November 2, 2025

When I say that I learned my lesson, well, there can be a mismatch between me and the surrounding world. Sometimes it has demands. Still, I don’t think I need to do a day-by-day rundown this week. These are some highlights instead to mix things up:

We had a friend visit last weekend and another friend joined us for brunch, and we had a classic New England fall day. We went for a short hike in the woods, which were still bright with color. I love the sound of leaves shushing and crunching underfoot. I haven't been spending as much time outside lately, and it makes such a difference. The days are shorter, I don't like being cold, and I don't like being bundled up in layers, so I build up this mental block against going outside, but once I'm there, it's like: Oh yeah! This is nice. And it was a particularly lovely fall day.
Afterward, we headed to a nearby orchard for cider doughnuts, apples, cider, and pie.
When we got home, we lit our first fire of the season and lounged around the living room with books. We made roasted acorn squash that was stuffed with sausage and apples from the orchard and had mulled cider afterwards.
I binge read one evening — en entire book cover to cover, which I haven’t done in a while. I stayed up way too late and had regrets but also needed the down time.

(Note to self: I’ve been staying up too late on too many nights so that I can have some time for myself. I need to figure out how to get my own time without doing this… do fewer things in a day? I don’t know if my schedule will permit that right now? I’m sacrificing sleep for quiet time, and that also isn’t sustainable.)

I’ve been watching some soccer with the kid. I also watched the final soccer practice of the season and had fun with the parents on the sidelines at their penultimate game.
We had a power failure that lasted over 12 hours, and while that was stressful and threw off my weekend schedule (instead of going grocery shopping as planned, I was trying to figure out our food situation — would we lose everything in the fridge and freezer? What could we eat when we have an electric stove? How could I disable the garage door opener to leave if necessary?), the morning that power was supposed to be returned, we cuddled under the blankets and read. The absolute quiet except for a neighbor’s generator was really nice.