To Live and Die in Picton,

What is a weekend? On Thursday, we drove out to Picton to visit father-in-law and his wife (had we really not been since July?), given Rose's fever had subsided, finally. She'd been Wednesday in bed passed out cold until early afternoon, and the remainder of the two days recovering. Once collecting Aoife from school, we made our way into the car (slowly) and over to Picton the three hours or so south, and then west along that Highway 401. We made a stop, but the young ladies wanted nothing to do with a selfie.

A weekend, in which I spent most of Friday moving through the full manuscript of "the green notebook," the journal/day-book I've been working on since last April. I'd always aimed for a calendar year, and its now more than two hundred pages, the first I've sat down with the full manuscript-to-date since last fall, I suspect. I think I'm pretty much finished adding entries, although there are some scattered notes still to find themselves at the end. I am working now to hone the thing into something publishable, finished. I had sent a draft of such out for potential publication back in January, but I'm not quite sure if I should see that process through, or start prodding at someone else, also. How best to approach? And I'm sure you've been watching as I've posted excerpts-in-progress over at my substack, naturally. There will probably be further along there for some time.

A weekend-ish away, in which father-in-law and his wife could take the young ladies to a bookstore, a movie; in which they could celebrate Aoife's recent ninth birthday (it had been a while since they'd seen our young ladies, so we knew that important). Of course, I aimed for at least part of a day with a mound of books, tackling a morning of notes towards potential reviews on Saturday, prior to our scheduled return home, given Rose's choir was performing on Sunday. So much that I've yet to get to, but a bunch of pages of rough notes, which I'll attempt to craft into reviews over the next week or two.

Aoife had fallen to a slight fever prior to Rose, but had felt better, neither of them slowing down until they finally began to, slowly, do exactly that. By Friday evening, both lapsing back into slight fevers, but a quiet morning before an Easter Egg Hunt, in North Port, a small village some twenty minutes or so drive north of Picton, some distance west of the south landing of the big scary bridge. The whole village and environs, it would seem, had landed, with dozens of cars lining the main road, with easily one hundred scattered children with baskets seeking treasure from the park and various yards. The whole town, and the fire department, with trucks and equipment and snacks and a mascot. And every child left there with a basket of plenty of somethings.

By mid-afternoon, everyone was low energy, home. Rose and Aoife with fevers, Christine and I with sore throats. Low moving, so Sunday was, what? Laundry, each of us in quiet corners. So, Rose's participation in her choir performance was cancelled. But Aoife and I did colour more than a dozen or so eggs, dye staining our fingers, nearly impossible to remove. Beyond that, I think I wrote some letters. Not much more.