Spring in Montana is like a wizard it “is never late. Nor is it early; it arrives precisely when it means to.”
If you had asked me yesterday, I would have said Spring had come to Montana. It was a beautiful, sunny 50-degree day. Perfect for a long, long walk.
But when I woke up this morning, it was once again sunny and for a third time this week, we had inches of new snow.
New fluffy snow and bright sun. This is winter in Montana, at least on the east side of the Rocky Mountians.
The first day of Spring brought snow and cold. And the second brought sun and warmth. The third seems to be some combination: it is sunny, snowy, but not warm. I am grateful that spring seems to be making at least brief appearances. But winter has yet to release us from its icy grasp.
Creek is flowing and the ducks are quacking. It sure feels like spring!
My doctor prescribed exercise on Monday as part of the plan to deal with my weeks-long headache. (Her orders also included reducing stress, so that should be easy considering the current state of affairs.)
As directed, I have started walking every day, couple-three times a day if I am honest. We are trying to stay home, away from everyone else, like most people are during the pandemic. But walking and running are both socially distant activities so that I still do those at least!
And one of the things I am trying to do as I walk is to find something interesting, or at least pretty, and capture it to share.
Social distancing approved interaction. Meet Horse, I am sure he has a name but I don’t know it, I say hello to him every morning all the same.
Fortunately for me, I have a few companions during my wondering. Steve and I go out after lunch and in the evening I take the pups out for a nice long “smell tour of the neighborhood”. Mostly our short-legged pups like to play in the snow. No roadside snowbank is safe from the corgi snow seal and the basset super sniffer.
Lassie and Apollo are loving the snow!
I love it. Walking and being out in the fresh air has been wonderful. I am glad of the break during the days working from home. And I am feeling remarkable better.
There are a few things in this world that I truly enjoy and some have honestly improved my life. I imagine I will look back at these things years from now and wonder why but for now, here is a one of the things on the list of “Things I Love” (and more then some are not things at all).
Brand new Bullet Journal waiting to be set up.
Anyone who has interacted with me in person over the last few years has certainly noticed two things: I love technology and I hate paper! But I am always carrying a notebook with me. It seems contradictory and I suppose it is. In my perfect world, I would have to keep track of zero bits of paper. But since I don’t currently rule the world, my life is filled with paper. In my quest to minimize the pieces of paper I am responsible, for I have built myself a system to capture all of it in one place.
I have a notebook that I take with me everywhere, and in it, I write down all the notes I take ever. Meaning if I write it down it is in that notebook. No post-it notes or napkins for me. Nope, if it got written down it was in that notebook. It’s great because nothing gets lost it’s all in there.
This was my September 2019 Bullet Journal Page. I use colors to keep track of what an event is for (or whose event it is). The right side is a habit tracker and I am still not great at that.
The other benefit is that it helps me plan my life on paper and on purpose every month. When I am using it well, I lay out the month ahead of time, including all my scheduled events, meetings, and deadlines, then I record events and details as the month proceeds. It works well even if I get started a little late in the month. I keep a Google Calander that I love but there is something about taking the time to record what is happening during each week and seeing it all written out that I have found helpful and it gives me more than a little peace of mind. I think it helps because it ensures I have not overlooked anything vital because I wrote it all down.
It is more than just planning my life but documenting too. I try to write down things I was proud of each day and I keep track of what I am most grateful for, which is mostly one handsome fella and two ridiculous dogs.
This is my last BUJO, retired in January 2020. I kept it in that bag on the right, mostly to keep it clean and undamaged by its rough life in my bag. Steve made me that basset sticker for the back and corgi for the front.
I am not particularly crafty and I get very little enjoyment from drawing. (Sorry, Coach it still just feels like work to me.) But this notebook has also a way to capture my life. I stick little in bits of paper ticket stubs, stickers, brochures and event flyers inside sometimes. I kept the name card from our Christmas party because I had never seen my name look prettier than it did written out in perfect silver script on a tiny piece of folded paper. I use pens of different colors to keep me organized and just for fun. And recently, I have started writing a quote as a theme of sorts for each month. Hamilton is my inspiration for this year.
One of the surprising things I have used this notebook for over the past year is for taking notes in small meetings. I type significantly faster than I write and for all of my adult life I have taken my notes digitally. I always use a tablet and keyboard for note-taking but I have found that in a small meeting, say less than 5 people, that using a keyboard isn’t particularly comfortable. I can talk and type or listen and type without any trouble. But I have found that people wait for me to finish clicking away before they continue their thought. And I hate that. So I decided to put away my keyboard and drag out my notebook and a pen. And now, no one stops talking when I jot something down.
