Stir Crazy

After a Saturday of near constant rain but milder temps, I was going a little bonkers being indoors.  Truth be told, I think I was having one of those winter funk days where nothing felt right, I just wanted to be somewhere else, and everyone around me was desperately annoying. I even climbed back into bed midmorning and actually got left alone for a change while the girls played and Nacho manned the drink/snack/playdoh-opening stations. It was almost enough to lift the dark cloud.  But still it lingered and the girls being cooped up all day was not helping either.  So by nightfall, I was looking forward to a long sleep and a Sunday full of activity.  But even as we woke and ate breakfast on a clearer day, I wasn't feeling jazzed.  As we slowly got dressed, I could hear the strong winds blowing outside, and for a few minutes thought it might be a nonstarter.  I didn't really know what we were going to do. Elisa asked if we might go to "a park in Manhattan," and I didn't have a reason not to.  Yes, maybe a little visit to the Central Park petting zoo would cheer us up, and we could walk and visit the playground behind it afterwards.  It wasn't city living gold, but what's the saying? "Perfection is the enemy of good." All I needed was good that day. It would do just fine...

We managed to bump into some friends from the neighborhood as we made it to the zoo and that was a nice surprise. But the girls were already showing signs of hunger and crankiness before we'd started, so we hurried through to see the seals and snow monkeys before grabbing a bit of lunch. It wasn't in my plan to sit and get them overpriced hot dogs at the zoo, but it was a necessary evil which bought us more time to enjoy the park afterwards. And really, they did great sitting and eating, and for the first time in a long time, I found myself really relaxing on an outing. Not just surviving it, but finding humor and really engaging them.  Maybe because we never really had a goal for the day, I finally felt at peace. And the weekend that started off so shitty was actually getting better. I suppose we can't always have great days, or even good ones, but sometimes finding a little happiness in the ordinary is all you need. It worked for me on Sunday, and I plan to make it a habit.