and on the sixth day, there was perfection

an early-morning bike ride to the farmer's market with shay
a couple of hours at the library reading newspapers and magazines
almost finished the crossword puzzle
a tasty lunch full of farmer's market exploits
the first swim of the summer
a great book to read in the sun
games and dessert with friends

summer, i think you and i are going to get along just fine.

summer of saturdays

I have a great job working for the public school system in a nearby city. Give me a pen and a legal pad (because who doesn't love those cheerful yellow legal pads?) and I can make a nice list of things about my job that make me happy. But I'm probably not the only person who has ever felt, at the end of a year in the public schools, like summer break was the greatest perk of all.

Oh, summer vacation. How we love you.

Only, now that you are here, what on earth am I going to do with you? It feels like I just had five Saturdays in a row. The first few were pretty awesome. Several times a day I would think things like, Wow, I'm going running at noon on a weekday! Wow, am I still reading in bed? or, Wow, I'm watching daytime TV! By the fifth day... fewer wows. More hmmms. I can't deny that I've loved the indulgences, but I'm almost exhausted from filling all that time with my own creativity.

Today I decided to whittle away some time giving the blog a makeover. What? You can't tell? That's probably because I tried about 20 different combinations of layouts, color schemes, headers, etc., and in the end I published something that looks virtually the same as the old blog, with a few barely-detectable changes. Let's just say I'm not the kind of girl who moves her furniture around every couple of months just for fun.

Here's to a summer full of Saturdays! Any ideas about how to fill them?

random visitor

3:05 a.m.

Me: "Shay. Wake up. Someone. Knocking. I don't want to answer it." (How dependent I've become in a few short years....)

Shay: [mumbling and dragging himself to the door]... [looking out peep hole to see a strange woman dressed like an 80s punk rocker, only with more piercings]... [warily opening door]

Scary stranger, quietly: "Are you Nate?"

Shay: "Nope."

Scary stranger: "Oh."

Shay [in his head]: But if I were, would we be moving on to some sort of illegal transaction right now?

Scary stranger: [already getting in her car to drive away]

You know what? I don't even want to know what that was about. But it was mildly entertaining to speculate and laugh about it for the next half hour, until we finally got to do what normal people do at 3 a.m. - you know, sleep.

finals week widow

Shay has been busy with school these last weeks of the semester, and he still has a few more days to be holed up studying and translating things and writing papers before he can come out and play again. I, on the other hand, am getting down to a point where I am deliciously un-busy, and I want to celebrate that fact every single day. The timing is not good. It takes extraordinary amounts of self-control for me to leave Shay alone and let him work. It doesn't help that he prefers to study and work at home. Every day I'm hard pressed to come up with things to do that keep me entertained, but are not so enticing that Shay will be tempted to join me. A few things I've tried so far:

* Watching movies that Shay doesn't like. Unfortunately it turns out he doesn't dislike them as much as he professes to, because sometimes he still chuckles at the funny parts. From the office. I hear him and I yell, "Am I distracting you? Or is that journal article just a riot?"

* Getting the heck out of the house. This seems an obvious solution to our problem. I tried this on Saturday, and I came back with two pairs of shoes, two shirts and some shorts. So it's effective. But it could get expensive.

we need to talk

Dear Blog,

Let me preface this by saying: it's not you. It's me.

I haven't been as interested in you lately. I used to think about you almost every day, but these days life rolls on for a week or more without you even crossing my mind. When something funny or interesting or exciting happens, I don't always think to share it with you. You're a patient listener, and I know you think I am fabulous and witty. But the truth is that I don't always want to be fabulous and witty. Sometimes I just want a place to say whatever comes to mind, and not worry about whether it comes out in complete sentences or whether it might be of interest to anyone else. So, I still resort to the good old fashioned journal once in awhile. I hope you're not jealous.

Don't worry, it's not like I'm going around checking out other people's blogs, while ignoring you. I'm not. I've actually become a little disenchanted with your type in general. In a lot of ways you are all the same - attractive and fun, but too high-maintenance at times. You put up a front of being the ultimate great communicator (and you do have some good things going for you there), but there are times when you suck hours and energy from my life that would be better spent communicating in other ways with actual humans.

I'm not about to call it quits. You have been good for me in a lot of ways. But if it's going to work out between us, we are going to have to work through some of these issues together. Just be patient with me, okay?

lex