Columbus had its first large snow about ten days ago, and as always, it was pretty. So every morning I wake about an hour or so before Fajar, pray, and then once the time for salaah is announced, I pray, and take a nap before waking up at 7:50. A Quick shower, then off to the kitchen. At that time, it is quite lovely to open the blinds and pull the curtains. Squirrels are running around, and sometimes small, beige bunnies with their pom-pom tails. On the other hand, the kitchen is supremely boring compared to all that’s going on outside. Honestly, I feel that my life has been spent in the kitchen. Every time my husband complains that I never sit outside in the living room, I always hide in my room. But after being in the kitchen for years, surrounded by smells and sounds of cooking (i.e., oil smells, frying smells, flour smells, meat smells, pots and pans sounds, dishwasher sounds), I really want to be as far from the kitchen as possible. In fact, one place I really don’t like is the kitchen, as it has sucked most of my years after marriage, most of my healthy years to be precise.

Enough whining about my unpaid labor in the kitchen. I make and pack lunch for my youngest child (I am making it sound as if I am making a proper meal for her lunch when it’s just a sandwich accompanied by a healthy snack like a cucumber, orange, or an apple), then tea for myself, and sometimes my little miss, as she enjoys tea sometimes. We are on the road precisely at 8:20, reach school at 8:30. It is a very therapeutic, bucolic drive as we pass a horse farm, an empty green field dotted with grazing deer, squirrels squirrelling around, geese everywhere, with occasional ducks, and some ponds. Once in a blue moon, we have come across skunks crossing the road and animal carcasses. The school is exactly 9-10 minutes from my house.  Every now and then, we do make it in less than 10 minutes.