To the Gym With Me

My little one seems to wants to go the gym in the morning and though I drove her and I over one day last week, I vowed that going forward we’d need to get her sister’s bike fixed.  She had one as well, but her sister left it at school for months on end last year till one day it was gone.  And yesterday, with a bit of cajoling and one-hundred-and-fifty RMB for two new inner-tubes, bike was fixed and biked back home. 

This afternoon I managed to talk my older one into biking over to the gym with me.  What a nice day we had.  It won’t last long, but for now its lovely and I didn’t mind the smell of the canal and the civilizationally-challenged drivers, or my beat-up old iPhone that won’t allow me to take pictures change song or open just about any app without pressing on the glass repeatedly, it was wonderful to just bike along with her, sharing the ride I usually bike through by myself.

I got up late this morning.  It had been a more spirited evening than I recalled as I considered the drag on my verticality, trying to get up and out of bed and recalled the various beverages imbibed at different stages of the evening.   One Advil and large bottle of San Pellegrino helped.  But I was still tired.  So, I brought my novel “The Time of White Horses”, read a few pages and drifted back to sleep where the dream involved a mall where the wrong turn from the car park led to an international customs exit, and this wasn’t what I was looking for. 

Wife just returned home.  Sun’s just gone down.  She had two bags of groceries, which I suppose we always need, though there shouldn’t be much need to cook much this evening.  The refrigerator is bursting with leftovers.  She did some lovely work in her garden today.   I snapped some photos when I got back from our excursion to the gym. 

I took some time to write a long letter to a dear friend before my daughter and I biked to the gym.  He is perhaps the best letter writer I know.  And I can’t write him texts and emoticons back.  But you need time and a sense of clarity to write like that.  I woke this morning to see a letter of his in my Inbox.  Disarmingly lucid, informative, loving, I was very glad to have nothing better to do today than fold the pillow on my chair, fill another glass of San Pellegrino and sketch out an appropriate reply. 

Sunday 4/14/19