Late in the day yesterday, I found a surprise rosebud in the memorial garden. Wonderful!

We had a lovely day together in Rhinebeck yesterday. Perfect sunny and beautiful fall weather. Don found a couple of books, I found two, as well, we had lunch at a pizzeria that has been there for years – we had paninis – and we walked around town for a bit. It’s a rare day when we are together on one of these little daytrip adventures. Usually, we’re running errands, etc., separately. Today, we’re going to run another errand together. Too much togetherness? Nah.

I’ll share a bit more of Rhinebeck with you tomorrow, but here is one of my favorite old houses on the main drag. I think it may have been converted into a business.

I love the charm of Carpenter Gothic homes.

As to our trip –

No, we’re not going to Michigan. (Don drove there last January to retrieve my stuff from my friend’s basement.)

No, we’re not off on a leaf peeping trip. We don’t really need to do that as we live in a place that is spectacularly beautiful in the Fall. People come from all over just to spend the weekend here.

No, the miniature show in Philadelphia is not until November and I’m not sure I’m going to go anyway.

No to any spot in New England – it’s lovely, but I used to live there, and both Don and I have spent a lot of time there over the years, separately and together.

No to Florida, though we do need to go there in the next year to see family and Little Z.

No to Canada, though my family is from Canada and it’s beautiful, but I’ve also spent a lot of time there over the years. No to Montreal, though we haven’t been there and do want to visit someday.

We’re going to Paris.

A few months back, Don stood up and said: “We’re going to Paris.” I was surprised, to say the least. But he knew how much I longed to go back there. Turns out he did, too. We talked about it all the time.

We had the usual discussions about timing and money and is this a good idea and all the things that creep into any conversation about this sort of thing. Especially from me.

We thought about it all day long and decided to go. I wrote to the hotel we stayed in last year and they told me they were booked through October 19th, so we decided to leave on the 20th and made our reservation. We got a pretty good deal on our air fare. We set aside money from our recent respective jobs for the cost of the hotel.

Then we had to pay additional taxes.

This week, I thought long and hard about it and brought the whole thing up to Don and said, “Maybe we shouldn’t go.” I reeled off a list of maybe-in-the-future expenses, some quite probable, some not. Our plane tickets are non-refundable, so we’d be out that money, but we could cancel the hotel up until 24 hours before our arrival.

Maybe we should just stay home.

We gave ourselves 24 hours to think about it. I meditated and really didn’t get any sense of direction. Every time I saw a photo of Paris, I felt sad. Anyway, later that day Don said, “Of course  we’re going to Paris!” I said I didn’t want to talk about it until the next morning. But by the next morning, I felt fairly positive about the whole thing (an answer?) Turns out, the day before, Don had secretly bought tickets to a production of Moliere’s The Miser  at a well known theater near the Eiffel Tower. So he had already made his decision.

So we’re going.

Here’s the thing: we wanted to go a second time because who knows what life has in store and maybe this is the one chance we’ll get to go. We wanted another week there in which we were freed from frantically trying to see everything and, instead, could just be. Where we could sit in the park for hours, if we wanted to. Where we could explore neighborhoods. Where we could sit in a cafe for an entire afternoon, should we choose to. Where we could walk along the Seine and hold hands and celebrate our anniversary and get away from the chaos in our country for a week.

So we’re going to do it. We leave on Sunday night, will arrive on Monday. And we’ll head back home the following Tuesday. We’re doing it on a budget. We just want to soak up the atmosphere and beauty of that incredible city.

I often react from a place of fear. I’m working on being practical yet not sinking into fear. I can’t control the future, nor should I try. But that’s what I attempt to do time after time. So many times in my life, I have made decisions based on a fear of the unknown or of what might  happen. Cautious Claudia was one of my childhood nicknames.

Life is too short not to go for it.

We’re excited. It was just yesterday, by the way, that we shelved our idea of cancelling the trip.

Anyway, there’s your answer.

Happy Wednesday.