I watched every minute of the Cohen hearing yesterday. I’m glad I did, but it did mess with my routine. (If you haven’t seen Elijah Cummings’ closing statement, do watch it.) Today, I’m craving little chores and all of the little things I do in the course of a ‘normal’ day. It’s very cold out there, but sunny. We ended up with just a dusting of snow. Hurrah!

I will be glad when I’m able to spend some time outside, clearing out the gardens, planting seeds, and watching everything come back to life. Quite frankly, I’ll be happy to have something else other than the interior of the house to photograph. In the midst of winter, it gets awfully hard to find a new angle, a new something to photograph. It’s also tough to come up with anything exciting or different to write about. We’re like many of you; relatively housebound, waiting for spring, recovering from the flu or whatever. Neither of us is doing any work in our chosen field at the moment. Don is working on his ukulele technique and is learning some songs. He’s waiting for the warm weather to reappear so he can get back to his camera and taking street portraits. This has been a long break for him and it’s been hard. But I think he’s handled it well.

As for me, I have no idea if any coaching work awaits me or if this is the actual winding down of my career. It may be. If so, I’m okay with that. (Although I’d like the income, small as it may be!) We’ve both been reading a lot, loving our routine and life in our little cottage, watching movies, and pursuing our creative outlets.

In other words, not necessarily a lot to write about, but a daily rhythm which is comforting. We love our routine and we’ve been talking about that very thing this morning, as we saw a movie by Jim Jarmusch last night called Paterson. It’s a little gem of a film and it stars Adam Driver. Some people might find it boring because it doesn’t deal in big plot changes or any of the things we have grown to expect in this era of big everything and small attention spans. In fact, we caught ourselves thinking something bad was about to happen in several scenes and then we laughed at ourselves. Always expecting something bad to happen! It’s laughable. No, this is a quiet and compelling film and one of the things that spurs creativity for the character played by Adam Driver is routine. A routine that is honorable, yet freeing.

It sparked a big conversation this morning as we drank our second cup of coffee together on the living room sofa. We’re still talking about it. Also, one of the supporting actors looked familiar to me and I realized that I coached her in Chautauqua several years ago. She’s a good actress and I was happy to see her excellent work in this film.

I think the routine – washing dishes, mowing the lawn, vacuuming, doing a job you know like the back of your hand – can free up a portion of your mind, allowing magic to happen.

We’re going to watch it again. I loved it. And any film or play or performance or piece of art that sparks that much conversation is rare and wonderful.

Happy Thursday.