Wishy-Washy

Tuesday and Wednesday Bike Commutes (12/28-12/29/10)

May I be honest for a moment?  Yes?  Thanks!  I’m having a hard time with re-entry this week.  I went back to work yesterday for a few hours—I gave myself a short day, on account of my epic travel day on Monday—and today I did the same thing, but I worked a few more hours today.  Work is slow right now because I had to wrap things up in order to go on vacation.  Re-entry means I have to start turning the crank again to get things moving, and I am feeling tired, slow, and uninspired.  I find myself thinking about a certain four-year-old with fluffy blonde curls, and I wish I were still in Michigan to read stories to her, to cut cheese into cubes or sticks (depending on her instructions, of course), to snuggle with her while we watch her tv shows and rub the sleep from our eyes.

I miss my Lydia.  And it hurts.  

It’s no surprise, then, that work is hard this week.  I have to get my head back in the game.  I have to remember the experiments that I wanted to do, the experiments I was looking forward to doing once I returned from Christmas break.  This is hard, when all I want to do is make plans to move next door to that four-year-old so that we can play together every day.

It rained this morning, sometimes in fat drippy drops and other times in great buckets that soaked my jeans and made my heart feel heavy.  I had been looking forward Texas sunshine.  The sun, I knew, would cheer me up!  But there was no sun this morning.  Later, as I was riding home, feeling kinda mopey, the sun began peaking through the heavy grey skies and the sky itself began to lighten to these gorgeous shades of blue.  It was quite lovely, and almost immediately I felt better, lighter and happier.  And it helped that the rain had stopped!

The other thing that helped lift my spirits today was a photo session underneath one of my favorite trees on campus.  This wacky tree has long, low-hanging branches that stretch over a sidewalk, creating a woody canopy.  Every time I see this tree, it makes me smile with its strange, fairy tale-like beauty.  I can imagine a gnome living under this tree, or a group of toddlers having a picnic here.  For today, it was the perfect background for my purple bike, with or without me.