I picked them up from the ferry building the day before – they had just finished a trip to the Southern Yolla Bolly Mountains earlier in the week. We stopped through Sunday Streets on the way home. We saw the organizer and a few other people before heading back to the apartment. Then, later, I took them to REI to get them boots.
After dinner that night, we created a schedule for the morning. I have found that step especially useful because the kids see the times and make the connection. It also generates a sense of anticipation which I find drives their resolve to get out of the house. As they got ready for bed I could see that they were intent on getting a good sleep. I spent a few more hours packing as I had had no other opportunity to make get my stuff together that week.
I set an alarm and slept until 5:10a. It goes without saying that the boys followed the plan and we got out of the house by 6:20a. We caught a bus to Salesforce Tower and boarded the Capital Corridor bus to Emeryville.
At the station we ended up waiting three hours because federal cuts made less maintenance work. I thought that this was the ultimate irony given how nervous I had been getting ready. I was dead–I still was when I was writing about the day in my notebook.
When the train finally arrived, I had just finished showing them a greenstone fountain across the street. On the train we had had coffee and hot cocoa. The boys played iPad and I took a nap. The car was relatively new and the lounge downstairs was really different.
I sat with the boys to the café car and we played Uno, drank soda and had sandwiches. They got restless but didn’t fight too much. I gave them notebooks and iPads. They took naps too. I ended up carrying one of them to his seat after I was done writing.
This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.
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