Abe informed me that today was supposed to be the last nice day of the season. What motivating news! After breakfast, I packed the girls into the jogger, loaded them down with snacks, water, and blankets, and proceeded to spend the next three hours bidding adieu to the sun.
We walked up and jogged down City Creek Canyon, which was a wonderfully meditative experience since Mary was asleep and Lydia would only occasionally pipe up to ask pressing questions. (Lately, she’s been very interested in learning what animals and people are “scary” and which ones aren’t. These are harder questions to answer than you would think, especially since I consider practically everything to be–at least potentially– dangerous.)
I then walked down to the grocery store, which was a rare jaunt for me considering it’s six straight blocks downhill, and then the same back up. When you are pushing a double jogger loaded with kids, blankets, snacks, groceries, and books (we stopped at the library on the way back), those last few blocks can feel pretty severe. But I felt inspired by one of the ladies I visit teach, who can be seen running regularly with her baby around downtown Salt Lake. She told me that she runs up the twelve blocks from downtown to her house. After she said that, I told myself that surely, surely I can do a better job of walking to the grocery store and to the library–a mere three blocks away.
No sooner than we arrived back home than the clouds started to gather and the weather took a turn away from its morning glory. We spent the rest of the day inside while it got progressively colder and grayer out. Hello, Winter! I welcomed it by curling up in my bed while the girls napped (actually, Lydia opted for “quiet time” instead of nap time today, so the whole time I could hear her “reading” her books and playing vigorous games of pretend). As I lay there, I envisioned all the things that I would do if I were an upright object in motion, as opposed to a horizontal lump, so to speak. The only thing that got me moving was Lydia tapping urgently on the door telling me that she peed in her potty.
After I fed the girls dinner and bathed them both, I managed to accomplish the ONE cleaning goal I had today: vacuum the upstairs. Woo-hoo! The carpet actually feels different pre- and post-vacuum, and I am now going to end this blog and go upstairs to tread the soft carpet and enjoy the fruit of my one solitary labor of the day.