This was my first Bullet Journal and I found this pen case that attached to the outside. I loved this set up!
I have no real proof, but I think that subtracting the screen between us has improved my relationships with people as well. They just talk to me with more ease when I have my notebook instead of my tablet and keyboard. And for me, it is worth it to take a little extra time to digitize my notes and tasks after the meeting if not having a screen makes our meetings better.
So if you are intrigued by my love of a notebook and bullet journaling system I encourage you to look into it, YouTube is great for tutorials and Instagram is good for the pretty examples (as it usually is for most things). I would suggest starting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm15cmYU0IM and also here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkZEEQG6IVE.
I love to travel. I have flown more in the last 20 days than I have in the past 3 years. And for the record, I have been on a plane at least once each of those years. So after more days on the road in the last month than I have spent at home, its time to reflect.
The airport in Munich made me want to explore Germany for longer then just a layover.
I have been asked a dozen or more times over the past week what I liked best in Spain and France. I have said lots of things, I love the food, I loved the city, I loved the people and the culture. But I think if I am really honest the thing I like best was the “going”. The new and unseen. I am not the first to walk a street, of course, but it is a first for me. I love the first dozen times I walk down a street. I love to see an ancient altar in a church built hundreds of years before my hometown had streets. I love the common things, that are mundane to a local because it is entirely new and different for me. I love the people. How they ride the train and shop in the local market.
This was the sun setting on our adventure in Paris!
“There is nothing new under the sun.” It’s a quote I want to say I love, but if I am honest, I hate it. It is silly really, there are new ideas and thoughts every day. But that is not why the quote earns my ire. There are so many things that are new to me. And I love that.
This is Paris! This was our station Metro and for me, this picture is exactly how I will remember the city. It was beautiful for no other reason than because it could be.
I like to write while on long trips. I keep a little journal documenting the things I did and the places I saw. I fill it with all the paper pieces of the trip, tickets, maps, and brochures. I carry it with me. From one place to the next, churches, cafes and along the sea. But I mostly write at the end of the day, sitting on the couch or my bed and early in the morning wrapped around a coffee at the table.
I love the perspective. I love that every day is so important that is seems intolerable to let it pass without capturing at least something on paper.
I love the sea. There was a terrible storm the day before we landed in Barcelona. The damage was extensive but I did find a place to at least put my feet in.
It changes me every time I travel. Leaving home for more than a few days, especially when the going is sole purpose is to travel, to be somewhere else. I find things, small things, that are done differently elsewhere. I pick up some of those things because they are better or maybe just better for me. The way I write the date, how I ride a train, brew coffee, or dry cloths.
Sacré-Cœur Basilica is high on a hill in Paris but this little tram will take you up if your feet are too tired from your exploration to make the climb, ours certainly were.
Travel is perfectly selfish and the benefit is entirely personal. It is more important then what I saw and touched and all the new tastes. It’s about letting it change me. Returning home better, even if only I notice the difference.
I fully intended this post to be all about our whirlwind 52 hour trip to Paris, (and I still intend to write about Paris) but our first day in Barcelona begs to be recorded first. We arrived in Spain on an uneventful flight on a rather interesting airline during a thunderstorm on Wednesday evening.
We took a taxi to our Airbnb, an apartment a few blocks from the beach in the Northeast neighborhood of Poblenou. It is a beautiful apartment and perfect for our week here in Barcelona. Steve paid our driver and we settled into our place. We left Paris before dinner and because it was late we planned to have Ubereats deliver something when we arrived. After very little debate we decided on Greek food, and of course, that would surprise no one who knows us.
And here is where our story gets interesting. After only an hour in Barcelona, Steve could not find his wallet. It took only moments to turn out every pocket and empty our backpacks (the only bags we carried onto the flight) before we realized the wallet was gone. Panic truly began to set in after I scoured the hallway and rode the pitch-black elevator down to street level. A search of the street and sidewalk turned up nothing; the entryway was empty. I stood in the cool dim ground level hallway (in Spain and France and many other places I am sure, the first floor is one floor up and what I would call the first floor is street level or ground floor), resigned to the fact that the wallet was gone. Which in and of itself would not have been so bad but when we emptied the safe in our Paris hotel we put all our debit cards to all three accounts into that wallet, Steve’s passport card (you know, so he would not have to risk carrying his passport booklet around the pickpocket capital of Europe), and several hundred Euros in cash, which was most of our cash.
