The field trips in my house

So here we are - taking it easy with a sprained ankle. Spending time on the bed and on the floor with my little one - and the dogs as said territories are also dog zones. It turns out the baby likes his face being licked by the dogs. I don't really.
I have been a very good patient by resting and reading and playing with baby. I have been deliberately been taking it slow so my ankle could heal. I haven't left the house - mostly because our front steps leading up to the house can be treacherous - in fact until today I've stayed mostly in the back of the house and not even wandering up to the front or the kitchen. But today, I started to get a little nutty and had to wander around and play with the camera. So this is my token shot from today's field trip (and with a sprained ankle this would qualify as a field trip).
In some ways, it is like a vacation oddly. I've been reading the kinds of books one reads on vacation: Jane Smiley and Ann Patchett. A Thousand Acres came out in 1991. I'm a little embarrassed I just got around to reading it. As always, my default excuse is it's American and I prefer the Brits. Truth be told, I'm not usually one for location landscape novels, yet this one, as it follows the King Lear storyline, is far more enticing and exquisite. It's a novel I have to reread to see how Smiley did it. Rereading novels to see how they are constructed is something I tend to do when I work on/struggle with my own novel. Often, exquisite novels make me want to shoot myself as I feel like I could never achieve anything that rendered the human experience so beautifully, but Smiley's made me want to go back to mine. Somehow, she showed me it was possible. Maybe it's that even as she tackles a Shakespearean plotline, she does so so simpley. Like you read that novel and you just watch her putting one foot in front of the other.
I love Ann Patchett, but The Magician's Assistant is more of a cruise ship read. It's one of those books that I can shrug my shoulders and say it's okay when really what I'm thinking is there's nothing bad I can really say about it because Ann Patchett would just thumb her nose at me and say "neener neener neener, I'm published and you're not. so there."
Blasted.
Nevertheless, with this ankle situation, I'm thinking of going back to my novel, writing more in my journal, collaging. Of doing things besides loving and playing with my baby. Keep your fingers crossed I just don't end up with more unfinished projects.