Life Talk, seasons, writing

April, May, Tulips, and Writing

I hope you all has a wonderful Easter! We did; my husband’s family came out for the weekend, and we thoroughly enjoyed spending time together, filling and hiding plastic eggs for the kids to hunt on Sunday after church, and eating all the food I could keep coming out of my kitchen. We were a surprisingly hungry bunch this weekend!

As much as I loved having family out, and visiting them in our turn, I must confess to a sneaking sense of relief and freedom as we enter the month of April. Why? Because we have NOTHING planned. No trips, no people coming out to see us, nothing. Just living.

Now, I have learned in the last almost-decade of my married life that this is usually when life decides to laugh heartily at our expense and whack us on the nose with a broomstick. So I’m fully expecting Things to Happen. Even so, I’m reveling in the illusion of freedom right now.

We can finally start following our schedule! I can finish sewing the kids’ spring clothes! I can get more writing done! We’ll be able to do more than two days of school in a week! I can keep practicing driving so as to be more comfortable behind the wheel by the time we move! Carl and I can work together on the weekends to sort, organize, and pack boxes so that I don’t get completely overwhelmed by it all the week before we move!

(I am so laughing at myself even as I type this. This is NOT going to happen.)

Also of excitement to me are two things happening in May (in the merry, merry month of May …). One: my mother is getting her Master’s! We’re going up north for her graduation ceremony, and THEN we’re going just a little further north to go to the Tulip Festival in Ottawa, Canada.

This was an excursion we made most years when I was a kid, and Carl and I have wanted to go up every year since we were dating, and never made it. This year I said since we were already going to be so close (my parents live just south of the US-Canada border) at the right time of year, we WERE going to go. And so we are making sure our passports are up to date and GOING. I can’t wait. The girls are going to be blown away by so many tulips in one place, and downtown Ottawa is always worth a visit even without the flowers. Hurrah!

The second thing will actually happen before the first (confused yet?). For Mother’s Day weekend, happening before my mom’s graduation, Carl is going to take the kids to visit his mom. Where will I be during this? I’m SO glad you asked. I will be having a couple days entirely to myself. Not Here. Not at home, surrounded by all the Things I need to do every day, mocking me whenever I take the time to write. Not at his mother’s, where I still have to be mommy and wife (and daughter-in-law) even though we aren’t home. They are going to drop me off somewhere between our house and his mother’s, and I will have a real-live solo writing retreat. It’s my (belated)birthday present/(current)Mother’s Day present/(future)keeping everything functioning while Carl’s in seminary present.

So, any recommendations for a good place to stay in the Berkshires or southern Vermont for a solo writing retreat with no car?

And how is April looking for you?

Ever been to the Tulip Festival in Ottawa?

Did you have a nice Easter?

(A picture from last spring, taken at a park here in our city. Now imagine that, plus thousands more. THAT’S what it will be like in Ottawa.)

0 thoughts on “April, May, Tulips, and Writing”

  1. Oh the Tulip Festival sounds amazing. I always wanted to go to the one in Holland, Michigan but I never got there. Have a great writing retreat!

  2. Wow — I'm a little jealous of the Tulip festival plans! I'm a big plant nerd, so I'd probably pass out in the face of so many flowers, haha. Congrats to your mom on her master's, and I hope you enjoy the writing retreat!

  3. I would love to see the tulips! They are my favorite flower, right up with roses! One of the reasons we've decided to wait until next year to go to PEI is because we want to see tulips there. I'm also jealous of the weekend alone and not at home! My one day I had alone I spent too tired to do anything fun really from being out the night before, and too busy thinking I needed to be doing things around the house.We don't have many plans for April and May just yet. We're just wanting everyone to be healthy first and foremost. This weekend we're having my mom come so she can watch L while we work in the front yard. Our flower bed needs cleaning out badly. Other than that, we just want to go to some baseball games and to see the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Crystal Bridges Museum while it's there.

  4. I've heard about the Michigan festival, but I've never been. Our city has a little mini-festival, which is fun, but nothing like the fields of tulips in Ottawa. I hope, hope, hope it's a good year for flowers this year!

  5. YES to getting healthy! We are all creeping back toward full health here, and our fingers are crossed that we STAY healthy. For a change.The idea for the writing retreat spurred from the fact that every time Carl takes the girls out of the house for a few hours, so I can write, they come home to find me either asleep in the recliner, or doing housework. We finally decided that if I want to have time for writing, it has to be OUT of the house. Which is what has spurred the Friday evening hour-long writing sessions at the library for me, and what eventually led to the idea of a writing retreat. The plans are still fluid, but it's looking promising for everything to work out.

  6. Oh, have so much fun on your solo writing retreat!!! And yay for having time! I know the feeling–March was SO insane here. We spent Easter weekend in Ohio for my brother's wedding–lots of going and going and fourteen hours in the car. It was fun, but I'm glad to be into April and have things slowing down a bit.That tulip festival sounds amazing–I hope you guys have a blast! 😀

  7. Fourteen hours? O brave soul! The last time we did a long road trip was five years ago, and I swore "never again" until our children are teenagers. *shudder*

  8. I will probably take and post more photos than anyone else could possibly care to see! It's a heaven-sent opportunity for an enthusiastic amateur photographer like myself.

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