! They're struggling! 

Breakfast. Hurry up, Ed! The cat is waiting for her petting session.

 

For a good part of the morning, I studied cameras and photography stuff online. I carry my Fuji camera with me everywhere and I travel with it as well -- bulky lens and all. But my last trip gave me serious pause: when I stick the camera in my backpack, it takes up a chunk of space. Like, most of the space there. Moreover, the new screening machines at airports are sensitive to its complicated mechanics and that backpack now always gets sidetracked for an independent hand check. But most importantly, the camera is heavy and I'm wondering why I bother to always take it along, given that a small camera, though with fewer helpful features, would do just fine. Yes, I would miss the photographic flexibility of my big one, but I hate taking it with me to restaurants, for example. And I'm starting to miss the freedom of not being weighed down with machinery. When was the last time I took a walk in a faraway place without a hunched shoulder? Reading and musing about all this takes up a big block of time. Silly, you say? Well sure, but I have had a camera slung around my neck pretty much every day since digital photography took hold (and on occasion, way before that). Is it time to free myself of the burden of always looking for the best photo? When the next best thing will do?

In the afternoon, I go to pick up the kids. I leave the big bulky camera behind. Just to try out not touching the monster for a day. Well, a half day! 

(The little camera serves me just fine on a drive-by photo! The pretty snow against a blue sky help...)

Many small classroom challenges crept up for the older two grandkids today. My thoughts? It's much easier if only one has a story of a particular irksome problem or difficulty. Two at once? That can be tough: the car ride is not long enough to accommodate that! Still, by the time we get to the farmette, I felt that we'd come pretty close to letting our a grand exhale. Both of them seemed nearly recovered. 

Thank goodness.

In the evening, Ed had a sailing commitment. No, not actual sailing, but some exploratory stuff at the university sailing club. He used to teach there. He may go back to that this summer.

Me, I fried up eggs and baked some cheesy cauliflower. Standard stuff for a solo dinner at the farmhouse.

with love...

Valentine's Day

I tell Ed that he is the worst boyfriend material! He responds with a grin -- the worst! Terrible! -- I add, laughing. This Valentine's Day you outdid yourself in neglect!

In those words are seeds of true love. A love so solid and unshakable that you can say the opposite of what's in your heart and it wont ruffle a feather. Indeed, it will be understood as an expression of an abiding affection. 

Ed, is, of course, an extraordinary BF and partner in life. Seemingly not keyed into emotion, he appears lost in his world of machine design, sail boats -- the usual Ed stuff. And yet, he'll notice my every shift in tone, my slightly askew movement, my excessively quiet stance and ask -- everything okay? He knows me so well that he intuits all that is not on course. And yes, I surely can do the same for him, though no one will be surprised by that, since I study the guy with eyes wide open and I listen for what's on his mind without expecting an articulation of any sort. 

Valentine's Day is a game for us. He'll go along with the usual  -- flowers, chocolates, a special meal, maybe a card -- so long as I lead him to the places I like for any of the above. This year, I did ask for a bunch of tulips and indeed picked them out myself...

... but otherwise, I let him be. He was busy, I was busy. We have enough chocolate bars. I've a nice stack of cards from past years. And so I let him off the hook with everything. Besides, he's scheduled to go to work for the day, and I have my poster boards, and my ideas, and the kids. Still, it's fun to poke him a little. Terrible, just terrible! Not meaning a word of it. 

And he knows it.

*     *     *

Love, of course, is not just what you feel toward the person you live with. Love governs your behavior in every way as you shape your day to include your kids, grandkids, friends. I love so many in that compilation.

And they know it!

*     *     *

Speaking of positive feelings, I have some today toward a few whom I have never met. A woman who is corresponding with me about a future trip, for example. She is so charming and helpful! I just love her form, her effort! Too, there is someone who sent me a postcard in the mail -- a stunning picture of spring blossoms, even though she herself is facing autumn (in Australia). Just beautiful!

I also have very warm feelings toward Anne Lamott, a writer whose stuff I have long admired. She is my age and today she writes a piece about the virtues of our advancing years. There are not many people I know who approach old age with humor and without the self absorption that is so common (too common!) as physical strength diminishes and we continue to make adjustments for newfound frailties. So when I find someone who understands the necessity of being delightful in the face of challenges, I am going to give her my full attention! 

Since I've not used my free links to Wash Po articles this month, I can give you Anne Lamott, on "a superpower of old age," here. So much humor and wisdom in her piece! So much to love.

*     *     *

The two older kids are here after school of course and I do have a pang of regret that I did not commemorate their Valentine's Day with anything concrete. Of course, they don't need anything and surely adding candy to their loot is not a great idea, but I feel I should do something to let them know that this day they are extra special. So we go out for ice cream.

