Kolo kolo mlynsky :::

Will’s on a business trip to France right now. Ah Paris! Apparently he is living off bready products (pan chocolate and crepes) and cafes au lait. He may try for some escargot this evening to work in a little protein. As for us, I’m actually enjoying myself, this first day. For one thing I’ve already talked to Will by phone twice, something we never do in Prague where everything is sms and telegraph emails – home by six any food ideas stop. And I’ve had a lot of time to really focus on C too. We played ball in the hall, sorted cups and read books, then when she took her swim break (definitely Caroline’s favorite part of the day) I exercised – amusing her by jogging in place and doing sit ups and push ups on the bathroom floor, helped along by a cushy exercise mat.* It’s my new time saving concept and certainly beats trying to read while sitting next to a small, active and wet water wheel.

There’s something oddly liberating about having your time be your own, even with a two year old in tow. I could time dinner for 5:30, race against the clock to clean the dishes (8 minutes!), play games for twenty minutes, read books for ten, extend bath time to just before the finger wrinkle point. It reminded me of the first time I stayed in an apartment alone during summer break in college. I was so thrilled to be living somewhere all by myself, with no roommates, no classes or anything to go to, in fact no responsibilities at all for three days.

The first thing I did was to completely clean and organize the flat. I’m not usually that neat a person, but it tickled me to know that I could clean up once and have it still clean thirty minutes later. I did the same thing with time – picking an hour where I’d just work on Spanish, 30 minutes for reading a magazine, 2 hours for violin. Of course, I started to get a bit lonely after two days and by the third I was talking to strangers on the street, but I remember that head whirling freedom and my puzzlement over why having so much control over my time and space made me feel so free.

* Where ideas are born: one of the reasons for my long hiatus away from the blog was that I had food poisoning last week and only now have started feeling up to snuff again. During the worst bit I spent half the night on the bathroom floor (and the other half snuggled up against the toilet seat). Midway through that night I had a brainstorm and grabbed an exercise mat from our closet, and found out just how much more comfortable tile can be with an inch of industrial strength foam between it and you. It seemed such a good idea, and rather a shame to waste on one evening of activity, so I decided to try it out for C bathtimes too.