Siege - Days 19 and 20

Weekends do still, somehow, feel more relaxed than work-weeks do.

Yesterday me and my housemate baked cookies together.  I'm not sure we've ever done that before, though cookies have certainly been baked and eaten around here in the past.  It was nice.  It added a sort of Christmasy vibe to the days around Palm Sunday.  And the chocolate chip cookies and powdered sugar dusted molasses cookies are tasty.

(And what a Lent this has been!  Someone quipped that they "hadn't planned to give up quite this much for Lent."  I feel that too.)

Leaves are breaking out on all the trees now, even our newly planted one!  Birds are noisy.

In a minute here I'm going to start an hour of architectural continuing education - online, of course.  Just to prepare for a future that might still be on... sometime.  Who knows?  It can't always be Lent.  Sometime it will be Easter.  Just as it can't always be winter and never Christmas.*

Public domain image from Pxfuel HERE

It seems right now like a very long slow walk to normal again.  A poem a friend found reminds me that we must make patient progress...

Grandma once gave me a tip:

During difficult times, you move forward in small steps.
Do what you have to do, but little by bit.
Don't think about the future, not even what might happen tomorrow. Wash the dishes.
Take off the dust.
Write a letter.
Make some soup.
Do you see?
You are moving forward step by step.
Take a step and stop.
Get some rest.
Compliment yourself.
Take another step.
Then another one.
You won't notice, but your steps will grow bigger and bigger.
And time will come when you can think about the future without crying. Good morning

Elena Mikhalkova, "The Room of Ancient Keys"

(I'm not sure if this is a fair-use, well, use here... If the poet objects I will, of course!, remove this.  Meanwhile, thank you Elena Mikhalkova for this present comfort.)

*  And it's a good time to reread hopeful classics.  Narnia.  Lord of the Rings.  The Little Princess or Little Women.

Books on CD - The Traveler's Friends

Many of my shows this season have been in Fort Worth - a 100 mile round trip - so I try to make fewer, more efficiently planned and productive trips!  I also take along a book on CD.

I've driven my way through several classics that, reading all by myself, I might not have finished:  Beowulf, transformed into English poetry and read by Seamus Heaney was terrific and so was The Odyssey read by Ian McKellen.  I found myself driving in time to the rythm of the verse.  On the lighter side, P. G. Wodehouse is pretty good company.  My favorite is still Michael Chabon's Summerland, (earlier post HERE) a wonderful, imaginative tale.

But at Half Price Books...  Do you have one?  A treasure-trove of a used bookstore!  Ahem.  At Half Price Books recently there were irresistible CD books:  Alcott's Little Women crazy-cheap; Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, THE time-travel-romance-adventure book which, as my elderly mother phrases it, "gets a little warm"; and the charming Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame.

Almost makes me want to drive to Fort Worth.