Numbering my days

I like a bargain.  I especially like a bargain in an otherwise-pricey store.  Last year, in my search for a personal calendar, I found the perfect thing at MUJI: a plain brown blank calendar, with room for notes at the back.  It was less than a dollar, and just what I was looking for.  (MUJI often has just what I'm looking for, but rarely at a price I want to pay.)  It's a 16-month calendar, so come April I'll switch to a new one.  This means before April I'll need to sit down and fill in the dates for the next year and a quarter, so I've put that on my to-do list now (I sometimes require a long lead time).  It was an interesting exercise when I did it last winter: filling in every day of the coming year, thinking about the seasons and holidays that are predictable, wondering where summer would take us and what else the year would bring--a year is full of both the mundane and the unexpected.  Numbering the days made me appreciate how many days there are, and yet how quickly they can be counted and how quickly they will pass.  

Looking ahead, the next few months are getting full, and summer is once again on the horizon and demanding some attention already.  My week is full.  My day is full.  I skipped the farmers market this morning and kept Nora home with me, just to have a quiet morning hanging out together.  She heads off to kindergarten in August, and my days will seem a lot emptier.  No less busy, but emptier.  Today I have lessons to plan, meetings to organize and pray over, lunches to make and dinner to think about; but for now, I can enjoy her company and my tea, and know that those things will wait another hour or two.