Down Time

 

 

It’s nice to have a day given over to some down time, and rainy days present that to me, as long as it’s not a string of rainy days.  Today it’s raining at a gentle spring like pace, no wind, and just the twittering of birds and the plip plip of raindrops acting as the soundtrack for my afternoon. It’s a good time for reading, baking muffins, and writing a letter or two, as well as trying to work on a story (not getting very far!), writing a blog post, and sipping tea on the couch while making up poems in my head.  It’s a nice bit of respite from the hurrying that sunny warm days seem to spark in me.  I took the umbrella and walked up and down the driveway, just to hear the rain falling on the bonnet of the sunny yellow protective device. (There! I’ve described my umbrella without using the word!  Haha! Just a little challenge to myself.)  I grew up walking in the rain as my father had the car at work and we only had one car as most families did at that time.  We lived in town so the schools were in walking distance and umbrellas, rain boots or shoe coverings (rubbers, we called them), and good rain coats were part of our back to school gear every year. If we wanted to go to a friend’s house we walked, or if we needed something from the grocery store or post office we walked there too.  It was just part of life and we didn’t complain too much since there really wasn’t anything you could do about it besides stay home and that just wasn’t what we did.  I don’t really like walking in the rain too much anymore, but maybe I should try it this spring and summer.  I’ll think about it!   At any rate, I slipped out onto the deck and took a couple pictures of the raindrops clinging to my wisteria, which reminded me of little crystals hung there.  It’s hard to get a picture that does them justice, but I think the lighting was pretty cool anyway. It made me realize that even if the clouds are covering the sun today, it is still higher in the sky and so you need more clouds to make the rainy day as gloomy as it would have been even a month ago, and that’s a good thing!

TIME

 

Time has a way of getting away from us.  It’s hard to believe that:

February is gone,

It’s been 2 years since everything shut down,

2 years since I went to work,

Decades since I was born (my birthday was the end of February),

Nearly 4 decades (or 2 score) since I became a Mrs. (still am!),

 Over 3 decades since I became a mom for the first time,

 Have had some of the same friends for 40 to 50 years! 

Don’t even get me started on how quickly the weekends go, blink your eyes on Friday afternoon and suddenly Monday’s alarm clock is ringing.  It’s always shocking to me when I realize how much time goes by without realizing its happening.

               When we are young we think that we will always be so and we have all the time in the universe to do things that we like to do, until one day we wake up and realize we qualify for an AARP membership card and a discount on a meal at IHOP on Wednesday afternoons.  Seriously, did you ever go to an IHOP on the senior discount day?  My husband and I did that fairly regulary years ago when he first qualified for the discount.  We didn’t do it because of the discount, but rather because at the time we had a respite worker come to stay with our daughter for a few hours and that’s the time that she was available so we’d meet up when he got home from work around 4:00.  We were the youngest patrons there, and it reminded me of a dining room at a senior living community with men in their best shirts smelling of Old Spice aftershave walking around telling lame jokes, women with their hair freshly done twittering in response to their mate’s attempt at humor.  There’s even a special senior menu with lower prices and smaller portions.  I kid you not. We don’t do that any longer because it’s been years since we had the respite worker.  I miss regularly having a date day but don’t miss going to IHOP!

               This weekend we turn our clocks ahead an hour so we lose an hour’s sleep, of course when I was much younger and more foolish it was an hour of party time that we lost.  Haha! Those days are long gone!  I think it’s a hard thing to try and be mindful that time is going at jet speed when days can feel so endless sometimes.  We have so much to do and so little time; or so it seems.

I took a walk at the local park recently.  I can't wait until the grass is green, but it was nice to get outside on such a beautiful day.

These are the flowers my husband gave me for my birthday, a beautiful taste of spring!

My friend sent me this picture of us when my first born was only days old.  Who are those young people?

This is me at my little birthday party last month.  We had so much fun and a lot of laughs.  I think I was being a smart aleck about something in this picture. Haha!