Cloudy Monday Solo Skate Ski

After dropping the kids off at school, I started listening to my new hour-long skate ski playlist on my iPod. The first song was the Talking Heads' "Take Me to the River," and I let the song lead me to the end of my block and down to the river, though I declined to be washed in the water.

An army of small white clouds were marching resolutely to the east, where the sun weakly announced its rising. I resolutely begin skiing, determined to start out easy and last the whole hour. After a half hour the army of clouds was gone, and the sun shone with greater strength, causing the trees to cast long shadows across the snow. I pretended to be a groundhog seeing its shadow and predicting 8 more weeks of winter (because that is the kind of groundhog I was--a ski-deprived groundhog who wanted more weeks of frolicking in the snow).

I made almost two complete loops of the skate trail before my playlist ended. Gosh, I am slow. Oh well, I skied another ten minutes and headed home, ready to take another look at the "Warm Demander" article I'm working on with Amy Carpenter-Ford.

When I got home, Noko sniffed all that fresh air, woods, and river smell on me and looked at me with his large, sad eyes. Sorry, Noko, sometimes I need my solitude.