Long-Distance Love

While life is still a bit lonely on the home front, this time away from my darling hubby and daughters has a few advantages. Fewer people means fewer dishes and less laundry. Packing is much more effective without little helpers taking things out of boxes as quickly as I put them in. Granted, Eli still manages to undo a bit, but it's much easier to put something out of reach when the "someone" only stretches twelve inches off the ground.

The best perk yet, however, came as a lovely surprise from Jason--an e-mail! Handsome as he may be, I actually first fell in love with this dashing devil because of his writing, not his good looks. After an entire summer of his delectable e-mails, I was completely smitten. When Jason writes about the every day, you simply want to drink in life. Here's his account of day number one in Vermont:

We've had a very pleasant but lazy day here. Your mom slept with Brooklyn on one of the bottom bunks in the corner room last night, Talia slept on the other bottom bunk, and I slept on the bed that is tucked in the corner between the two windows. The night was quite cool and made for blissful sleeping. Talia crawled in bed with me around 5:30 or so (although my own phone battery has surrendered to the battery draining void of endless roaming, so I'm not exactly sure what time it was), and I drifted somewhere in between dreaming and awake for the next two hours.

It started raining early, and kept it up for most of the day. During one of the brief pauses, Grandpa and I went out to the boat (which supposedly is going to be put back in the lake tomorrow), took apart the steering cable bracket assembly, and mounted a "cable buddy", or large nut with a hole in one side through which one can inject lubricant, onto the tilt brace, or something like that. In essence, we stuck something onto some sort of piece in the thingamajigger, then squirted oil in it, and so now the boat will steer better. Theoretically. In any event, I got to tinker with tools for a while and get thoroughly messy so it was a definite success.

The girls and your mom and I played a rigorous round of Trouble before lunch, then we spent some good daddy-daughter time bonding while we each labored over our individual art projects. Apparently at some point the girls completed their masterpieces, because I was suddenly startled out of my artistic stupor by a thud, a bump, and a loud crash. Looking frantically around I realized that Brooklyn and Talia were no longer in the vicinity. I raced towards the source of noise and discovered a VERY broken lamp (as opposed to a mostly broken lamp) and two guilty looking girls. Don't tell anybody, but I think the breakage actually represented an improvement in the lamp's appearance. Perhaps the girls' very acute artistic sensibility had been offended by the thing and they decided it needed to go. And so it went, and Grandpa's cabin is no down one lamp. The lightbulb and lamp shade survived.

The death of the lamp prompted a change in activity, and we ambitiously tackled teaching Brooklyn and Talia how to play Monopoly. The real Monopoly. After about thirty minutes, Talia was thoroughly worn out and wandered off upstairs to take a nap. Brooklyn meanwhile had taken a sound lead. Her grasp of real estate trading and improvement is really quite sound; after another hour your mom and I threw in the towel, having both suffered a serious walloping at the hands of Brooklyn.

We then took a dip in the lake... or, at least Brooklyn and I did. The water was fairly warm, but the air was cool and the sun was spending its time in far-away St. George. Needless to say, I didn't last too long though Brooklyn probably would have stayed in until dark. I finally convinced her to trade in the lake for a few minutes in the hot tub, where I practiced getting used to the water jets in preparation for the move to our new house and jetted tub. Grandpa then proceeded to grill some very amazing salmon, which we devoured along with corn on the cob and steamed broccoli.

The girls have finally drifted off to sleep as I've been writing this. I tried reading them to sleep, but Talia kept asking "why?" over and over again, along with about a zillion other questions about what we were reading and every other related and non-related topic she could think of. I eventually threw my arms up in despair and went downstairs for a warm cookie that had just come out of the oven. When I came back up toting my laptop, the girls were once again creating artistic masterpieces, this time in my sketchbook. Fearing we were entering a viscous cycle and that the cabin would soon be missing yet another lamp, I decided it would be prudent for me to hang out with them in their room until they fell asleep. Which thankfully they have now done. Hopefully your reading this hasn't had the same soporific effect on you.

I love you. I miss you. I hope your frozen burritos and blueberry muffins were good. And that you cooked the burritos before eating them.

Your best friend forever.

(despicable?) Me

Well PB, your e-mail made me feel more euphoric than soporific. Sleep well, and dream of me.