We don’t get out much anymore. That was so plainly evident today that it turned out to be both laughable—and my silver lining.
I sometimes feel quite badly for Spanish daughter number three. This year has turned out to be very different than the normal exchange student experience. She is wonderfully calm and accepting about it, and she never complains about all that she “should” be able to do. Instead, she just rolls with it.
Today, she decided that she’d like to join me on a sunrise hike. This is huge for a Spanish person, by the way; it seems that the entire country believes that greeting the world before, oh, say, 7 AM is just “not normal.” Since it’s early June—and it is at least 15 minutes of walking through the woods to get up the hill in order to get to our favorite vantage spot—I told her we really need to leave by about 4.45. She still insisted she wanted to go, and indeed, she did get up.
It turns out that today was (as I had warned her) completely fogged in. So much for the sunrise. “Another day, Jill!” she stated without a bit of regret.
She joined me on the weekly trip to the grocery store. I made our outing even more “exciting”: I put gas in the car. Then, I upped the ante even more, and I bought a carwash.
Turns out that Spanish daughter number three LOVES the automated carwash; she says she always has. She even decided it was one of her “two good things of the day”, just because it was fun and made her happy.
And really, who can argue with going through life with this sort of an attitude? Under “normal times,” I am quite sure we would not have had this special moment today. One more silver lining found… at the carwash, of all places!