July was, um, spectacular. And busy. And I somehow spent a lot of time being busy at trying to do nothing. Does this happen to you?
It happens to me in one of two ways usually:
1. I intend to plan relaxing activities. Fun summer stuff. Like playing by the creek. But relaxing takes a lot of effort. There is sunscreen and bug dope. Snacks. Water bottles. Sandals for bare feet. Jars & nets for catching bugs. Fishing rods. Wheelie strollers with flat tires. Bear bells. More snacks. Long discussions of how to pan for gold. Slimy seaweed skin treatments. Mucky smelly mud. Sandy silty mud. Protecting the camera from mud. Hauling boards to make structures. Buckets to pick chokecherries. Screwdrivers and mallets to experiment on the chokecherries. Discussion of a rope swing. Plans for an asparagus patch.
2. I intend to do nothing. I sit on the back porch (sidebar: I call it the back porch but, technically, it is the side that faces the road so it is the front porch.. but we come in the other side so I consider that the front.... anyway... I guess I should call it the west porch). I have a cool drink, a magazine, some quiet tunes on the ipod and kids playing in the yard. I see something that needs fixing. I fixate. Then I fix. Pretty soon I have the entire contents of the gardening bucket strewn across the yard, I'm sweaty, I've made a list 3 pages long for the hardware store and it starts with "quickcrete" and there is a two-foot hole trenched in the grass and I'm thinking, "How am I going to explain THIS ONE to Hot?"
No comments:
Post a Comment