Walking

Now that I know my teleworking purgatory will last at least 9 more months, I realized I needed to switch up my routine: I started walking in the morning before I start work. Walking 5 steps to my computer was prematurely aging my body, I'm sure. I haven't missed sitting in the car for hours, but I do miss my public transportation commute when I could read and walk before sitting down at my desk.

We are lucky to live in a suburban pocket that is not completely taken over by houses. Across the street are 42 acres of farmland which can't be subdivided, and there are several other farms nearby. Unfortunately these are marred by a McMansion neighborhood, but I conveniently cropped out those monstrosities. The good news is that apparently people who live in McMansions don't need to come outside because they can just lap between their giant rooms, so it is usually quiet and serene.

The weather has been beautiful lately as the trees reach peak color. The fog settles into the valleys early in the morning before it burns off. The sky is a brilliant blue and the fields are just starting to turn a golden brown. I am trying to soak it up before it becomes too cold and dark. 

I am usually fine until Christmas; the bare trees are fairly new, and everything is twinkly and festive. But then, January through March happens, those brown, dead months before gardening season begins. I wish there were some traditions or something to help us get through those months (and not valentine's day... no one really cares about that right?) What do you do to survive the dead of winter?

That Golden Autumn Light

 

The months, they fly by! This is hardly a unique statement but I feel like I need to say it anyway. The week before "school" started we stayed at a cabin near Shenandoah National Park for a week. My little hikers were good sports but after the 4th hike they were getting tired of it; there is not much else to do these days. The cabin had a hot tub which was a fun activity for them, despite the fact that it was 95 degrees out, hotter even than the water in the tub. 

Now that it's October the garden is pretty much done, and true to form I'm tired of it. After 6 months of gardening I'm usually ready to finish it up and move on to something else. I'll try to squeeze in as many art, craft, and house projects as I can before it starts getting truly cold and I commence hibernation.

My work announced that we will continue teleworking until July 1 of next year. That will mark 15 months of working from home, when we originally left the office thinking we'd be back in 2 weeks. I haven't been back since and I'm sure the mice are having a field day with the food I left in my desk. (Mice, on the 6th floor of an office building? True story.) A coworker managed to rescue my plants so at least I'm not worried about them shriveling up.

Everything continues to be the same every day so I am not sure what else to say. Mary started 1st grade online and we look at our screens all day, and are basically all trapped inside in the same room trying not to develop cabin fever.