Sigh. Still sick over here. This morning I was getting so fed up with this cold that I actually took some cold medicine, something I view as a last resort. It wasn’t a miracle cure but it did enable me to breathe through my nose for a while. And it was better than nothing, so I though I’d take the opportunity to return some books to the library and pick up some others that I had on hold. Plus, it killed two birds with one stone since Daisy was getting antsy for that late-morning walk she’s developed quite the ardent taste for.
I briefly toyed with the idea of also picking up some things we need from the grocery store and the drugstore and maybe swinging by the bank, but I changed my mind on that pretty quickly after another excellent sneezefest hit. Besides, leaving Daisy outside the library for a couple minutes while I pop in is one thing. Leaving her outside the grocery store for the better part of a half-hour would never fly.
So I got dressed and ready, books in hand, dog in tow. But, ladies and gents, what do you suppose should be the case when I finally get up said library? The damn thing is closed! That’s right. Apparently, for some unknown and completely stupid reason, the library doesn’t open until 12:30 on Thursdays. I was pissed and confused. I looked at my watch: 11:45. That was 45 minutes until it finally opened. Well, going to the store and the bank to kill time were still out of the question, especially since I’d left what I needed for those trips at home. And the thought of walking all the way home and back again felt like more than my dwindling energy levels could bare. What to do? What to do?
Well, I thought, I do have a bag full of books with me, and I did just pass a park…
So back I went to the park and found a sunny spot in the grass to sit and read. Daisy was confused. When we go for walks we generally, you know, walk. She was not used to this whole staying-in-one-spot thing, not when in foreign territory anyway. After a few whimpers and much sniffing around she got over it and settled in. The grass was damp and cool and the sun was nice and warm. I pulled out a book I hadn’t gotten around to reading before it was due and dove in.
And it was nice, if a little odd for me. See, I never just randomly sit in the park, or anywhere for that matter. I never have that kind of time. Usually if I’m gonna take a break, I take it in the comfort of my own home where, once the break is done, I can quickly move on to the next task on the never-ending to-do list. But this forced impromptu park visit made me remember how nice it is to do things outside by yourself. Not because you’re going somewhere, but just because it’s nice to be outside. It’s something I don’t do nearly as much as I used to since I don’t have my own private yard or anything anymore.
But it was fun and it was relaxing, and maybe during my time off I’ll try out a planned park excursion. Who knows, I may even get a tan! Though I think, in future, I’ll make sure to bring a blanket to save my butt from the damp (tee-hee!)
So I thought about it, and here’s what I came up with as a template for my days:
On most mornings, when I’m not fighting off illness, I tend to wake up naturally around 7:00. I’ll do the tea/coffee and email/blog thing for a half hour or so. Just enough to keep the email landslide at bay. While I like and enjoy technology, I’m trying to make sure I’m not a slave to it. I was starting to feel that way for a while there, but I think that recently, I’ve found some balance on that front and no longer need to read every twitter or respond to every blog post. There just would never be enough hours in the day.
After that is the usual shower/breakfast/get dressed trio, and Daisy often needs a mid-morning walk as soon as I’m presentable. Perhaps I’ll take the camera along on some of these and see where we go.
An early afternoon snack, say around 1ish, with a magazine and a cup of tea may be a nice way to break up my day. I’m thinking it also may be enough of a break to shake me out of any possible morning brain-stuck I feel setting in. Because the plan is to not waste away entire days uselessly.
Tuesday afternoons are the Farmer’s Market/CSA pickup, and taking some time to peruse fresh veggies is always a real treat. And the bonus of being off this month is that I can get there early and swoop up the good stuff before it’s gone. You know, instead of being the one at 5:45 in the afternoon, moaning, “Darn! The peas and spinach are all gone again?!”
And I hate late dinners (one of the blights of my current existence) so if I start cooking promptly at 4 p.m. every afternoon, I’ll never have to worry about feeling bloated at 10 p.m. and may even have enough space for the occasional dessert!
And finally, since I generally tend to run myself into the ground every evening before plunking down into bed too tired to even wash the makeup off my face, 8 p.m. will now be my Gettin’ Ready for Bed Time. I’ll still probably end up doing all sorts of things in the evenings before falling into bed exhausted, but at least I’ll be doing them fresh-faced and already safely in the PJs.
Now you’ll probably notice that there are a lot of things that I didn’t book into this schedule, and that was on purpose. There are things I wanna do when I’m ready, when the mood strikes. Not when my schedule says I must do it. Stuff like writing, trips to the gym and the library, more walks with Daisy, visiting with friends, chores, chats with my mom, etc. I want each individual day to have its own feeling. To be memorable in some different way, instead of each being exactly the same, stamped out by a cookie cutter. I get enough of that during my workdays. This time isn’t about that, it’s about discovering me.
Well, my chest cold has broken into a lovely cough with stuffy/runny nose to match. But I do seem to be getting my energy back, albeit in small spurts. It was enough for me to take Daisy on a walk around the block this morning. And I really should’ve taken the camera with me when I did. New summer flowers have been popping up everywhere while I’ve been cooped up inside. Roses and tiger lilies, especially. They’re everywhere and they look gorgeous. Note to self: Remember to take the camera next time we go out.
And because I’ve had more energy, this morning actually resembled something closer to a real morning, rather than me just getting up and moving directly to the couch. Which reminds me. I did have “plans” to settle on a rhythm to my days, something that everything else will free-flow around as I see fit. So I’ll be posting my shot at putting virtual pen to paper and thinking up a routine that works tomorrow.