*     *     *  

I come home from drop-off and find a card propped on the table. With Ed, expect the unexpected.

An evening on the couch. I defrosted two tiny lobster tails, leftover from New Year's Eve.  We turned on the big screen and settled in for an evening of blissful togetherness. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

With so much love...

Tuesday

I am cocooned. Lost to the world. Distracted. Preoccupied. Drifting in a fairyland, half real, half speculative. This is my morning.

It struck me that I simply haven't outgrown my love for exploration and especially of exploring the possibilities of exploration! Ever since I was a young adult, I'd imagine adventures. I'd lose myself in the spin of ideas on how it would feel to wake up, say, in this place. Good? Oh, well then. How would that work? Could I even get there? 

This kind of fantasy isn't that much different from the imaginative things floating around in the head of a young grandchild. Indeed, sometimes I will ask Snowdrop, in a moment of deep silence -- what are you thinking? And she'd tell me her own imagined story in her head. She'd be playing out some twisty tale, fantastical to be sure, but grounded in the reality of her emotions. Isn't my frequent plunge into my own imagined world of exploration the same? Aren't I merely continuing the same pattern of floating far into a world that is different than the one I inhabit? Snowdrop puts herself to sleep by placing herself in concocted stories. And I do this too! And sometimes it carries over into the day where I play around with new flashes of inspiration, and all kinds of what ifs, until something hits me as very real, very possible, and then I slowly formulate an idea for a trip.

All this after breakfast, which today is with Ed. Croissants from Madison Sourdough! I drove down to get them, because Sparrow loves the cookies from there and today is a Sparrow day.

And then Ed retreats to his work and I lose myself in my world of ideas.

 

Very quickly the afternoon rolls in and I head out to pick up the kids. Playful today.

 

But don't let that mislead you. As always, it's a bookish afternoon! With time out for finishing up Valentines Day cards for class distribution tomorrow.

Valentine's Day... Hmmm... Do you celebrate it? You should! Privately if that is your style. Or shout it from the rooftops. Because, well, as I told the kids today -- I can't think of anything that's more important than love, in all the shapes and sizes and forms that it presents itself to us.

Monday

We are at fifteen degrees above a February 12th average. Okay, that is not to be celebrated. The irrefutable trend is worrisome. So I am going to pass on lauding the warm beauty of this winter day. But the sky! Can rhapsodize about what is actually normal for south-central Wisconsin? That beautiful cornflower blue, February sky! We have it today and it absolutely warms the spirit.

(Looking out the window just before my walk to feed the animals...)

Breakfast would have been lovely. Leftover szarlotka, with fruit and a milky coffee, and with Ed, and without the cats...

... except that I was on the phone for the duration. On a long airline hold. Because I wanted to champion a consumer right!  The airlines have this habit of posting misleading pricing information when you book online and I was going to right this grave injustice. I was tired of their marketing buffoonery!

I got nowhere, the grave injustice prevails, and I wasted two hours on speaking to powerless representatives. I'm sure the sales and marketing department does not accept feisty consumer calls.

In midmorning, I left to get my hair cut -- another indoor activity! Well who knew today would be so pretty?! But Ed was there waiting when I got back (trained to notice my hair changes, he shouted out "it looks great" before I even entered the room). He proposed a bike ride. 

The one thing you dont want to do after a haircut is to strap a helmet on top of your hair and flatten all that nifty work of the stylist, but still, that sunshine and a coaxing from Ed are a powerful force to reckon with so we did go and it was simply sublime.

Snowdrop is here on Monday's after school.

 

 

It's "wear a hat to school" for the kids today! (School spirit week always happens this month, to get the kids excited about life, despite the cold, the 100 days left in the academic year, despite it being February, darn it!)

(by the time she reaches the farmhouse, all hats are off!)

She and I started in on a new book today and I'm trying to give it a good run, even though my heart still belongs to the previous set. Nonetheless, Snowdrop tends to see the good in her world, so we're sticking with it. 

(How positive is her outlook on the everyday? Here's an example -- we pass the expo center every evening on the way to the drop-off point. There's always a billboard announcing the next few expos. Today she tells me -- look! this weekend it's the fishing show! We should go! I glance at her smiling face. Really? I ask. Do any of us fish? No, but it sounds exciting!

Evening. I didn't grocery shop and we're out of almost everything. This calls for making a very pared down veggie soup with very few veggies in it. It's that or eggs!

Tomorrow, I'll get it together. Today -- well, I'm still catching up!

with love...

Sunday

As someone who left her home country to live elsewhere and who traveled back and forth between groups of people I love all my life, you'd think I'd be all too familiar and even comfortable with the feeling of separation. And I was. I never gave it much thought in my young adult years. Until my kids went off to college. That was the first time I understood that a departure could also be a temporal shift, whereby my child now enmeshes herself in a life away from home. It's a good thing, thrilling even to see your little one set out on her own independent path. But at the same time, you feel that emptiness, as you yourself have to adjust to a life without the everyday mix of events, upsets and delights that were yours in the years when they were growing up at your side.

