After six days on the road, Kate and I returned to our normal routine today. It felt right. It wasn’t completely normal. I actually got up over an hour later than I often do, 7:15 compared to a normal get up time between 5:30 and 6:00. I woke up earlier at 4:20 and 6:00 and decided to sleep a little more. That decision was prompted by the fact that I am still nursing a cold that has been hanging on far longer than usual. I felt like this was a good day to take it easy. I didn’t even take my morning walk. That was partially influenced by the temperature around 30.
Kate was up before 8:30 and ready for Panera about 9:30. We were there an hour before she was ready to come home and wanted to work outside even though it was still 36 degrees. After she had worked for an hour, I suggested we go to lunch at Carla’s Trattoria. We go there almost every Tuesday. Even though we had eaten well, actually too well, over the holiday, we splurged and finished our meal with some of Carla’s homemade salted caramel gelato. From there we dropped by the church to make a last-minute payment on our church pledge and then by Walgreens to pick up a couple of prescriptions.
When we got back home, Kate told me she wanted to go back outside. I told her that would be fine. Since it was then 39 degrees, I thought maybe she might not be out too long. I underestimated the attraction of the yard. She was outside over three hours and happy as a lark. She and I have often said that working in the yard is her therapy. There is more truth to that than we originally believed. She is able to work for hours though not usually with weather in the thirties. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that she had wanted to “pull leaves” at Kevin’s house. On two occasions she actually did pull a few as we walked from the car to the house.
We finished the day by going to dinner at one of our other local favorites. We enjoyed our dinner and then came home to relax. Kate got ready for bed, and I watched the PBS Newshour that I had recorded earlier. It was a good first day home.
