just to pass the time away

another day of no pictures.

i don't usually think to stop and take pictures when we are going to and from school, and especially not now that the weather is so cold, and especially not on a day like today with a steady, cold drizzle on top of the cold temperature.

it sounds like the rain has stopped for now, but if tonight is anything like last night and the night before, then it will resume right around 10:30.

today is one of those days where you just want to get where you are going and stay there... until you have to get up and go to the next place.  leave school, go to the grocery store.  get home, leave to pick up the kids.  ride home.  no parks today.  no riding around on bikes for fun.  just get home.  off with all the wet rain gear.  still, despite the weather, it's a good feeling to be out.  when i got home from class (after the grocery store), i sat down and wrote my words for the day.  then i stayed sitting and did my danish homework.  when i finally got on my bike again to pick up the guys, my knees were stiff from sitting too long.  fortunately, at this juncture, sitting (still) is not usually so long-lived (for i suppose i'm still sitting on my bike).

later, i made dinner, or had things cooking on the stove.  william somewhere in the other part of the house, and henry gone to join him.  and then he fairly promptly fell from somewhere and was quite shook up with a bump on his head, which (fairly promptly) disappeared.  william had been sailing his boat in the bathroom sink, and henry, as he is more and more likely to try and do these days, seems to have climbed up, at least part of the way, before losing his grip on the wet sink and falling (for he had wet sleeves).  he was okay, as he always (knock on wood) is, but it was right then, with henry crying in one part of the house, the food on the stove cooking away in the other part, that i was happy to hear greg knocking on the door, home from work.  entering the realm of domesticity for sure.  the bliss being in the eye of the beholder.

even later, holding henry's hand as he reluctantly lays down in his bed to sleep, running through just a couple warm-up renditions of 'the farmer in the dell' before moving on to the night's (and every night's) main performance, 'i've been working on the railroad' which starts out big, until, four or five rounds later, the audience begins to lose focus such that it turns into a sing-hum, and a sing-hum into a hum-sing, and a hum-sing into a steady hum, which inevitably becomes unsteady, until a few lines exist in just a whisper, and then on go the blankets (the audience doesn't mind now) and the performer slowly gets up, knowing exactly where to step so as not to rattle the audience, and into the next room, where peter pan is teaching wendy and john and michael (and maybe william) how to fly and for one reason or another on this night i take over the reading that's already begun and when we've been introduced to all the lost boys and just before meeting the pirates, it's time to turn off the light and william doesn't want to and he doesn't want to read anymore stories at night or listen to anymore songs, he just wants to fall asleep by himself... except that he just wants one song.  one song, or to sing until you fall asleep?  to sing until i fall asleep.  and so i have a new audience and a new song ('silent night'...  because one night its first line was in a book we read about christmas, and he has requested 'the christmas song' many nights since), but it takes only three or four go-arounds of verse one, because verse one is all i really know by heart, but it is the best one i think, before he is asleep and i am out on the couch writing the post for tonight, these last two paragraphs being added only because i have written my words for today and finished my danish homework and am keeping greg company as he finishes his own work, so why not add on a couple more paragraphs?  but he's going to bed now and it's 10:25 and the rain is set to start in 5 minutes and here i am still writing.