Adventures in gratitude

Yeeeaaahhhhh. Week's ovah.

Adventurey day today, not sure how much's in my fingers to tap out, highlights were:

• early awakening (yay) for
• a mini roadtrip (yaaay) for a
  
• ski adventure to a new spot (Northfield Mtn, y'all, in [or maybe next to] charming Erving, Mass., etab. 1828, think the sign said), so that yields things like:
  

1. ski adventures! I know I'll already said it, but cool stuff bears repeating
2. snow!
3. snow, cont'd. ok, so not much snow, but snow, skiable snow. maybe snow that was disclaimer'd to us as "spring conditions" "better near the top" "less icy once the sun beats down" etc., but snow, precious, rare, fleeting snow.
   
4. bottom line: snow, skiing, adventure = yay

• then we have the way-back-from-snow adventure, which bears having its own bullet for 2 reasons, 1 lovely, 1 sorta terrible:

1. the lovely. this quaint (seriously) little lunch-counter cafe in a store packed with ... antiquey things? really not into antiques, so not sure how to genre-ize them, but lots & lots of little old stuff hanging all over the walls and all over everything, for sale. and the cafe???? it was vegetarian, y'all! ok, there were a few fishy things (like, salmon, not like sketchy). but it was pretty unexpectedly awesome for veggie me to stumble across such a spot unexpectedly, where I have *multiple* things I could choose from on the menu! aaaaannnnd for my gluten-avoiding friend, they even had gluten-free bread in the freezer! crazy!
2. the terrible. there was a pretty bad accident RIGHT NEXT TO us on the way back. freaky, freaky, freaky. one of those "kiss your kids, pet all your animals, touch your favorite things, tell some folks you love them because you just never know in this world" things. now, fortunately, it could've been way way worse than it was, and while we don't know for sure everyone was ok, it seemed like it. but basically, this big ole semi/dump truck thing merged onto our 2-lane freewayish thing going *really* fast, and there so happened to be a minivan in the lane that, I dunno, he didn't see or what, but he, well, merged right on into them. why they didn't come hurtling in our lane, I dunno. but they didn't, and somehow, the force and angle of their being merged into pushed the minivan around so it was IN FRONT of the semi thing, that was still going really fast, and he PUSHED them for what seemed like forever, until the minivan rotated its way around to the other side of it and came to stop at the side of the road, facing oncoming traffic. I'd pulled over, and my friend and I, and the woman in the car behind me, according to my rearview mirror, were like ohmygodohmygodohmygod the whole time. it was that cliched "happened so fast yet in slow motion," then over and the shock kicks in. the people in the van hadn't gotten out, but looked ok. the semi driver was walking back to them. someone'd already pulled over and someone'd already called 911 by the time we did, so after a minute or two of shock, it seemed the best thing we could do is get out of the way, given the 2 lanes of traffic piling up behind us. but, yi. seriously.

So, all's well that ends well. The gatos and I are exceedingly happy to be cozy at home, wrapping up a week in our usual mellow fashion, and eyeing the bed. Whole, healthy (cold's on its way out) and happy is a good way to end a day and a week.