Odds and Ends... In pictures

Running Away

When we were driving through Pensacola, Florida in the spring of this year, I picked up a free magazine in a health food store. It contained an article about getting into shape in a short amount of time and gave several different possible routines, one of which was an interval jogging/walking plan. Soon after our return, I took up this practice and it has evolved into a habit. Do not ask me why it took a little over forty-one years for me to develop this particular habit that clearly has a lot to offer, but it did. I suppose I exercised more pre-kid and I trained for and participated in a mini-triathlon once a million years ago but this feels more substantial and like it has the legs to last. But anyway, now once a week, instead of interval walk/jog, I run solidly for 30 minutes. When it was light out, I toured the neighborhood taking several detours through woodsy areas near the house, but now I circle around a track, in the darkness.

Occasional dog walkers, garbage trucks and park clean-up personnel keep me company. I have a special fondness for the cyclists squeaking along in the dark. I leave the house around 6:00 am in the starlight, and sometimes wind and rain or fog three or four mornings a week. I never set an alarm; I just wake up ready to go. I can't explain this at all. A few months ago, I would not have believed this was me. After running, I am raring to go for the day - bring on the love, the work, the sweetness, the mundanity, the inanity, the skirmishes, the chores, the cuddles, the scrapes, the resistance, the messes. Three cheers for endorphins.

Excavation

This morning I woke up in the dark at 7:00 am. I saw light beaming in around the curtain in the living room. I wondered if it was the street light, but when I opened the curtain I saw the light from the full moon filled a rectangular swath of our carpet. I plunked myself down in that beam of moonlight and closed my eyes to see if I could still perceive the light with my eyes closed. I could. Eventually I went downstairs, way down, to continue going through our stuff. In the "massage room" as we still call it, even though I haven't massaged there for over two years, piles of papers, folders, envelopes, and miscellaneous all other beg me to give them a proper home, or return them to the one they know. I obliged them as best I can. Cleaning up is not my usual forte, but we are motivated. We are going to paint down there and put down a new floor. Excavation comes to mind, a serious upheaval and realignment. Lucy's third grade topics for science center on the issues of housing, food, clothing; basics really. And it turns out we still need to attend to those issues ourselves, as adults. Tend the spirit of our home. I'm not ready to sweep out cobwebs, I like them. But I am ready to make more sense of the spaces in our house and be more conscious about what we want to use them for. And see if we can eliminate piles, especially the ones that sit for months and sometimes years.

Meanwhile, Rob created this cake for a silent auction for the Northwest Girlchoir who were performing their welcome concert today. Someone paid $75 for that cake. At first I didn't recognize Lucy as she performed for the first time since she joined Fresca. She looked older with her hair pulled back and her eyes focussed only on the director, singing loud and proud from the looks of it. A shift from previous year of performances with Prep choir during which she often stared behind her or into space or seemed otherwise to be inattentive to say the least.

Today's concert focussed on old music like Hildegard of Bingen. Lucy's choir sang a beautiful Jewish folk song called Ma Navu (you can see another choir perform it here). Thrilling since we read the stories of the Torah these days, along with singing and dancing to several Israeli folk songs, also part of the Grade Three curriculum we do too. I want her to teach me that song.

Upstairs Rob and the kids are watch Fantastic Mr. Fox. Jasper often runs away to shake or cuddle me before darting back to the action. A bit wary, him...