bald eagle

This weekend passed in a dreamy haze.

We keep having (minor) bad things happen, then discovering that the bad seems to have sparked something good. Case in point: on Friday night, Kevin herded the dogs down to the basement to crate them. DJ ran ahead and somehow, somewhy, and completely out of character, peed on the futon we’d literally just moved down there from our bedroom (because we got a new bed! YAY!). In cleaning up the mess, we discovered that the futon was in dismal shape, and then we did the math. Purchased in 1996. Okay, that makes it ten — no, wait — almost twenty years old! GAH!

Clearly time for a change. Last weekend, we bought our new bed from a futon store uptown: the plainest, sparest bed you can imagine. So we’d already priced out (and knew we could afford) a similarly plain futon and frame for the basement, to use as a guest bed. Kevin bought it and put it together on Saturday afternoon.

And just in time.

That very same afternoon we learned that a family member needed a place to stay temporarily — and we could offer our brand new futon. It seemed providential, an old-fashioned word that wants using from time to time.

I feel the same way about the bed bugs, another bad thing that set into motion all sorts of good things: clearing our bedroom of years of clutter, and finally painting the room, which spread to other painting projects around the house. I spent this weekend setting our bedroom back up again, so that we no longer feel like we’re camping.

Kevin cleared the basement of much clutter, too.

We’re ready for guests. The house feels like it’s being steadily cleared of excess, stripped down to the basics, an orderly, comfortable home, even if the order is disguised beneath dog hair and art supplies and sports equipment. (Why must we keep two skateboards in the living-room, and a scooter in the front hall?)

There wasn’t much time for relaxation this weekend, but I squeezed in two long walk/runs on this serene path you see above, both afternoons, during AppleApple’s soccer tryouts. I miss the high of pure running, but walking has its benefits: you see more detail, you can meet a friend and walk together, and you can pause to look up in awe at a bald eagle in a bare tree that you might not have noticed if you were travelling through, apace.