Sylvia's Journal

I have been admonished by some of my faithful readers to write more. Why haven’t I been writing for a month? Too busy? I think I was busier before my full time job was terminated. It’s true that the busier I was the more organized I was. So this is a reboot.

I have been kind of busy, but not accompanied by the usual discipline of writing. Since my last post about Senegal I have returned to cold and wintry Massachusetts, went on a ski trip with the grand kids, made a brief trip to North Carolina with its daffodils and flowering trees and returned home to suffer through a series of three snow storms in a row, leaving us with half a meter of snow and lots of black ice.

The grandkids took to cross country skiing with great ease and glee. Saffi’s bottom is about one foot off the ground, so falling and getting up was no big deal, a source of much giggling and laughing by all. Both she and Faro loved going fast down tracks of the little practice hills in front of the Jackson X-country ski lodge. Oma functioned as a ski lift from time to time, pulling Saffi up by her ski pole. Faro was old enough for lessons and made quick progress.

After I became a free agent I had signed us up at the Home Exchange site, a French site that helps people switch homes for a short period. We have three exchanges organized for the summer: one with a family from Breckenridge, CO (though we won’t do the exchange, getting points instead which will allow us to ‘pay’ for stays in people’s homes when they are elsewhere or their second homes); then one with a family from Scotland – we are switching homes for two weeks, and finally one with a family from Canada who will be in our house while we are in Maine. It is our very first experience having strangers stay in our home and it has led to some long overdue repairs and much decluttering. As for the latter we are getting excellent decluttering advice from the book ‘Let It Go’ by Peter Walsh (no, we didn’t find Konmari’s approach as helpful).

And so this is where we are now – the upstairs bathroom is empty (and therefore out of order) except for the bathtub. Carpenters, plumbers, painters and floor sanders are lined up, we hope, in the right succession. With this we are finally turning a bathroom with distinct 50s features (Kelly green trim, severely rusted pipes, leaks, rusted sink, plug-prone toilet) into a 21st century bathroom that is code compliant and has a fresh new look.