Escapades and girns

My housemate and I have over the years enjoyed not only many a DVDs and laughs, but also instituted the idea of a quarterly adventure: they have varied from the one-day to the five-day, from near to far, from educational to totally frivolous, but ALL are enjoyed.

When I invited her up to the cabin for the weekend we hadn’t intended it to be our last adventure of the year, but somehow the fresh snow on the mountains, the brilliant fall sunlight and the catching-up conversations on the drive had us deciding to eat in a restaurant in Martigny as opposed to stopping at one or the other of the cafeterias along the way.

The first one had no seats – the rösti with chanterelles (hash browns with chanterelle mushrooms) were the attraction there – so we went to the next one in line and both had the seasonal deer with chestnuts, spätzli (a Swiss noodle), pear with cinnamon-flavored jelly and a sauce that was to die for (no worries, we are both still alive and very well!). Given the delicacy and delightfulness of the meal we both decided that this weekend would be our fourth and last for the year “adventure” (just as well as when her husband R returns they will go south and we probably won’t see each other again until end January, early February).

So the whole weekend has taken on the flavor of fun and adventure – and making sure that we continued the theme last night it was a DVD, cheddar popcorn and sparkling wine.

Do I enjoy my life? You bet and almost every minute of it.

That being said my first hellos this morning were of the girn* nature. I had awoken at 4:44 with an ache in my hip: at 5:56 it was a general achiness and at 7:00 it was from a bad dream in which I had returned to Geneva on a train and as I was getting money from an ATM machine my suitcase was stolen! (With my computer in it and all my recent photos: that was the most painful part! A reminder to back-up, back-up, back-up?).

I went back to bed to read for awhile before trying again – this time with a slightly less girn and more of a grin.

Writing about yesterday’s adventures has managed to straighten my mood so out into the fall sun and on with more fun.

*MEANING:

verb intr.: To snarl, grimace, or complain.
noun: A grimace or snarl. 

One of my favorite mountains  - my view from the kitchen.