And every time that departed child would come home, or I would go visit her, there would be afterwards that separation and emptiness again. It never lasts, but it is always there. Still today, when I leave my younger daughter after placing myself in her household for a day, sometimes several days, I feel the emptiness taking hold as I drive off.

Since she is happy, I am not sad to be leaving her. Not at all. I know how her day will proceed, I know what role her husband and kids will play. Still, once again I need to adjust to not being part of the everyday in the way that I would be, were she here, just a few blocks up the road, or like my older girl -- a short drive away.

*     *     *

The morning in Chicago was lovely. We ate our traditional breakfast of oatmeal and fruits and then I volunteered to give Juniper (age 2) her first haircut. 

 (before)

 

 

Big day for her! She didn't flinch, absorbed as she was in Frozen on a tablet.

(My assistant)

Afterwards,  Primrose went for her swimming lesson with dad, mom baked, and I took Juniper out for a walk to Mindy's bakery. 

 

 

 

(a bit of sunshine to warm us up a little!)

 

 

She loves the croissants there and I love... well, pretty much everything.

Not that we need more baked goods at home. I am hauling back a szarlotka (apple cake) from the Polish bakery, and, too, some fried faworki with powdered sugar. Oh well. We'll stuff our faces this week, that's for sure.

(She gets to eat her croissant on our walk home.)

 

Hey, Primrose is back from swimming! Time moves forward so quickly on these Chicago Sunday mornings. Very soon, it's time for brunch -- at the Lonesome Rose. A favorite of ours. The kids love their soft shell tacos, us bigger guys? Burritos and bowls. All good!

From there, a short walk to pick up some coffee. 

 

 

 

Primrose likes to speed up ahead with me. As if her sister could keep up! 

 

(Waving)

 

 

And now it's time for me to head back to Wisconsin. Empty, but happy. 

*     *     *

I have very little free time today, as the Madison young family is at the farmhouse for dinner tonight. I'd have called it off -- it's all a tad rushed -- but the next couple of Sundays are slated to be without the family dinners so I stuck with it. And I'm glad. These kids are always a bunch of joyous energy and, too, it's good to have a moment to catch up with my older girl. She has been so busy with work that we've resorted to quick and dirty texts and nothing more in the past few weeks. Tonight at least we can take a moment to focus on something other than work and schedules and coordinating drop offs and pickups.

(She and I talk. The rest? Who knew that they were Super Bowl fans!)

(Dinner)

For dessert? Szarlotka (apple cake) and faworki (fried twists). Very much liked by those who dared to try them!

*     *     *

And then there is patient Ed. Ready to resume our couch time. It's very late by the time I can actually sit down and put my feet up. Nonetheless it's special, in the way that every evening spent with him is special. Ours and only ours. To be loved, in all its simplicity and calm.

with so much love...

Saturday

It's 2024, my youngest girl has had her birthday (a couple of weeks ago) and I still haven't seen her, haven't celebrated properly, haven't spent time with the grandkids in Chicago. Time, therefore, to head south.

After a very quick trot to the barn and an even speedier breakfast.

(thank you, Ed, for waking up and coming down...)

(To Chicago then!)

I have an errand to run before I arrive at the younger family's home -- a stop at Delightful Pastries, in a northwest corner of the city.

This is the bakery that sells authentic paczki. The traditional Polish doughnut. Loved and eaten by most Poles on Fat Tuesday. (Make that Fat Thrusday; remember, Poles like to feast a few days earlier!)

So many Polish baked goods! I mean, I haven't seen good faworki or a Polish apple cake in a long time. And of course, the paczki.

(The staff, all Polish, putting out nalesniki. Cheese stuffed blintzes. Just like my grandma's!)

I pick up the paczki and turn toward my daughter's home. It's been just a little over a month since I saw the two Chicago girls. 

 

 

 

That's over a month's worth of growth and changes. So much to catch up on!

("can we keep on dancing?)

(always the selfie!)

(lunch, followed by paczki)

And let's not forget my daughter's birthday celebration. 

 (This particular present is not from me, but it was fun to watch her unwrap it...)

 

 

We all go out to dinner at Antico -- a place she took me to 13 years ago, when I visited her then in her small apartment in the city. Two weeks later I moved to the farmhouse. Three years later she married, a couple more and the girls were born.

Time: it's a beautiful thing, really. No, it doesn't stand still. You don't run on repeat. You keep adding stuff to your wealth of experiences, you grow. 

(Walking home...)

Oh, it's good to see these faces again! Happy paczki day, happy Saturday, happy New Year, happy birthday indeed!