The work weeks feel long and tiring lately. I have to drive to work now, whereas my last job I could walk to. It’s only a ten minute drive, but I hate it. I hate driving in the city. Especially when everyone else is driving to or from work, too, and half of us are running late. There are actually many moments of generosity and kindness, people letting other people cut in. I am always grateful for that, and try to be generous myself. But there are also many moments of rudeness, of pressure, of having to decide whether to jump out in traffic or to make all the people waiting behind you mad.

Basically it’s all the problems we people have getting along with each other, without the ability to communicate beyond honks and waves (and other gestures) and with the addition of loud, metallic, and potentially lethal encasings. If you are an introvert, which I am, and if you do not like making people angry (I don’t) or being treated unfairly (that neither), then driving to work in Boston may not be for you.

So it’s been a long week of work which I love but which is tiring, each day bookmarked by the aforementioned barreling around having dozens of stressful mini-interactions. But then I come home and it is Friday evening. Friday evening looks like this:

This the view *from* my chair. I am too tired to get up and take a picture of my actual chair.

Ah, quiet. Solitude. Well, not exactly, my housemate is a couple of rooms away. But he’s an introvert, too, so it works out well. We meet a few times an evening coming and going, and chat, and then go back to our respective corners.

One more picture before I sink even deeper into the relaxation of my Friday evening. A little bit of work that I don’t mind having followed me home: A cupcake tattoo, applied by six year old M. Happy weekending, everyone!

Pussy willows 2012

I took the baby to the Boston Nature Center today to check on the pussy willows. Yes, they are budding! This picture is from two years and one day ago. They are much taller now, and not quite as far along. Wish I’d had my camera with me.

We also saw: chickadees, woodpeckers, robins, tree swallows, red-winged blackbirds, Canada geese, mourning doves, and wild turkeys. The turkeys got scared of us and flew into a tree, which made the baby laugh.

The whiteboard at the office said that a merlin had been seen there last week. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one! I’d like to very much.

I meant to post this sketch a while ago, and was reminded of it today by David Mitchel’s poem, Vision and the little things. The sketch was inspired by a retreat meditation on Psalm 84. “Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself where she may have her young — a place near your altar. “But of course the little sparrows also remind me of Jesus’ reassurance in Matthew 10: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

The swallows are barn swallows, one of my favorite birds to watch at the Boston Nature Center. And the sparrows are house sparrows. These are the sweet little birds that hop around under your picnic bench at every park you’ve ever been to. Turns out they are not native to North America — The entire North American population of the house sparrow is descended from a few birds released in New York City’s Central Park in 1850!