Tag: #Relaxing

  • Contemplations of a Brook

    We got out of the City for a few days. Where we found ourselves was in the country, on one of our planned vacations, and next to where we are staying is a brook. Where I’m from, we would have called it a creek. Or maybe it’s a stream. Either way, its water rushing over rocks. Nature’s white noise machine. And it is a rushing, turning, moving brook. I dare not wade into it, as I think it would carry me away. The water is clear, and I can only imagine very cold.

    As I have looked at this brook for the past couple of days, I want to know where the source of the water is. I want to know where it is going. The water passes through the property, but I have no gage on the role this water plays in the countryside. Is it spring feed? Does it come from the mountains? Is it created by the rainfall? I know all water makes it to the sea, but does the brook stop off at a pond or a lake?

    At night, when I go to sleep, I hear the rushing of the water, and it is the first thing I hear in the morning. The birds calls around here have to fight to be heard. The movement of water, passing and going. The continuous, calming sound.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Summer Day Camp’s Last Day, Vacations, Tottenham Anxiety

    “Odds and Ends” is my continuing series of random thoughts and follow ups…

    Today is the final day of the kid’s Summer Day Camp, and it went wonderfully well. I think the wife and I over did it asking the kid if she wants to go back next year. The answer is yes, and hopefully, we can give her a month there, instead of two weeks. The other thing that made me happy about the camp is that our daughter had no qualms about being away from us for 6 hours, and in fact, wanted it to be longer. To me that says she is in a healthy place with being away from her parents; She wants to separate and have her own experiences, like a normal kid.

    Now we start the stretch of vacations. Yes, that is means more than one this Summer. We were lucky if we got away for one vacation a year in the past. And most of the time a “vacation” was just leaving home for a few days, and could also mean visiting family, which sometimes can be the opposite of relaxing. For us to go someplace and actually relax and not doing anything has been rare. This summer, we’re getting two trips. I feel very spoiled in saying that, even a little self-conscious. I know this is due to Covid and being trapped home for the past 15 months, but wow! I really want to get the hell out of this apartment for a couple of days.

    So… Tottenham is a bit of a shit show right now. Have they even picked a manager yet? Is it Nuno? And Harry Kane rumors are all over the place, but Tottenham has him on contract for one more year, and I still hold that Kane made that, “I want to be on a teams that wins championships” statement to get management to do something, like build a team, or keep the talent they have (like Son) and solve that defense issue they have in the last ten minutes of every match! Friendly matches start up next week, so I hope to see some changes myself.

  • Thinking About Summer Vacation

    Today was a nice, solid winter day in NYC. It’s only 36 right now, and there was about an hour of snow flurries that fell, though nothing stuck. We have the radiator on in the apartment, and I am bout to make afternoon coffee. It feels like winter, and if you squint, it almost feels normal.

    And if this a normal winter day, then I would start thinking about summer vacation. Like a real summer vacation. (Just humor me, here.) If this was a normal school year here in the City, than we know that the kid would be in classes all the way through the end of June. Most likely, we’d take part in a Summer camp for the kid over the month of July, and I have a good idea that we would get clued in by some of the other parents from school of which camps to take part in.

    That would leave the month of August, and I want the whole month of August 2021. See, I have it in my head that we could take the whole month off, and if so then we are headed up to New England, and I think I would like to try out Maine again.

    Two years ago, we did five days in a small vacation town on the coast in May, and I thought it was great. The day was only 75, and warm enough to go to the beach, and then at night it got into the 50’s so I could put on a sweater while having a drink on the front porch.

    I know the wife wouldn’t be super excited about it, but she could work remotely for two weeks, and then we all could take two uninterrupted to just relax. Maybe boil some lobsters, do a clam bake, or just order take out. And reading books, sketching landscapes, just thinking the day away.