And Today

Well, let’s see. The big news today is that I found my pedometer! It had, apparently come off the side of my shoe and been covered by a layer of soft fluffy snow. Since said soft, fluffy snow was melting this morning, on my way out for a walk, I saw the pedometer lying on the ground. It is now back on my shoe and it seems to be working….

We lost power very briefly—well, for about 15 minutes –this morning. I walked down to the corner to see if the traffic lights were still on, and yes, they were. Then I looked left, and there were the Green Mountain workers in their cherry-pickers zooming up a pole to get to the transformer. Just after I got back home and stopped in to tell Fred, the power came on again. When I lived in Mississippi, I had candles all over the house. Usually, the power was off for an hour or so there but sometimes it was much longer. I had an electric oven there but a gas cook top so even when the power was off, I could still provide food. Here, in the new apartment, everything is electric.

Anyway, right after I got back from my walk, we went over to the neighbors for brunch. We had a lovely time. I took a loaf of bread the clever machine made and little Grace {I think she is five} ate a slice with enthusiasm. I was very amused. I had met Addi’s boyfriend, Roberto, briefly before but I was very pleased to get to know him better. He seems like a very nice young man and although only the baby, Jackson, is his biological child, he often made comments about having three children. They were not nasty comments, just things like he really liked his new car because it was so much better for three children. I thought it was interesting that Grace came in and said to him, "Daddy, make the boys {her brother and her uncle–age 13} get off the computer and come outside with me!" She knows he is not her biological father and indeed, even though he {the bio father} is not around much, she and Mitchell,  her brother, often go off for weekends with him, especially in the summer but she calls Roberto "daddy." Anyway, it was a very pleasant experience and Fred and I both enjoyed it.

Today I have:

• got up very early and loaded the clever bread machine with ingredients for a white loaf to take to the brunch
• done 30 minutes of Italian grammar and corrected any errors from the answers in the back. BTW, "correction" means drawing a neat line through the error and correcting it by writing out the whole thing correctly. I find it helps to see the error and then the correction.
• Gone for a 20 minute walk in the slush in the morning followed by a walk {about a block} in the afternoon.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. — Marcus Aurelius

Until later….