Perfect Day

Sometimes, when your expectations are low simple, you get exactly what you want.

Last week, on her blog, Stirrings and Stories, Jenna asked readers to describe their perfect day.

I wrote: my perfect day would be sunny and quiet and I'd have lots and lots of alone time to go hike in the woods, draw in my nature journal, read and write. Oh, and someone would have left me three delicious meals (and would come later to clean them up). Oops, somehow my husband and kids don't figure in to my perfect day (maybe I would let them come visit after I do all those other things).

This past Sunday was one of those crisp and cold but clear and sunny days we sometimes get in January. For breakfast I made rice pudding with all of the leftover rice from Saturday's Chinese New Year feast and spent the morning reading, both to myself and to E and Z. Then C took all of the boys to a bowling party, followed by a German waffle party (it is rare indeed for those four homebodies to leave the house on the weekend, but for them to attend two social engagements without me dragging them by their ears is unheard-of).

I spent the day reading and writing (or, more specifically, revising a short story for my first packet). I went for a hike in the woods (the snow is still not deep enough to necessitate snowshoes or skis) where I spooked an owl off his perch with all my noisy boot-crunching. I read and wrote some more. I munched on leftover eggrolls and tofu and rice pudding whenever I felt the urge, and sipped chai all afternoon. The house was already clean from Saturday and the only housework I had to do involved washing and hanging a few loads of laundry and keeping the woodstoves loaded.

My husband and children came and visited after all that, and I gave the little ones baths and read them a story and put them to bed, after which I returned to my books for another hour before falling asleep myself.

It was almost exactly like the perfect day I imagined and it was almost exactly perfect.