brrrr

We just got back from a whirlwind trip down to visit John’s parents. John’s sister was visiting them, and John’s mother just had a birthday. Plus, coincidentally, my sister (from California) was in New York city for a couple of days for a trade show. So, a trip down to New York seemed in order.

We left Thursday night, after I got home from a really long day of teaching and meeting and commuting. We didn’t get on the road till about 8:30, which isn’t bad considering I got home at almost 7, and still had to pack and eat dinner. But it did mean an arrival time after midnight.

I then took the train into New York City to meet my sister Friday morning, and join her in checking out some retailers. (Actually, I don’t mean shopping, believe it or not. Though I did buy a bathtub drain stopper and some licorice. I lead a glamorous life like that.) I had a really fun time. This was the first time in years my sister and I just got to hang out together. With no babies or anything. It was rainy and windy and cold, and not really a great day for walking around outside. But walk around outside we did. I also took the opportunity to spend the time on the train reading a book for fun since I wasn’t lugging my laptop. I re-read Sara Caudwell’s The Shortest Way to Hades, one of my favoritistest books in the world.

John is going through a crazy-busy time for work now, and so we decided to come back home Saturday night. (It’s impossible for either of us to get stuff done when visiting John’s mother.) But first, we had the day with John’s sister, visited John’s Dad, then made a trip to my favorite restaurant in the universe. We then went back to John’s parents’ house, packed up, and were on the road by about 9:30 or 10:00.

Phoebe and I got to sleep most of the way home, which was great. Especially since, upon our arrival at home at 1:30 a.m., we found that the house was a nippy 50 degrees (that’s 10 degrees celsius). Our furnace had shut off at some point in the past couple days. We spent the next couple hours doing various things to speed up the warming process: turning on the oven, running space heaters in the bedrooms, and burning cardboard and whatever scrap wood we could find in the fireplace.

It was actually almost festive, with the roaring fire and the scavenging for amazon boxes and clementine crates. Phoebe had fun playing with her crayons while bundled up in a blanket nearish the fire. By 3:30, a space heater had brought Phoebe’s room up to a tolerable 60 degrees or so, and I managed to get her into her crib by 4. (We didn’t want to leave the space heater running in her room, so wanted to get the room warm before we left her in there.)

And I did sleep past 7:00 this morning, and seeing as I have no deadlines this weekend and have even read a book for fun and watched some TV, I now can lump myself in with those categories of people of which I was previously jealous. Hurray!