all walls are great if the roof doesn't fall

There have been some lazy weekend days, some busy volunteer days, and here in the centre of the week both my children are home sick with colds -- not entirely to my surprise, they have had various symptoms over the last days, but always at a level they could ignore, no fevers or other reasons to keep them home, but this morning seeing them so exhausted and both coughing I decided enough was enough. I almost always feel a little guilt when I keep them home without fevers or upset stomachs, since there is certainly an aspect of my own pleasure in it -- I enjoy them, I enjoy being home with them, I enjoy lazy days when we are all in our pajamas keeping our own schedules -- but I think in the case of today it is well justified, and hopefully the day of rest will strengthen them to get back to school tomorrow and finish out their week.

The weather here has been strange and beautiful; we had enough cold along with rain to have snow on our hills, both the inland hills where I have once or twice in the last twenty-four years of living here seen snow, but also on the hills (small mountains?) between here and the ocean, where I have never seen it before. The inland hills turn shades of brown and gold by May or June or so, but when the rains come each year (if they do) they become brilliant bright green that makes me think of photographs of Ireland, and yesterday they were this green with crowns of white that almost looked like low clouds until the sun broke through and made them glow. I took picture after picture standing outside my house looking out at them, but I do not think any did them justice; if any did I will perhaps upload them here, later on. As for the ocean hills, they are covered in trees, redwoods and many others, and are all times of year a beautiful dark green/blue/black, but yesterday they shifted to grays about halfway up, trees heavy with the snow, and the actual mountain we can see from our home (it has a name so I suppose it is a mountain rather than just a hill) snow-covered, all its bones limned by the white. These I could not get pictures of, I only saw them driving, so I hold it in my mind, the utter strangeness of seeing the hills pale gray instead of dark.

I like where I live very much, despite the strange seasons where the green is winter and the brown is summer and there is hardly any autumn until November and then never enough for me, and I feel lucky that the house I am in which I hope will eventually belong to my children -- a generation home, I think it is called -- is here on the edge of things, such that all the amenities of a sprawling city are nearby, shopping and restaurants I can walk to just a few blocks away, and yet turn the opposite direction and it is all hills and parks and sky. I drove south on Monday evening to meet new people (a post in itself, it was nerve-wracking and strange and largely enjoyable) and took a surface street instead of the freeway and had a breath-taking moment as I drove where the streetlights and strip malls and little lights of houses faded out and I went up a hill and was suddenly driving through what, in my childhood, we called "the country" -- it was night and lightly raining and there was nothing to be seen, no lights, not even the shapes of trees or buildings, just darkness and the road and no other cars for a few miles. If I drive it again it will be a little more familiar, or there will be traffic and thus the lights of cars, or a clear sky and moonlight -- but that first time it was pure adventure, just myself as the car and trying to keep the shape of the road and trusting that eventually it would come out into town again so I could go to the house where I was trying to go. I am feeling strongly just now how much rhythm and routine my life has, that a drive on a new road at night is of such notice, but I think I am more pleased than not; I like to be able to see and feel the small things.