February 11, 2013: The New Normal??

My kitchen just the way I like it...prepping for dinner

After a whirlwind three weeks with my new venture and Irish friends in town, I drove home last week breathing a sigh of relief. "Back to life as normal...for a while," was the comforting thought on my mind. As I thought through the boys playing on the tramp in the backyard and a dinner of steak and baked potatoes on the grill, I sighed again. Normalcy.

Then as I thought about the days to come into decompression mode, I rethought my idea of normal. Life back to normal? What's that? My normal of today is light years different from my normal of ten years ago. I would never have dreamt ten years prior that my idea of normal life would include every other weekends with my kids, a career change, and a boyfriend in Denver. But it sure feels normal now.

Maybe normal = comfortable in my world. And I would say that my new life routine has become very comfortable to me. The basic "normals" of cooking a dinner to enjoy together at the table, the sound of kids playing in the back yard, and thought of the piano humming tunes later on are the standard secret ingredients that tie it all together. Add in a phone call from my man from Denver to finish my day. Normal. Comfortable. Definitely.

Tomorrow I will add my 5:30 a.m. run with long-time friends. The thought of all this comfortableness is pure bliss. When we run from Harvey Oaks, we see the same elderly lady walking her morning route as well. She always greets us cheerily as we meet on the trail. Our routines collide frequently.

Today I passed her walking her route in the wee hours as I drove home from dropping Garrett off at the airport. I started thinking about her normal routine; which obviously included this morning walk. What did normal mean to her? What else filled her comfortable days? Perhaps a cat to be fed when she got home. Community service and then bridge in the afternoon? Dinner after Jeopardy? Hmmmm...who knows...maybe she has a boyfriend in Denver too.