Friday miscellany: Car line observations

I have spent a lot of time driving children around this week. This has led to various carline observations.

The high school is, curiously, the most orderly. You drop off in the same general area where students can park, so I’m guessing that a reasonable chunk of the people pulling in off the main road and coming up the drive are 17-year-old drivers. They are quite considerate. People are making both left and right turns into the parking lot from the main road, and of course people are trying to pull out of the parking lot too. But rather than everyone following the usual right-of-ways, which would result in quite a jam up, it has turned, seemingly by mutual unannounced decision, into a 3-way stop. This is the most efficient way of moving cars in and out (in the absence of someone directing traffic) so it is really great. I wish the middle school parents would all, by mutual unannounced decision, do the same thing! As someone making a left turn into the middle school, I’m often waiting for a while to turn in, and meanwhile, people can’t easily exit from the parking lot, so the line winds up longer than necessary.

Anyway, I finished Malibu Rising before the book was due back to the library. I’m now starting Cold Mountain — we shall see how I do with that one. I’ve been curious about it for a while, and the library had it available. I can’t tell yet if it’s going to be violent (it is a war book, sort of) so we shall see.

Over at Medium, my column this week is about The Question That Frees Up Your Schedule (got to love an internet headline, right?)

I drove past the old house this morning to see if the magnolia tree was blossoming and it was…not. I mean, it had budded and started to bloom, but then the cold snap over the past few days made all the blossoms shrivel. So instead of a gorgeous pink they were brown and dead-looking. It made me sad, even if I don’t live there anymore, but also made me glad I did see the cherry blossoms last week and that they had avoided that fate.

We have a gorgeous weeping cherry in our new yard that is in full bloom. The photo accompanying this post is from my laundry room. I don’t particularly enjoy doing laundry, but the view does improve matters.

The next Patreon meet-up for Best of Both Worlds is going to be Monday April 18th at noon, eastern. (Yes, I know some people will be coming back from Easter weekend, but Sarah’s month is booked up with call and moving so we needed to get it done!) We currently have a discussion going on the Patreon site about how people are planning their summers. We’re always looking to grow this community so please come join us!

This week’s Before Breakfast episodes have included Write Your Own Quarterly Report, and Take the Friendship Challenge. In a personal favorite, I also talked about How to Amortize Time. I love the concept of moving time around in various ways. If you know something big is coming and that you will have to deal with it when it shows up, but you don’t know exactly when it will land in your lap, how do you plan?

Anyway, it will be a kid-activity-focused weekend. Soccer is starting, believe it or not, despite the snow squall that hit recently. I created a weekend schedule that should theoretically allow my husband and me to both exercise twice. We shall see!