Today (Sunday) would have been Gramma’s 100th birthday. It’s been nearly six years since she’s been gone. I wrote this when she died.

This year, Mum and Dad celebrated with Italian cake and Rudi and I with cannoli. Gramma did love her Italian pastries

I hadn’t expected a wave of tears to smack me upside the head while I was writing this, but it did. Gramma’s death was the first time I learned you could cry in your sleep, but it’s been a long while since she died. And mostly I’m at the point where I think about her fondly or use her still as an impetus to get though a tedious chore.

But this week also marks a one-year anniversary of a different type of loss, and I assume I’ve conflated the two, reimbuing my mourning for my grandmother with the weight of all I and my family have missed since last March.

Be kind to yourselves this week and kind to others. And, for goodness’ sake, have a cookie and a cup of tea. It helps.

Sunday would have marked my maternal grandmother’s 100th birthday, so I’m planning a celebratory weekend.

I have already put in a bunch of extra hours doing work, because she definitely valued hard work and meeting your obligations.

My fun activity for Friday night was watching Magnum while I was eating supper. The reboot is too recent for Gramma to have watched, but she enjoyed the original and I like to think she would have appreciated this version, as well. Rudi’s coaching this weekend, so since I can’t watch new things on tv tomorrow night, maybe I’ll pull up some old Britcoms. She did enjoy Hyacinth Bucket, Father Brown, and Jean and Lionel.

As I mentioned yesterday, my tea reinforcements have arrived. I’ll be refilling all the tins that have been depleted and drinking plenty of cuppas.

It’s the quarterly member sale at one of the local bookshops, so I’ll be heading up that way to indulge (and do some gift-shopping for other upcoming birthdays). I also have plenty of books to read, including some mysteries, which were Gramma’s favorite genre.

The first round of Sock Madness opened a couple hours ago, so I’ll be spending a good chunk of time knitting. Gramma was the one who taught me to knit, but I don’t think she understood why I wanted to bother with socks.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a crossword puzzle, so maybe I’ll fill out the ones from this weekend’s newspaper in her memory.

The butter is out, so maybe I’ll bake up a batch of something from Gramma’s cookbook she made me. Lemon squares would be fast, mint sticks chocolatey, or I could try something new.

In addition to baking sweets, Gramma enjoyed eating them. I have most of a container of ice cream in the freezer, whipped cream to top my cocoa, and Mum suggested I pick up a cannoli or something with Italian pastry cream in it to mark the occasion.

Okay, off to bed, because Gramma would not approve of still being up this late!

I write a lot of posts that I get a paragraph or two into and then delete. Mostly, they’re self-indulgent journal entries that belong in the pages of a private diary, rather than published for the world to see. Worse, they’re boring and repetitive and whiny, which demands that I purge them, suffocate before they gain enough oxygen to exist in the world on their own.

But I’m starting to wonder if, in an effort not to gripe in a place that guarantees my complaints will live on, I’m also denying myself the opportunity to problem-solve in the way I do best — in writing.

So, I’m going to dig out one of the bazillion notebooks I have floating around the Burrow and start writing in it. Start allowing my frustrations and my dreads (and occasionally my deepest hopes) into the air — where they will get oxygen, but also light. And if I can see a problem, and write about a problem, maybe I can solve it. Or come to terms with it and make it just an inconvenience, rather than a problem.

As I wrote Friday, I’m also going to get moving. Daylight Savings Time returns in a fortnight, and I don’t really care if you don’t like it (kids, pets, whatever). It helps me tremendously to have light after work. Daylight proffers the ability to work in the garden, to walk along the creek, to bike with less stress. I spend too much of my workday sitting (no need to walk to the conference room any more or run out to pick up lunch or bike to work), and I feel it, particularly when my day doesn’t end at 5 when it should, but at 7 or 8 or whenever I just give up on getting more done and switch from sitting on the couch with my work computer to sitting on the couch watching tv or reading. And it’s sure as hell going to show when I get out on the volleyball court with people 15+ years younger than me. If I’m not going to be inspiring, at least I should strive not to be a warning sign. As of today, the sun is finally setting after 6 again, and by the end of the month it’ll be after 7:30. I can work (and work out) with that.

And I’m going to put five things away every day. Not just down, but away. Rudi and I are notoriously bad about not wanting to deal with things in the moment, and they have a way of piling up — and not in a good way. We’ve agreed that we both need things to be less cluttered, but now we need to put action to word.

That’s three goals for the month. More than that and it’ll become impossible to begin. I’ll let you know how successful my inner Yoda is. (There’s a distinct possibility I’ll just smother him in a pile of laundry.)

I started to tell you about my work week, but, honestly, it’s exhausting to think about and you have your own work week you’re escaping. You don’t need to run into my monsters as you’re trying to beat your own.

I will say that it’s raining out tonight. It’s supposed to rain in the morning and some (possibly much) of Sunday, as well. I’m planning on spending those parts inside, possibly with my book and knitting and possibly trying to get some stuff cleaned and put away. Even small steps will help. There may also be baking.

Tomorrow afternoon and maybe some of Sunday’s will see some drier weather. That’s when I need to lace up my boots (or pull on my galoshes) and head outdoors. My volleyball teammates have indicated they’d like to play this spring, which means I need to think about being able to spend an extended period of time being active within the next six weeks, and being active with 30-somethings to boot. First part of the plan: getting in 7-10 thousand steps every day or spending 45 minutes out on the bike. Second part of the plan: unknown. Third part of the plan: fame and success (or, at least, not letting the team down when we’re back on the court). I’ll let you know how it goes.

This handsome fellow came home yesterday afternoon, which was absolutely lovely. Because he was out of state, obviously, we need to keep mostly to ourselves until after he tests negative later in the week, but the sun just made it too impossible to stay below ground. So we ventured forth to the Georgetown to the waterfront, double-masked except for when we were far away from others and drinking/eating.

We had saved the final To All the Boys movie for Rudi’s return, which was both a satisfying end to the trilogy and also a perfect February Saturday date night. And tonight we watched some lovely season finales to Miss Scarlet and the Duke and All Creatures Great and Small.

We replenished all the batteries on the fairy lights and ate lots of cookies (thanks, Mum and Dad!) and doted on the cat and generally just enjoyed being under the same roof again.

These daffodils are from before the winter storm passed through, so I’m not positive whether they’re still standing. But spring bulbs, like people, tend to be remarkably resilient when faced with adversity.

Either way, the equinox is a month from today. Daylight savings kicks back in in three weeks.

Hold on, everyone. Change is coming. It’s just hard to tell from where we’re standing.