Rainy Friday, and recasting time

I’ve got a lovely fire going in my office fireplace right now. It’s making this rainy Friday feel nice and cozy. This is definitely improving my mood over how I spent much of the past two hours.

Since the move we have been driving both older boys to school. There are safety reasons (waiting in the dark on a busy street corner just strikes me as a bad idea) and it’s also helping that the 12-year-old scores another 30 minutes of sleep on weekdays. He had been waking up early when he shared a room with the 14-year-old (who has to get up earlier), which is why it made sense for him to just grab the bus that came to our driveway. But now that all of those morning routines have changed, he is sleeping longer and we are driving.

My husband was gone the past few days so I have been doing both runs (our nanny came early, though theoretically I could have taken the baby with me and left the 12-year-old in charge of the sleeping 10- and 7-year olds for the first run). The past two mornings have been very rainy, which means more families opt to drive, in addition to there often being traffic tie-ups on I-76, which leads to more commuters taking the main backroads through this area. The traffic around the high school and middle school has been…wow. This morning the middle school in particular was terrible. We left at 7:51 for what should be an 8-minute drive. School starts at 8:15. I didn’t wind up dropping my kid off until 8:19.

So there was a lot of time in the car this morning. But at least the time when the boys themselves are in the car, it’s forced one-on-one time. We have been having some good discussions. We’ve talked driving safety. The ethics of the Olympics. Next year’s course selections. So I’m trying to view the irritating drive through that lens. It was still rainy and cold and miserable but at least I had two thoughtful young gentlemen along for the rides!

In other news: I am most of the way through reading A Comedy of Errors in my Shakespeare reading project. I have to say, it is not my favorite. I don’t like false accusation stories, and of course one of the major plot points of any mistaken identity comedy is going to be that the other person did something that you’re now accusing the first person of… But just a few more days of wading through that and then I’m on to more tragedy.

My running life has been in absolute tatters. I have somehow not managed to get going on this (our treadmill didn’t make the move…the movers could not get it out, so we’re trying to solve that problem now). I could run outside but it’s been snowy and rainy. So I go for a 20-30 minute walk every afternoon and go up and down the stairs with boxes and at least it is something, but I really need to get back in the habit.

I spent two hours yesterday finally unpacking the boxes in my closet. I was stuffing all my exercise clothes in one drawer when I realized…wait! I’m no longer sharing a closet with my husband. I can use lots of drawers! So now I have a separate drawer for sports bras + cold weather layers, then another for exercise pants, and another for running shirts. Too bad I’m not actually using any of them right now!

I tried freezing my Thin Mints, as suggested by numerous commenters yesterday. They are fine. They taste like cold Thin Mints.

14 thoughts on “Rainy Friday, and recasting time

  1. “They taste like cold Thin Mints.” ha! I never understood the cult following of Thin Mints either (I much prefer Samoas) but I still eat them. 🙂

    1. Agree! I could take them or leave them. My favorite was always the peanut butter one (tag along) which I think is now retired.

  2. I am with you on the thin mints. When I was 6 I had a bunch of mint and later that day developed the stomach flu. Ever since the idea of mint is, well, nauseating.

    1. That is funny, I had the same experience but with Samoas, not Thin Mints. And to this day I can’t stand coconut and will never eat another Samoa again!

  3. Laura,
    Lotus Biscoff Cookies are vegan, you can find them anywhere, and they are delicious! These are the cookies you get on Delta flights.

  4. A Comedy of Errors is my favorite play by Shakespeare. I also love our old Soviet film – it’s so beautiful and tragicomical!

  5. Try Sweet Loren’s Cookies (dough). It’s vegan and I just eat the dough… and don’t bother cooking but it makes good cookies too.

  6. As a dutch person I’m always surprised about this schoolbus/driving kids to school thing. I know the roads are not that well equipped for bikeriding in the states, but…. is there really no way you can make a nice family walk out of this… ? you could run back 😉 an 8 minute drive seems doable on foot… The difference between our countries on this point is really big, i love the different perspectives 🙂

  7. My tip for moving your treadmill? Find an engineer. They’ll find a solution.

    We had a sofa bed delivered and the movers couldn’t manage to get it into the intended bedroom. I called one of my engineering friends, she came during her lunch hour and we got the sofa bed into the bedroom.

  8. Car rides are the best time to talk to teens! A lot of things can be talked about while both parties are looking straight ahead!! : ) Take advantage of the time cause all of a sudden they will be driving themselves!!

  9. I love to run too, but even rainy wet weather and extended dark definitely make it challenging in Jan! Two things that made a huge difference for me in Jan: Barre3 online classes (you can do them for 10,30,45 min whenever you have a pocket of time). They are not the same as running-but really help with arm, an,core strength. Also, my husband bought a stationary bike at the start of the pandemic that can be adjusted for anyone in our family. With 5 kiddos, I would bet anything it could get a lot of use by a few. Plus-30 min when your tired cycling while watching Ted Lasso seems doable, when you don’t feel like running when it’s 10 degrees. Between the two, I managed to work out a ton in Jan and it would have never happened otherwise.

    1. We run laps around our house (it’s kind of a loop). It’s 25 steps around. You can’t get going fast because of the sharp turns. But it’s too icy out to run.

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