Lost Arts

Tonight, I sat out on the back porch after dark, eating angel food cake with sugared strawberries.  In the background were the delightful tones of young girls splashing in the swimming pool practicing their spokesmodel voices doing pretend makeup commercials.  It was warm but not too hot.  The water was fine, until Grace swallowed a feather (the skimmer isn’t working).  I chased the cake with a cup of hot coffee (because really, when isn’t that a good thing?) Out of my Santa mug. A good thing too.

It was one hell of a day, and I stopped even pretending that I wasn’t in a ferociously foul mood.  People noticed.  And really, nothing was so bad about it, it was just one of those days when most things didn’t turn out right, my phone rang off the hook and I was in full agreement with my friend Nancy’s labeling – it was a Woe is Me Wednesday.  It was a lovely thing to come home, and sit on my back porch (after running errands, cleaning the house and making dinner, of course) and relax.

I don’t do that enough.  I don’t take time to look around and breathe.  Leisure is a lost art in our lives, and I struggle with the constant tug of productivity, which sits like the angel on my right shoulder whispering constantly in me ear “do more” “it’s not enough” “keep going” in contrast to leisure, that devil, kicking back in a lawn chair with a Mike’s Hard Lemonade on the left side sighing contentedly “Mmmmmmmmm.”  I deserve both, but I can’t figure out how to have both.

Sometimes, while we are fighting the good fight, whatever it may be, it is nice to be reminded of things we have lost, and things we know.  Today, at the tail end of the Bad Day for No Good Reason,  I asked my intern to do me a favor and type something real quick.  From the look of barely concealed panic in her eyes I came to the immediate conclusion that she had never seen a typewriter in real life.   Most days I would have been gentle, but today I waited a beat, laughed good and loud and bellowed “You don’t know how to use a typewriter!”  She is organized, motivated and bright beyond measure – but office equipment?  Not so much. 

I am grateful for a lot.  To right the universe for the badness I spewed today, I send out thanks. 

Thanks for strawberries.  Thanks for coffee. Thanks for my Santa mug.  Thanks for ten keys, and typewriters and the knowledge of how to use them. Thanks to the people who put up with me while I was learning how to use them. Thanks for giving me the power (somewhere down deep) to be patient with others while they learn to use them. And finally, thanks for Scarlet.  O’Hara. 

“Tomorrow.  Tomorrow is another day.”

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