An outdoorsy toddler, his mom and the gray days...

Pic by Luciano Brito

The days are short, the darkness long.
The mornings are a swirl of thick fog and chaos, indecision and yearning for the light. The afternoons a shade of gray, that shade of dull that creeps up when the sun plays truant and the mists threaten to roll in.
When sunny picnics in the garden are a memory to look back on and the toddler's pent up energy is frayed at the edges, grating on your nerves.
When a quick walk on the desolate roads is all you can nip out for. When you're counting down the hours to the end of the day.
The evenings? They pass in a haze of gloom, a gray footnote to an equally gray day.
Sunless days like this, with a toddler at home and a distant dream of 'me-time' on the burner, stretch like bubblegum overchewed to its stringy limits.


It's hard being a single parent. I'm not one, but I'm often in that role because of the nature of my husband's work.
It's difficult when the sun isn't shining its gold on you. When it's not melting the fog and the gloom away. When the days stretch ahead like another tedious chore.
When you have an outdoorsy toddler to entertain, and a stack of thick gray days to conjure up magic with. There's only so much of joy you can wring out of those kind of days. Only so much of excitement you can pound out of stony winter hours.
This is not a pity-party. But an honest scrap of writing....just what I endeavor to piece together in this little online notebook of mine.
Maybe online lives are perfect, but mine isn't. Mine are a mix of gold and grit, sunshine and rain (and fog), straight roads and hairpin bends. And right now, it's more gritty than gold, more gray than yellow.