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A Quiet Week

Well, it's been a quiet week in...

I feel as though I should begin this post with the opening line from a Lake Wobegon story even though I don't have a snapshot tale to tell you about what has happened in Small Town this week. It's just been a quiet week here.

Husband has been visiting No. 1 in Berkeley this week, tidying up a kitchen remodeling project we've been managing long distance and spending time with the kid. All reports suggest they're having a nice time, even though the kid will sometimes resort to answering her father in Arabic, a language he does not speak. I can imagine that eventually feels like your child is mocking you in Pig Latin, but I'm sure they're working things out. When Husband embarked on this trip, he said he would approach it like a personal vacation.

So, I'm approaching my time alone at home as a personal vacation as well. True, I don't have a stressful job to breakaway from, or any job for that matter, but a break from the usual routine is good for the soul—and the brain and the creative energy and anything else that needs a rest.

I have bought what seems like a boat load of groceries for just one person, but I haven't been cooking the usual sort of meals every evening. I have made a mediocre batch of mac and cheese, chicken salad, marinara, shrimp with lime, watermelon salad...stuff like that. I don't follow a clock-determine schedule, and I don't shush the cat when he incessantly meows at the door the way he does when he wants to go outside to eat grass and then come back in to vomit all over the floor. If Husband should read this post, he will be happy to know that I have been careful not to leave the porch door open in the heat of the day so I'm not air-conditioning the whole outdoors. What do you think, we're made of money?

So, what have I been doing all week? First, I signed up to be a substitute horn player for one concert with a community orchestra about an hour from Small Town, and I've been to two rehearsal. The Wyrd Sisters brought what we called Bar in A Bag over here one evening, and we sat outside by the pool drinking vodka gimlets and eating shrimp and hummus. It was a wonderful evening of giggling and talking in circles. Not one of us is a linear thinker, it turns out, although we claim circle-processing at varying degrees.

I hosted a small orchestra planning lunch yesterday with the manager of the local farm market, and I made soba noodles and roasted salmon which we enjoyed with assorted bottles of beer, so that was something. I baked a small batch of cookies, I read, I did laundry, I star gazed, I vacuumed the pool, I swam in the pool, I skimmed the pool, I emptied the skimmer basket of the pool after a crazy storm that nearly tore my patio umbrella right out of its stand, I gazed at the pool....I could go on about the pool.

I had Big Fat Summer Band rehearsal one evening, the last one of the season, which is sad, and I played my best given my brain seems to be fully engaged in vacation mode. That means that in the middle of a 2/4 series of measures, I would start counting in 4/4, or on a page full of three flats, I would suddenly forget about the flatted A. I never missed an offbeat though, well, except for that once. That's unfortunate, but by concert time this coming Saturday, I'll be primed, I'm sure.

And that's about it. So, it has indeed been a quiet week in Small Town, and I have enjoyed every minute of it.

Comments

dive said…
Hee hee for K answering her father in Arabic. That's too funny, Robyn. As soon as I've finished typing this I'm going to ring my mum and talk Japanese to her.

So glad to hear you had a nice quiet week, though Wyrd Sisters night sounds more of a blast. Here's to more weeks that are as pleasant as if narrated by Garrison Keillor.
2:26 PM
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