Morning Report

October 30th, 2018

I am up an hour before my kids, which never happens.

Eliza crawled into bed with me pre-5:30, and that was it. Pre-dawn mental adrenaline coursing through me as I ran over the usual laundry list in my head.

“This would be a good time to finally start that daily 15-minute yoga practice,” I thought. I decided to make pancakes.

I had fat, juicy red cranberries in the fridge — one of my favorite food things about this time of year. There really aren’t that many things you can do with cranberries. Some would argue, not even pancakes. I disagree. A hit of tart in a stack of sweet is a good thing.

I am terrible at making pancakes, is the one problem. Despite a LOT of practice since having children, I always manage to burn most of them. I blame this on the cast iron skillet, whose heat is not even nor predictable. People say that cast iron skillets are the best for even heat for pancakes. Not mine.

Nevertheless, I refuse to cook them in any other pan. It comes from a stubborn sense of misplaced homesteadiness and a fondness for this Eric Carle book about pancakes:

I ate a pancake before 7am on a Tuesday.

Later, I also ate half a breakfast burrito. Hear me out. I did find time to go for a walk.

This  article came up in one of my feeds yesterday and I thought, touche:

It has been a goal of mine for months, maybe years, to start a daily walking practice. In my single days in California, I used to hike for hours at a time, up and down mountains, across ravines, in places coyotes frequent and mountain lions would not be unheard of. But here, in Vermont, although I’m surrounded by woods, it’s the rare day I even find time to walk to the mailbox.

With a renewed sense of inspiration-slash-fear this morning, I tried again. I dropped the girls off at the school playground and walked straight from there into the woods.

It turns out that there are legit hiking trails right there, yards from where I drop them off every morning. How have I not noticed this before? I need to start opening my eyes.

Ironically, this is part of the reason I want to start a morning walking practice in the first place — I feel like I’m going blind from all the screen time. I need to give my eyes a chance to focus on things in the far, or at least middle, distance every day.

This morning, we (Jon went with me) saw a deer dart off into the woods, ricocheting through the trees to get the freak away from us. It’s a start.

And so we begin again.

Share Button

Leave a Reply

Back