A Day With Nuria

Time passes...

It's 8AM. I stand at the top of the basement stairs and watch Nuria, my Costa Rican house guest, descend the stairs to the basement while carrying a basket of laundry. I hate doing laundry, mainly because I don't like going up and down the stairs to the basement. The stairwell is spiral so the steps are odd-shaped, like wedges, and there is no handrail. I try to be extra careful, because a slip-and-fall could be deadly, but Nuria steps lightly down the stairs, seemingly with little effort. She puts up a fight if I try to carry laundry down the stairs. "Let me," she insists.

Nuria walks around my neighborhood for an hour every morning. At 6:45AM, my friend from tropical Costa Rica began her morning walk with the air temperature here at 33°F. She walks for an hour every morning. I used to do the same, but the task eventually became so boring that I quit. I'm glad she walks every day. When morning temperatures become warmer, I'll join her.

We ate breakfast and afterward I made 4 jars of vegetable juice: a blend of carrot, celery, and cucumber. A 16 ounce jar of juice is enough for two people, so we have a total of eight servings. I put the juice into glass jars with screw-on lids and put the jars into the fridge. Fresh juice will be good for two or three days.

Time passes...

It's 11AM and the day has warmed to 48°F. It's also breezy. The high today will supposedly be 60°F. The sun shines brightly as the noon hour approaches.

Time passes...

It's 4PM. I'm back from a long afternoon walk—my first (and only) walk of the day and Nuria's second walk of the day. I had got on an old treadmill I keep in a spare bedroom and walked a little and it put me into a mood to go for a longer walk outside. So we left the house and walked around the neighborhood. Now we're back and the temperature is 54° at 4:30PM. That's as warm as the day got. It's also cloudy, which makes the cool air feel even cooler.

Time passes...

It's 9PM. My friend has gone to bed. We did my Spanish lesson around 8PM. (Did I mention that she is also my Spanish tutor?) I have a fire in the fireplace and I'll wait until it is out, or almost out, before I go to bed. The outside temperature is 43°F now. The low is predicted to be 35°F tonight and there is a freeze warning, because some places will be colder. There will be one more cold night and then, for next week, the daytime temperatures will rise into the 70s. No more burning logs in the fireplace. Instead, there will be open windows and drapes moving in the fresh air. That will be nice.

Little by little, with bits of this and snippets of that, the day has passed. I enjoyed the day, not least because Nuria was here to share it with me. I will miss her when she returns to Costa Rica in May. But she must return. Her visa expires in May and if she is still in the U.S. she will be here illegally. She will not do that, nor would I want her to do it.

Time passes...