The other day, it was a sunny 68 degrees and my only day off in a while for a while, so I needed to make the most of it. I'd gotten up early, enjoyed a cup of coffee and bagel in bed while going through e-mails and doing paperwork for the camper. Jasper curled up in the little space between my legs and I couldn't help but think about her birthday coming up in a couple of days, so we watched videos of her as a tiny baby opening her eyes and hearing sounds for the first time and learning to walk and drinking from her little bottle and of the first time she washed her tiny face one morning in the comforter on the bed. I went to the hardware store in another failed attempt to track down a dozen lavender plants that I've been wanting to plant in the backyard and then stocked up on groceries for the next week of mayhem. By 10 am, my guests in the camper packed up and hit the road so I swooped in and flipped it for the next guests arriving this afternoon. Having my cleaning lady take care of it while I'm at work is a life-saver, but if I'm not working, I like to go in and take care of it myself...just so I can check on everything and make sure it's going well. Brian's apricot and peach trees are in full bloom right now, so I trimmed off some blossoms for the little bud vase and folded the towels a little extra fancy, just because.
Then, it was go-time. In an effort to avoid spring break traffic, I opted to hike a trail on my side of town: Mescal. One of my favorite things about any activity that I do solo is that I really get thinking. There's something about the blood pumping and the fresh air that just gets the wheels turning and I start to revisit the most vivid memories and start to make plans for the future.
I was thinking about exactly one year ago...when I was hiking the same trail on a similarly sunny, warm day. The same circumstances surrounded my hike: I was super busy at work and forcing myself to get out and enjoy life. Babushka had just disappeared and Jasper wasn't even a figment of our imaginations. We were daydreaming about Switzerland and the French Alps and what we imagined it would be like. We were messing with the camera settings on our phones in an effort to get all of the kinks ironed out before we left. The camper and Bugaboo and Iceland and Mexico and Colorado and San Diego and Northern California and the Canadian Rockies and Mt Rainier and Kauai weren't even a discussion yet.
It's amazing what can happen in a year and how fast it can go by and it just makes me want to slow down and take more pictures and write down every moment in my life and hope that it doesn't just slip away and get forgotten because life is pretty damn good.