PS – What the HECK was the name of that show from when we were kids where two teams of two children had to do ridiculous things, including making some disgusting concoction that the other had to eat the most of before the time was over. I seem to recall flour and M&M’s and peanut butter but…. What the heck was the name of that show?!
 When I was young, I used to dream of being a writer. I had all sorts of fairytale-esque story outlines tucked in notebooks all over the place. I remember during my babysitting years, telling two of my charges a bedtime story based on one of these story scraps I had. Inevitably, their parents returned home before we came to the end of the story and I left for home. The next day, their mother called me. Apparently both girls were desperate to know how the story ended. I had to tell them that I didn’t know how it ended because what I’d told them was all I’d made up.
I used to be a voracious reader as well, inhaling anything with even somewhat intriguing cover copy. As I got older, school readings became more important than anything else and my love of reading dwindled under the weight of being told what to read. But my love of writing never really faded. It did, however, quickly move away from the fictional towards the introspective and autobiographical. As I grew up, and there was less of a chance that my siblings would sneaking a peek, my journal entries became much more self-reflexive, without the fear of reprisals. When I write today, it continues to be self-reflexive, and I am buoyed by all the like-minded blogs I read out there from equally introspective women. (Peruse the blogroll at the side or email me for recomendations if you’re interested.) Even my reading has turned from the fictional to the non-fictional, even so far as the autobiographical. I’m picking up The Gentle Art of Domesticity again. It’s a book I’ve owned for a while but didn’t have the energy to devote to the kind of digestion that it deserved. During this month, I think I’ll have the clarity to take it all in, especially since my own goals in life so closely reflect those pages.
My mother still thinks that I should write children’s books. It’s true that I do have a vivid imagination. But I’d much rather write about this life as I experience it. The joy and pain, the ups and downs. There’s a whole section in the library for autobiographies, mostly those of famous people who have done wonderful or terrible things. But what about the autobiographies of simple people, doing simple things? To me, those are the more important. They are the true reflections of a society, of a life, of a time. So that’s why I write, to preserve my memories as they happen. To write my own autobiography as a testament to the simple and to the good.
So yesterday was something, that’s for sure. After that last post, I started looking up all sorts of stuff about the countryside. Then my mind turned towards farming and how cool it would be to have an organic micro-ecofarm. I even asked Dave what he though about it. But like the level-headed half of this partnership that he is, he stayed typically reserved and noncommittal.
Well, I went back to my research, looking all sorts of things up. But the more I researched, the less sure I became. What if this was me grasping at anything again? How could one buy and start a farm with a negative amount of money in the bank, anyway? And that inevitably led to another meltdown. I ended up crying, feeling trapped by my lack of choices in life, worrying about the future, and upset with myself that I’d tried to grasp onto another harebrained scheme again when I promised myself I’d stop doing that.
Seeing my distress once again, Dave sat me down. He said, “Look, I think you’re trying to jump from Step 1 to Step 3 without going through Step 2. Getting to where we wanna be in life is gonna take a lot of hard work and sacrifice, more than we’ve had to do in the past. But you need to be prepared. It’s like that old equation says, any project can only be two of these three things: done with high quality, done on time or done on budget. If you want something of high quality done on time, it’s gonna cost you. If you want something done fast and cheap, you forgo quality, and if you opt for high quality done on the cheap (which is probably a good analogy for what we want from life) it’s gonna take a long time to get there.” Longer than, oh, the five minutes I generally have been giving myself. What can I say, patience has never been one of my virtues.
We continued talking, Dave trying to make me feel better, and me trying to be okay with our current lot in life. I eventually came around to the realization that I end up so easily grasping onto all these random career paths because none of my life goals actually have anything to do with a career. My dreams for a self-sufficient life of gardening, baking and child-rearing has zero to do with working for the man or climbing the corporate ladder. “So,” Dave said, “maybe what you need is some crap job to help you get from here to there. Maybe that’s what we both need.” But we already have crap jobs that pay more than a lot of crap jobs and we barely scrape enough money together every month. “Ah, yes,” he said, “but we currently have dead-end crap jobs. What we need are crap jobs with some growth potential.” So that’s the point we’re at now, thinking about looking for crap jobs with growth potential so that we can scrimp our way from here to a home we can fix up, with a huge yard and/or a little bit of land. So that one day I can feel like something of a suburban homesteader: growing things, making things, raising children and being happy. That’s the real goal. And the real detriment to our current jobs, since it is unlikely that we well ever get another raise or promotion there. We instead just remain in a holding pattern, able to pay most of the monthly bills but forever hounded by the thousands of dollars of impenetrable school debt I have. (Hard to believe, huh, that we both have respected university degrees and we’ve come to the conclusion that all we can hope for in life is getting a crap job?)
Maybe we’ll have to move to a basement in Scarborough, cancel the phones and the cable TV. There are some debts that can’t be reduced, that we’ll just have to keep paying till they’re gone, like our gym debt. It was a good idea, and I’m happy we did it, but getting a trainer at the gym was, in all honesty, way beyond what we could afford and I shouldn’t have made us do it. We all live with the consequences of our actions, I guess.
So I have a month to figure out how to live the next five years on the cheap. Somewhere in there getting rid of my $40,000 school debt, saving a down payment for a home and perhaps even starting a family. Cloth diapers are still nouveau-chic, right?
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