A day off?

I woke up this morning, an hour later than usual, actually I woke up at my usual 6:20am, but stayed in bed an additional hour.  It is after all, Saturday.  My daughter works at a kennel on Saturday’s, and our agreement is that she will actually eat breakfast if I make it.  Having a female 17 year old hormonal daughter I know the value of starting the day with a good breakfast, NOT a toaster strudel.  The day goes better, there is much less drama, and my daughter stays healthier.  I made her breakfast, and then, are you ready for this?  I went back to bed.  Yep, slept another 2 hours.  I battled the head games that I do with myself, “You wasted the whole morning, think of all the things you could have done…”.  I just smiled, got up, and went down to the kitchen for tea.

I stood in front of the refrigerator sipping my tea, and stared at the box on the calendar that said March 27th.  There was nothing written on it.  I kept staring at it for a good five minutes.  I had forgotten what it was like to have a whole glorious day with nothing written on it.  Sure there are plenty of things on my never ending to do list, but for today, there was nothing in that lovely glorious empty box.

At 11:00am, I sat at my computer on the second floor in the studio, just checking email, and my husband wandered in.  He pulled the blinds aside on the huge wall window at the rear of my studio, which looks out over the back yard and then down through the neighbors’ back yards.  I asked what he was looking at and he pointed to some odd smoke wafting up through the pine trees a couple of back yards down the row.  We both stood for awhile and looked at it.  It started to increase, and since it was 30 degrees, and 11:00am in the morning, we figured it wasn’t a barbecue.  We decided to call 911.  Within five minutes, the police were there, and the smoke had turned into thick billowy acrid smoke, the neighbor’s detached garage was definitely on fire.  For the next hour we watched the smoke and then towering flames shooting up from the pines, there is that eerie fascination with the power of nature, of fire, that makes us stare with huge respect at the power of fire, all the while devastated for our neighbor’s complete loss of a garage.  The fire was finally put out late in the afternoon, once the roof caved in and the building was knocked down.  The main road was closed off for hours, and of course everyone gathered in the street to comment on the tragedy.

Not wanting to tear myself away from the whole affair, I started wandering my own back yard, picking up buckets full of sticks, broken from the trees in the hurricane like winds that came through a few weeks ago while I was traveling.  The air was cold, and crisp, and smelled of that sickly sweet fire smell, but it felt good just to be outside and NOT in my studio or on an airplane.

My husband came out, and together we puttered in the yard, he tilled the garden, (forgetting I had already planted the peas), and I replanted more peas and the lettuces and spinach.  I’m giving my garden one more year, since we got the dog in September, I am hoping Bjorn will keep the yard free of large furry rodents that dine on baby lettuces and anything else green in a fenced in garden that they somehow manage to find their way into.  I Shopvac’d the decks, the only way to get rid of all those droppings from the maple trees that get mushed under your shoes and tracked into my house, and then I started on some of the spring yard clean up.

Around 4pm, I came in and washed up and sat, yes I actually sat in a rocker and read my book for an hour.  I felt positively decadent, but the truth is, my back muscles were killing me from being so horribly out of shape and bending over picking up sticks in the back yard for an hour.  I made a wonderful dinner, tillapia baked with butter, wine and lemon juice with fresh parsley over a bed of sauteed baby spinach leaves with olive oil and garlic, over a bed of pasta.  🙂  And then, I actually made cookies.  Ginger snaps.  OK, I used a bagged mix, but I made real cookies, and baked them and actually thought for a brief moment that there was more to life than taking care of business in my studio.  I even got to play some new recorder music I picked up when I rejoined the American Recorder Society.  And now it is only 8:30 and I still have my evening ahead of me.  I could fill the tub and soak my weary back muscles and read more in my book.  🙂

Meanwhile, the mail brought news that I was accepted to teach at the Mid Atlantic Fiber Association Conference in July 2011.  I heard a couple of weeks ago that I was accepted to teach at Midwest Weavers’ Conference in June 2011.  Sadly, I was not accepted to five of the art/fiber exhibitions I applied to.  I long to get back to the sewing machine, to the loom, to anything creative, but for today, I made cookies, picked up sticks, and planted peas.  And I have some work for next year.   Life is good…