It’s the last weekend of June, before a short workweek.
Paint my nails. I’m thinking seasonal colors.
Bake. I have both sweet and sour cherries (but not sweet-and-sour cherries; that would not be delicious), so I’m thinking some iteration of a pie. Remind me to take a box of butter out of the freezer before I go to bed.
Plant beans and potatoes in the garden.
Find the safe place I put my tax forms.
Catch up on my email and snail mail correspondence.
Attend a ballet class over Zoom.
Make strawberry daiquiris and herbal tea (the latter to mix with lemonade for Arnold Palmers, the former not to mix with rum because that ruins them for me)
Write an Into the Stacks post. (I think we’re ready for March.)
Knit the heel of a sock or a zig zag on my lightning shawl.
“Sunrays and Saturdays” is an early Vertical Horizons song off their second album, Running on Ice (1995). While it’s technically about a couple breaking up, the song reverberates down through the ages (read: in the decades since college) for me because of good things the singer wishes for his ex because he “still feel[s] love for you.”
After all, who doesn’t wish all these things for the people that we love:
Sunrays and Saturdays
Perfect starry nights
Sweet dreams and moonbeams
And a love that’s warm and bright …
Friendship strong and true
Oceans of blue and a room with a view
To live the life you … choose.
I wish all those things — and more — for us all.
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The weekend was too short, as always, but it included a number of good things, including strawberry daiquiris, singing along to music, and an afternoon nap while it was raining. We did a video chat with my family, spent time in the reading in the park and planting in the garden, and bought a flat of strawberries at the farmers market (as well as the season’s first raspberries and blueberries).
We’re three days into a week where I declared at the outset that I wanted to spend more time at the park. How am I doing on that goal? To be honest, not great.
I’ve finished work no earlier than 8 p.m. every night this week. Two days I never made it outside the door of my apartment and the most exercise I got was walking to the bathroom or shuttling between the rocking chair and the couch.
So the highlight of the week was yesterday, when I did leave the couch, shutting the laptop in time to put on sneakers and leave the house and do a few laps of the traffic circle at the end of the block. I then sought higher ground at the park so I could catch the sunset.
Probably the nicest sunset I’ve seen this year, it was the sort of evolving beauty that you look at one second and think, “Wow! That’s amazing!” And then twenty seconds later you’re thinking, “What was I talking about? THIS is so much better than that was.” And so it continues until suddenly the show is just over, the screen goes black, and the house lights come up, and you’re able to think, “What a phenomenal show! That was totally worth the price of admission.”
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Flickr is down, so instead of my sunset shots, I’m going to give you a sense of what’s going on in the Burrow in the early morning:
Smelling: Overripe strawberries in the berry bowl on the table.
Feeling: A warm, soft Corey awkwardly tucked under my arm and draped on the edge of my lap in front of my laptop. Tired, from having dozed off on the couch before I got the dishes done and because I’m PMSing. Mentally exhausted from having put in two really long days at work (albeit from my couch and rocking chair), without having checked off a whole lot from my to-do list (my mother would tell me to put all the things I did do onto my list, but that method just makes me feel worse). But also hopeful because I only have two meetings scheduled for tomorrow and I have blocked hour-long chunks on my calendar to try to move projects forward. (If this fails, I’m going to have to ask my equally harried boss for some help in managing my priorities.)
Hearing: Birds in the trees, because it’s after 3 a.m. Cars passing by, because we aren’t as shut down as we used to be. Occasionally, a light rustle from the window well, where I assume a bug is out for an early-morning stroll. The fan in the bedroom whirring.
Tasting: Chocolate. Do you think Hershey kisses taste different from Hershey eggs or bars? Why do you think that is? Does the unique shape require a slightly different recipe?
Seeing: A super messy living room. I really need to do something about that, but after the long work days, I’m really lacking the energy/enthusiasm to move forward on any other task at this point.
Feel free to give me a sense of how you’re doing in the comments.
