It was one of those amazing winter mornings with the glistening snow clinging to the trees but roads clear enough that driving was no problem. The sun rising behind clouds of ice crystals making the sky a slow gradient of pastels of blue and pink. I was in bed at ten last night and that meant that I was up very early this morning. I woke up on my own at ten till five. I would have stayed in bed longer but my back was soar, the bed being quite soft being as old as it is, so that encouraged me to get up and get moving on the day.
I was out the door before six thirty, the earliest that I have gone into the office yet from Peekskill. The drive was very nice, the first part being in the dark but the sun coming up by the time that I got to Katonah.
As I came through Yorktown this morning I noticed that the Yorktown Diner, which I have been watching get built out for the last several weeks, was finally open today so I swung in as I was going by. There was no one there, I was the only customer. The owner said that they actually opened on Friday – but I was pretty busy that day so it is not surprising that I did not notice it. I got an egg and cheese on a hardroll and coffee. This is where being back in New York is awesome. Breakfast came to just $2.95 after tax. You aren’t going to find that in Texas. And breakfast was delicious. The deli is Mediterranean and loaded with awesome vegetarian options. Dominica is going to be thrilled since I can easily stop here on my way home and deliver dinner. Cheap and so convenient. They open at six and close at eight. So I can pretty easily hit them heading into or home from the office.
I got to the office at a quarter till eight. It is a bright, crisp morning and we are supposed to see it get pretty nice later in the week hitting the mid-forties by Wednesday or Thursday. We are hoping for good weather this weekend as we are driving out to Ohio on Friday evening after work for my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday party on Saturday.
Getting in to the office really early is nice. So much time to get caught up and be ready before the day really begins. Always strange, though, to be at work as much as two hours before the family even wakes up.
Dominica has to run back to Sears today to deal with the broken tire pressure sensor and to do some grocery shopping while she is out.
Today was a major potty training day for Luciana. Dominica had her on the potty nearly all day and she did amazingly well. Not only is her potty training coming along well but it appears to be fixing her constipation too. She had an extremely “successful” day while I was at work.
I got to leave at a good time today and was home not long after seven. Luciana was still trying to use the potty when I got home but gave up for the night. She was the happiest little girl that I can remember in a very long time tonight. The potty training is really helping her. This was the first night that I can remember in four months or more that wasn’t continuously interrupted every ten to twenty minutes by her running away and standing in a corner and with a pained voice saying “I’m pooping” and then “No, go away!” She was nothing but bubbly and energetic and as sweet and happy as could be the entire evening. Her old self again.
Dominica went out shopping around eight. She had to hit Kohl’s and get a carpet spot cleaner because, well, we are potty training and there is much to clean. And the girls have just made a mess of the carpets in general, yoghurt especially has been a huge problem. Our plan is to buy another Roomba, because we have been so happy with our current one, and forego a normal vacuum cleaner. Running a Roomba all of the time just works so well. We want to have one upstairs and one downstairs and split between them doing the main floor until we take out all of the carpeting and make it into laminate. Then we won’t need a Roomba there, normally.
Then Dominica went grocery shopping. She was gone all evening. Luciana requested that we watch Doctor Who together. Liesl decided that she just wanted to play her new Princess game on her Nintendo 2DS but she conceded to do so in the basement with her sister and me. So she sat on one side of the couch and I on the other with Luciana in my lap all evening. We watched two episodes of the fourth season of Doctor Who with Dominica returning home from her shopping with only about ten minutes left in the second episode.
We got the girls to bed right away, Dominica put them to bed tonight and read their bedtime stories while I did some emergency floor cleaning with the new spot cleaner. Luciana’s favourite story is still “Pete’s a Pizza” but a close second has become “Head to Toe.” When we read “Head to Toe”, both girls jump out of bed and go through all of the actions as we read the story. They are so adorable.
I then went straight to bed. The rumor is is that there is going to be a snow storm early in the morning, starting around five and going all day, so I want to get up very early and get on the road to attempt to avoid it. So I was in bed around ten thirty. Dominica stayed up for another two hours and made sure that the fire in the fireplace was out before coming to bed. She was not tired at all, having been out shopping.