Saving Daylight

In 2019, I’ve gotten a little trendy.  With New Year’s Eve being my favorite holiday since childhood, I always get into resolutions.  But this year, I stepped it up and chose a word of the year (delight), made a “19 for 2019” list of things I want to accomplish, and wrote my own happiness project.  The happiness project is pretty involved, has categories, and stands alone as a relative guide for how I wish to approach life. The categories are things like Physical Self, Life Outlook, Communication, Productivity, and Fun-and-Play-and-Feel-Good-Stuff.  I’ve referred to it often in the past seven months and have found it to be very grounding.  Item number 9 under “Fun and Play and Feel Good Stuff” is:  make peace with NoVa or make a plan to really take steps elsewhere.   Twenty years ago, on August 5th, I drove a rickety U-Haul truck one-way from Harrisonburg, VA to Fairfax, VA.  I still remember frantically cleaning and throwing things out of the college apartment minutes before l

I have fallen behind.  It was inevitable.  We've been out of town more than in it.  Though I HAVE been faithfully tracking my daily delightful-grateful moments and taking endless pictures, I have not carved out ample time to write.  So I'm gonna skip some days in efforts to catch up a bit.  Just know that the omitted days were full of marked joy too.   April 17 Spring Bunny event at the Heritage Farm Museum in Loudoun County!  Luckily Arthur seems to be right in the pocket of no longer being scared of holiday characters.  There were tons of actual bunnies to pet, which made me feel a little bad...I can't imagine this was fun for the bunnies, but maybe there's more I don't know about bunny temperament toward unpredictable toddler handling.  His favorite part of the event was the duck races...plastic ducks racing down windy PVC pipes and eventually diving into the pool via the water pump that the kids could handle themselves.   And earlier that morning,

March 31 Matt's first baseball game of the season.  I really love that he still plays and makes time for a sport that he's really good at, has played his entire life, and has a great group of guys on his team.  There's a core group of them who have played together for 20 years!   Arthur begged and begged (and begged) to run the bases and couldn't wait for the game to be over so he could get out there.  And then...(wait for the end).  Hilariously overwhelmed.   April 1 Last March, my beloved "female doctor" retired suddenly.  I mean, she was well within her rights to retire, had worked at least a few years beyond what was required, but she retired just days ahead of a needed shoulder surgery that would require a decent recovery time and made the decision a little sooner than I think she had originally planned.  My yearly appointment with her was on the Monday of her last week.  I was shocked, saddened, and gave her a long hug goodbye - wa