Drinks With Doug

Day Trip

Tuesday's weather: surprisingly warm for a cool, near-autumnal day. Sunny with few clouds that evaporated at sunset, low humidity, fresh wind. My basil and rosemary still producing, the thyme is dying back and the sage saggy.
Tuesday's drink: Jolly Green Giant, although it's really not so giant. Making me jolly, tho'.
Tuesday's link: OK, I Want In On This.

It's 6:08pm and I still have stuff to do. Every moment, practically, of nearly every day has a little floating list of things to do. Waah.

It just struck me this morning, packing up my gym bag with a, b, c, that it was as if I was taking a little day trip.

Day trips. Remember those? I took one last weekend: out to the Bay Saturday afternoon around 3:30p, catching up with P & G, collecting late harvest in the garden, searching through the bad movies for later, appetizer, dip into the hottub as the sun fell, dry off and out to light the bonfire, watch it blaze, blaze, down, down, down to reasonable, inside to prep a little dinner, garlic-coated steak roast over campfire, potatoes, onion shallot and oil reduction over top and garden fresh salad, "Diary of the Dead" (Lord it's dreadful), a dessert scotch and more fire and into and out of the pool, ice cream and "Whitest Kids U Know", off to sleep.

Wake in forest still, watch the room lighten as the sun wakes the birds, fresh walk (hike) to mailbox for Sunday paper and back, coffee going, quiet of morning paper coffee sunshine on Bay, boys wake and make breakfast, off back to town at 11:30, home again to make summer tomato sauce (there's no link! email me for recipe!!!), fresh sauce and pasta dinner with basil, oregano and tomato from yard, time on the couch with C, asleep by 9p.

Packed a lot in there. Mostly tedium for the reader. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

The end of this: waking today at 6p, turn alarm off before it rings, sneak downstairs setting bedroom door ajar, swap out dog water old for new, prep and make coffee, contemplate Cheerios for breakfast and decline, watch for weather on tv and shut it off, two cups of coffee and upstairs, one beside C when he wakes, the other inside the bathroom, shower shave eyes in brush teeth cologne on more coffee, root around for clothes to wear, down on floor for a few minutes of pets with STG, put on bare esstentials, carry STG downstairs, take her our and prepare her breakfast, back upstairs for more coffee, kiss C, finish dressing, pack gym bag with togs, letter to mail, iPod, ID for work, hunt for rings and phone, grab wallet and keys, stow sneaks in bag, grab suit to take to cleaners, one last taste of C, out the back to take out recycling, suit to cleaners buy paper on Metro mail letter buy breakfast wrap sit down at desk and toss down gym bag.

I write this not to bore you *ahem* but just to observe. Spend a moment watching the pattern. Is this normal? Is this what people do? Is this what I imagined life to be? Is this life, or the holding pattern until I find it? Is there meaning in the doing? Am I the sum of my habits and patterns, or more? And if more - what then? Am I fully in the moment in these activities? If not - what am I losing?

You see, everything is complicated with me.