I haven't posted for a month, due to a variety of things, but the main one being not having much to say given that the family were not here to fill my otherwise empty days..... (see previous post).
Anyway, normal service has now been resumed and we have just spent a really lovely weekend, just the four of us. Emma is admittedly very small still and barely able to do much more than sleep, cry and feed. But she has learnt to smile. A really beautiful smile. The kind of smile that could break a man. I am already not looking forward to the day I have to meet that man.
And Jack - well, what a change I have seen in him since he's been away. He's growing up fast and has an answer for everything.
This weekend, while Michele stayed with Emma on one side of the glass in the ambient room temparature of Mall of the Emirates, Jack and I spent nearly 2 hours playing in the real snow in Ski Dubai. And it was great. We played on sledges, and had snowball fights and slid down ice slides. He loved it. And so did I.
Later in the day, Jack helped me do some DIY and mow the grass. It was a truly memorable weekend.
But today, on a day when I had not a lot to do at work and was left to roam the internet, my mood quickly dropped at how the news was filled with stories of the endless disappearance of Madeline McCann, and the death of Colin McRae and his 5 year old son. That, combined with the fact that I had had, for no apparent reason (when is there one?), a very vivid and harrowing dream last night, made me realise just how lucky I am.
At the risk of getting all depressing (but then the purpose of this blog was to record events, feelings, moods, anything really...) I had a lot of time today to think about how much we take for granted, and it gave me pause.
Of course, Michele was initially a little suspicious when I came home with some flowers and offered to cook dinner ("Just because") but for the above reasons it has felt like a strangely emotional day (if you will, the "Yin" to my weekend's "Yang"). I could report that nothing of consequence happened to me today. And had I not been pondering the above for perhaps too long, that is probably what I would have said. But the irony is that is when you hear of such monumental events happening so suddenly and unpredictably to other people, that could so easily happen to you (Michele and I have left Jack in a hotel room sleeping while we went to the restaurant), you realise that there is a lot to be thankful for in a non-consequential day.
If nothing else, I came home at the end of today to a loving family who were all (and I refer to that smile again) pleased to see me. You can't buy that kind of happiness.
