Morning, Peeps.  Happy new week, happy Easter Monday, and happy Passover to those celebrating.  How were your weekends?  Ours was pretty much as usual in these weird times.  Saturday was a big day – are you ready for this?  I left the house three times.  Can you even believe it?  I went (1) to the grocery store; (2) for a family hike at a nearby nature preserve; and (3) for an afternoon run.  Look at me go!  The rest of the day was spent bumming around, not doing much of anything – par for the course, these days.  Sunday was Easter and we started it in our usual fashion – the kids went tearing downstairs and spent approximately 30 seconds ripping apart the baskets that I painstakingly assembled on Saturday night.  What was different?  We didn’t dress up, go to church, or do the Easter egg hunt in the churchyard.  (Of course, I missed the egg hunt last year too, because a certain child – name withheld to protect the guilty – had a tantrum in church and had to be dragged home screaming, good times.)  The rest of the day was more of the same stuff as usual – we got out for a family walk to the waterfront, where Peanut parked in the grass and read to us out of her new unicorn book (courtesy of the Easter Bunny, a.k.a. ME) and Nugget ran around like a maniac to work off his excess energy.  They both crashed early, and so did I.

Reading.  I am having a hard time focusing, still, although the books were good this week.  I spent nearly the whole week with Elizabeth von Arnim – first enjoying The Solitary Summer in Elizabeth’s German garden, and then traveling by her side through The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen.  (Pretend there’s an umlaut over the “u.”)  Loved both, and the Rugen hijinks were hilarious, but it was in The Solitary Summer that I ended up marking passage after passage with book darts.  Anyway – all good things must come to an end, and I finished the Elizabeth trilogy on Saturday afternoon and pulled The Man in the Queue off my dwindling library stack.  I’m enjoying it, but am still having a hard time settling down to any book.  I blame the COVID Scaries.

Watching.  We’ve watched a couple more episodes of The Crown and I’m definitely liking it (and glad to report that Philip seems more tolerable this season, hurrah) but I’ve been in the mood for something lighter recently, so we’re also working our way through some of the Rock the Park episodes that we’ve not yet seen.  And now I’m planning a trip to Alaska, just as soon as… well, sometime.

Listening.  Podcasts, mostly while running.  I’ve polished off the Crunchy Cocktail Hour backlog I had piled up, and now I’m bouncing from here to there.  The highlight was an old episode of Those Park Guys Podcast, in which Jack, Colton and Tommy discussed their memories from the first five seasons of Rock the Park.  Currently in the earbuds is the “stuck in a rut” episode of Those Park Guys, which seems appropriate right now.

Making.  Mmmmm, not too much this week, actually.  There was no baking this weekend and we are mainly working our way through leftovers and pre-prepped vegetables, so very little cooking.  But I did put together a vegetarian shepherd’s pie for Easter dinner, alongside a pile of steamed broccoli – hit the spot.

Moving.  Lots this week!  I’m working my way through the “Love the Run You’re With” sixteen-week program from Another Mother Runner, and last week was week #1 in the virtual series.  I switched the days around a little, because I had such a busy workday on Tuesday that I wasn’t able to get out for the prescribed run – but since Wednesday was entered as a rest day, I just swapped them around and made Tuesday my rest day instead.  So the week looked like this:

• Monday: Run.
• Tuesday: Rest.
• Wednesday: Run.
• Thursday: Run.
• Friday: Cross-training (I did barre3, which I love).
• Saturday: Run (and I hiked, too).
• Sunday: Rest (went for a family walk).

So that was quite the active week!  The program includes four virtual races; I haven’t decided on the specific combination of distances yet, but they all start with a 5K the weekend of April 25-26, so that’s something to look forward to.  I’m really enjoying having something to train for again; it’s been a long time since I (1) had a race on my calendar, and (2) actually made an effort to train for it.  It feels good.

Blogging.  Winter list recap coming up on Wednesday (spoiler alert: work was busy and I didn’t do much of my list) and another poem on Friday.  Check in with me then!

Loving.  I’ve been waiting five years for Nugget to really bond with one of his stuffed animals (he calls them “lovies” – awwww).  When Peanut was very small, she got into a committed relationship with a stuffed Peter Rabbit, and he’s still number one for her, but Nugget has never been a cuddly toy kind of guy.  When he was a baby, I was his comfort item, which was fun and wonderful but also exhausting after eighteen months of being summoned to his room multiple times a night.  Then there was a phase where he really loved his hard toys, and fell asleep every night for months with his arm draped around a recycled plastic fire truck.  But I’m pleased to report that finally, at five, Nugget has a best (stuffed) friend.  Meet Bear.  (Creative naming is not Nugget’s thing; for that, you want Peanut.)  The important thing to know about Bear is he is Nugget’s best friend and also his sibling, and he has to go everywhere with us.  We had a small crisis on Saturday when Bear fell into the couch and was missing for about 20 minutes.  But you should also know Bear’s history – by which I mean: how Bear came to be part of our family.  You see, you’ve heard of brown bears, black bears, grizzly bears, sloth bears – but have you heard of Squeak Bears?  Squeak Bears are very rare and they come from a beautiful land called Squeakalia, which is a mile off the coast of Antarctica.  (And now you know).  Nugget swam from Antarctica to Squeakalia; the experience was a prize he won after being the first student in his dive class to scuba explore every exhibit in the Baltimore Aquarium.  (Real news.)  And that is where he met Bear, and how Bear came to leave his home on Squeakalia and join our family.  Guys, I literally cannot get enough of Bear’s personal history.  I will sit on the couch for hours listening to tales of Squeakalia.

Asking.  Have you ever been to Squeakalia?  And what are you reading this week?