By the time I got back to our apartment, hopes dashed, Steve had researched every pocket – bag, jacket, pants, and every little pile of stuff that had formerly occupied those pockets. A call to the cab driver was a logical next step and he checked the with the cab – no wallet. So we decided to check the hall and street outside together. There was a drizzle of rain as we searched the sidewalk, gutter, and street but still no wallet.
Once we were sure the wallet was gone, we were unsure for a moment of our next step, it was late we were exhausted, the only thing we were sure of was that this was bad. And now all we could do was control the damage.
Our first bit of luck came then: while it was late in Barcelona, it was early afternoon in Montana and calling our local bank was simple. I explained our situation and Steve piped in that he wasn’t ready to give up the wallet as lost. At that, the banker checked our accounts and found no additional purchases after the cab fee. She suggested we put a hold on those cards, just in case they turned up. We did the same for the other bank’s debit cards – who knew you could do that online?! Steve started to navigate the labyrinth of the embassy and consulate websites to deal with his lost passport. After what felt like hours, we went to bed frustrated.
Steve emailed the consulate the next morning, hoping to get clarification about reporting his passport lost. Could he report just the passport card missing without invalidating his passport booklet? (The answer to that question, by the way, is no.) While he did that, I discovered that the best part about staying in an Airbnb as opposed to a hotel is the ability to cook, or specifically, in this case, make coffee without leaving our room.
We set off to find a bank and a grocery store with the one and only debit card we had between us. Caffeinated, we were ready to put yesterday’s frustration behind us. We found everything we needing a few blocks from our apartment and made our way back with three bags of groceries (that includes soda). As always happens when you reconnect to the WiFi after being disconnected for any length of time, we had a few notifications when we got back. We let them sound off while we put our groceries in the fridge and pantry cupboard. Steve settled in to check his phone while I cooked us a late breakfast, and I say cooked but I mean heated up the oven to cook a frozen pizza.
“Holy crap,” Steve leapt from the sofa grinning, “HOLY CRAP!”
And then he just stood there for a breathe, with me staring at him, a paper towel wrapper in my hand hovering over the trash can.
“Somebody found my wallet.” He explained that someone had contacted the consulate to say that they had found his wallet. “We need to go and pick it up.”
The pizza timer went off just then, “I guess we can eat first but we need to hurry,” he said smiling in earnest now.
Pizza in Spain is good – even the grocery store brand – and luckily it is thin crust and cools quickly, so eating it quickly is easier than say, a Chicago deep dish.
We walked down a few blocks to a busy street to hail a taxi, I have a spotty track record with hailing taxis so I let Steve handle that. And he did it beautifully, his Spanish was flawless and he chatted with the driver as we sped down Avenida Diagonal. As the buildings zipped by, I was in awe. the architecture was stunning and the shops were interesting. I love new places and this is why – everything is different but it all works the same. People work, and play and live and they do all of those things everywhere and their homes look different but we all need clothes and shoes and bread and buildings to live in. I love how we do all of those similar things so differently around the world.
In my distraction watching the city fly by my window, I entirely missed what our driver was saying about how to get to where we needed to go to retrieve Steve’s wallet. I gathered it was across the street from where he was dropping us off but that was it. Luckily, Steve speaks Spanish, and a little Catalan by this point, so he is confident that he can get us to the office we needed to go to.
Across the street, we went and looking up to find the numbers on the building and between a coffee shop and shop selling fine men’s suits, we found the Art Deco style glass door that would lead us to our query. In an elegant wooden elevator, the kind that is open not a metal box like I’m use to, we clicked up to the fourth floor. We followed the small signs to an office and were greeted by a receptionist who knew why we had come before we even spoke.
“Ah, Steven, your wallet!” She said as she retrieved it from a desk drawer. Steve thanked her profusely as she explained that the man who found it was in court today and would not be able to speak with us. With a smile, she wished us a safe and pleasant holiday and we were off again.
We took the stairs down. They wound around the elevators, there were two elevators one for people and one for deliveries, boxing it in on three sides with a landing on the fourth. As we went Steve hesitated just a moment, he had said before we arrived that he would be satisfied if just his passport was still inside. With a bracing breath, he opened the wallet. Inside there was his passport and one, two, three credit cards and in the center, cash. It was all still there. In the end, nothing was lost and we gained a rather unusual adventure.
Much to my surprise, I found a tear pricking the corner of my eyes as were reached the bottom of the stairs. I am fond of saying kindness is free and today it seems I have a bit to add: kindness is free and it’s priceless.
