Sarah and I had a delightful retreat. We spent a lot of time talking about future BOBW episodes, plus life in general. We ran and walked on the beach, ate several lovely meals, and got massages. And slept! It is really nice to go to bed without putting anyone else to bed. I’m generally not getting woken up in the middle of the night anymore — for which I am grateful — but still, getting a toddler to bed and then doing the rounds with everyone else takes a significant amount of energy.
So that was great, but travel, on the other hand, can be a nightmare. My flight to Florida was delayed an hour, which I guess isn’t too bad (though it was very bumpy) but then the flight home got caught up with some of the weather mess that hit the country over the weekend. The incoming flight was delayed almost 3 hours which meant we were — not coincidentally — also delayed about 3 hours leaving. Instead of getting home around 7 p.m. I got home closer to 10 p.m. I walked in the door to find that, speaking of putting people down for the night, none of the children were in bed.
(In my husband’s defense, he was trying with the toddler but it wasn’t going well, and no one else was voluntarily going down while he was stuck in the room with him.)
Then on Saturday we got hit with a wintry temper tantrum. A mid-March blizzard! The daffodils are coming up and the trees are budding but the temperature dropped (into the teens by Saturday night) and the wintry mix turned into a reasonable quantity of snow. Then the wind kicked in — gusting to about 45 mph at one point — leading to a near white out as we were driving back from Superior Play Systems on Saturday.
This was our little adventure for the week. We’re looking to get a play set for outside — part of my attempt to invest in making effortful fun more accessible — and one of the kids had gone to a birthday party at the playground equipment maker’s showroom once. So we decided to go there as a wintry weekend family activity and it was quite a bit of fun. The kids climbed around on all the different options — even the older kids (though I know the swing set will mostly be for the 10 and under crowd). We stopped at WaWa for pretzels on the way back and so except for the blizzard that was a win all around.
In other news…My Shakespeare reading project has me reading Julius Caesar this week, which I guess is appropriate for the Ides of March!
I also started writing for Medium again. You can check out last week’s column, The First Step Isn’t the Problem, the 356,751st One Is, here. With Medium, you get a few free articles per month and then it’s about $5/month for access after that.
If you are thinking of joining the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community, you might want to do so before March 24th. At noon (eastern) on that day we’ll be doing our monthly online meet-up, talking all things friendship.
I’m happy to report that I was able to take care of two registrations that opened this morning for summer things. One was signing a kid up for a particular summer program, and the other was getting tickets during the pre-sale for seeing Mary Chapin Carpenter at Longwood Gardens this summer. This was all a little tense as our home internet was down so I was using the cell network on my phone for both. But both went through and now the internet is back up too. Phew.
This is the winter that just won’t quit. It was horribly cold here last week – like temps below zero in the morning. I’ve been feeling so cooped up with our kids so was relieved that it warmed up on Sunday so we could go for a family walk. Your getaway sounds absolutely delightful – missing bedtime and not being woken during the night sounds amazing. Our youngest is mostly sleeping through the night again, but he’s been waking at 5:15 lately so we are feeling pretty weary! We haven’t gone away together since having kids but are hoping to go somewhere next December – which feels far off so maybe/hopefully we can do something this summer and get away for a night or 2 while my parents watch the kids. We’ll see.
@Lisa – it is so good to get away. And now today is 50-some degrees and sunny and I am feeling much happier about life!
I loved the Medium piece, Laura. I’m doing the W&P Big Read, inspired by you, and found a few chapters a slog but am really enjoying it thus far (just into Pierre’s meeting with the Freemasons). It feels really satisfying to chip away at it slowly.
I read something recently about limiting your in progress projects and this has been super helpful. I am restricting myself to working on 3 projects a week – this week, it’s one research project, one revision to writing, and teaching prep. And it’s really helping. i think normally I put too much on my list and jump from thing to thing, never quite finishing, but after 3-4 weeks of doing it this way, I’ve gotten some major things off my desk.
@Cb – yep, I was specifically referring to the free mason bit, which I recall from last March ha ha. I think that section has stymied several W&P readers who managed to make it through the first “war” bit.
And yes, I am a big fan of getting stuff done! If that means limiting works in progress so be it. When you finish one thing you can then devote all the freed up energy to something else. Very satisfying.