It’s been awhile. I’m being pretty forgiving of myself these days. Long weeks of Zoom meetings day and night has me good for little else than housekeeping and reading by the weekend. I haven’t been doing much in my sewing room or anything.
However, I have lots of unused vacation days, (thanks, lockdown), so I’m taking every Friday in November and December off. Instead of just thinking of them as a “day off,” or a “vacation day,” I’m very intentionally calling them Sabbath days. This simply makes me much more intentional about thinking through what would be renewing and restoring rather than just what I can do with free time. It comes out to a lot of the same activities, it’s just a little different mindset going into them.
One piece of my plan was to go for a long walk with the Aug-dog. I wanted to take him to a place up on the shores of Lake Ontario that’s a nature preserve and I recalled some really nice paths through it from a family hike we’d taken a number of years ago.
Unfortunately, it’s not really obvious which trail is which and they don’t all lead off a common trailhead—not even close. They’re spaced over about a 6-7 mile area. Ultimately, Auggie and I ended up driving around for a good 45 minutes total between finding trailheads, realizing it wasn’t the one I wanted, finding another one that looked good and heading off only to find out that it was a very short, loopy trail through brush and trees with only the slightest glimpse of the lake far off over a lot of reeds. Not particularly interesting. And I’m trying to stay ahead of the rain that I can see gathering on the horizon so I don’t feel like I’ve got a whole lot of time to mess around.
I finally took Auggie back to one that was a more populated and well-kept trail that would at least take us through some wetlands. 15 minutes into the walk, I see a hunter in full gear walking towards me. Ummm… “Are there a lot of hunters back in here?” I asked him as he got close enough. “Well,” he said, flipping his shotgun into his arm and scratching his head, “I think I’m probably one of the last ones.” I look down at Auggie, with coloring remarkably like a deer, and my own jacket which, although fairly bright, is still green. Yeah, no. Not a chance I’m willing to take. Hadn’t ever given a thought to needing reflective gear since we were only going to be in public parks. We turned about face and hoofed it back to the parking lot.
I grew up in the country. I know about hunting season. We wouldn’t let the dogs out to run at certain times of year because of the risk. But hunters in a well-traveled park with walkers and dogs? Huh. I looked it up online when I got home. I don’t think it’s legal to be hunting there, but there sure were a few folks doing it openly and a bunch of walkers who didn’t seem surprised so they must know something I don’t know. Still, I won’t be going back there any time soon.
Fortunately, it was enough of a day for Auggie that he’s now conked out on his bed. Between the walking and all the great new smells (although he was none too keen on the bridge we had to walk over), he’s a sleepy boy now.
Mission accomplished.
(BTW, he rarely lays down in the backseat. He likes to sit up and lean his head against the door. Weird dog.)
I had originally planned to spend most of the afternoon in my sewing room but by the time we got back from our adventures all over the shores of Lake Ontario, it was later than I’d intended. I only ended up with a little over an hour. It was long enough to clean off the cutting table (ahem), remind myself where I was in the Halloween project that no, didn’t get done in time for Halloween again, and get one more block done, which completes the top row. I lost a couple of points on the “spooky” banner in the upper right, but overall I’m pleased with the way it’s turning out so far.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to remember what I intended to do with these. {{head scratches}}.
In other news, my daughter has just been quarantined. She lives about 3 hours north of us so this Mama Bear is worrying and not able to do anything about it. Someone in her office tested positive a few days ago so they quarantined a few people right off the bat, and a few others subsequently tested positive, but my daughter and her office-mate didn’t get sent home until yesterday afternoon. Then her office-mate tested positive this morning. My daughter went right in today and had herself tested as well, and so far so good. Still, she’s definitely quarantined through Thanksgiving which is deeply disappointing, and I hate thinking of her alone in her apartment that day. If she stays healthy, her quarantine lifts the day after Thanksgiving so she’ll probably come home that weekend and we’ll do something late with her. But we’re taking it day by day. While I’m praying she stays COVID-free, it’s hard to imagine that she’ll be able to be with everyone else in her office down.
Yikes.