1) Today, I had to drive to Cleveland in the afternoon for a week of meetings and time in the office.  It’s amazing to me to think that Mark and I did this trip 2x/weekend almost every weekend for 10 months.  I really don’t know how we managed.  In reflecting on it, I think it’s true that life has different seasons and it’s remarkable how we adapt to those seasons and we just get done what we need to get done.  During those months, we fit our lives into Monday-Friday and Saturday & Sunday were in many ways special days that were outside the realm of our normal lives.  Now, it’s all a lot more blended together.  There’s not the distinction of “my life” and “his life” and “our life”…those separate lives now occupy just our working hours and the rest of it is “our life.” The divisions have changed significantly; before, it was always a bonus to get a few extra hours in “our life” and now it’s strange to lose those extra hours and go back to the way things were.  (I’d much rather live with the way things are now!). Still, I know the next 5 days will go quickly and then I’ll head back to Ontario Friday night, in another flashback of the good old days, but this time, I’m going home, and I don’t have to do the drive again on Sunday! .

2) We get asked a lot what we’re working on the house these days, and really, my answer is: “trying to get it clean.” (See last week’s post!) I’m encouraged though that, even though we didn’t get it much cleaner this week, the part we cleaned did stay clean.  So, it is possible…it just takes a little bit of extra diligence. (I realize that’s just a really dull update…but it was seriously a highlight of my week)

3) Our attention, though, in terms of projects, is turning to the outside.  When my parents visited in February, my mom suggested that we remove some overgrown bushes, and this week, we had them pulled out.  It’s SUCH an improvement.  I don’t have great pictures, but you can see here where Mark started turning over soil today where some of the bushes were.  I’m hoping to put in some flowering bushes or maybe some climbing roses or other such flowers.   This particular bed eventually winds its way from the side of our house next to the driveway all along the side and front of our house, so there’s a lot of potential. It’s right near the gate, too, where people would enter the patio/backdoor area.

4) Thursday, I happened to have some frozen bread dough that I needed to make into cinnamon rolls.  Mark was fascinated by the process and took some pictures/video. He thought it quite strange that I was using dental floss to slice them off the roll, so we have a video to demonstrate how it’s done (it’s in high speed cause we were running out of space on teh camera …)

5) Today was over 70 degrees! Mark walked home from church and I sat out on our deck/patio for awhile.  Maggie was enjoying the spring weather too.

6) Reading: I’m reading a biography of Mickey Mantle. Yup. Baseball.  I think my appreciation of the book is severely limited by my lack of understanding and background of baseball.  Still, it’s moderately interesting.  On my drive to cleveland, I listened to a podcast about cities and how one physicist (I think?) has cities reduced to a bunch of ratios and mathematical formulas. For instance, pick a city and all people within that city walk at the same pace roughly. AND….that pace is proportional according to some formula to the population of the city.  In the end, how quickly people walk, the number of libraries, how quickly people talk, etc are all predictable based on the population.   anyway- there’s apparently a book that explains it and i think it needs to be added to my reading list