I will greatly miss the sounds of summer silence. I will miss the days when I can leisurely write during the mid morning and not hear anything but the voices in my head. I will miss the afternoon breezes when I paint in silence.
I will miss the extra sleep. Very concrete this one. When the treadmill is running, weekday naps can only happen after work and cat naps at 5:00 pm are so much less satisfying than crawling under the covers for an hour or longer snooze on a foggy late morning. I need to be out of bed consistently by 4:30 on treadmill days and so I am generally falling an hour or two short of my personal requirement of eight and and a half hours of sleep daily. Less daily sleep makes for a challenging day.
I will miss reading. Summer days bring novels and non fiction. They bring the chance to do internet research on so many topics. They bring the pleasure of a relaxing walk through periodicals like The Sun and Atlantic Monthly. I get the periodicals during the treadmill days, true, but they often pile up on the dining room table, patiently waiting for my attention. In summer, they get read immediately.
I will miss tomatoes, basil, strawberries, berries, corn and more from the garden. I will miss the chance to play a bit more with food because I have the time to experiment more and the tasty produce with which to experiment.
I will miss the beach. Treadmill days make it tough to get over there on any kind of regular basis. Even summer days are such that beach adventures are still strangers to me but, if you count vacation days in Ft Bragg or Monterey, as well as the easy 25 minute drive over to the Sonoma County beaches, then you will see that beach days are more a part of summer days than treadmill days.
I will miss the time to leisurely exercise. Don't get me wrong. I will exercise daily on treadmill days because I like to do that. I am a weirdo who enjoys starting her days with an hour of solitary physical exercise of one kind or another. But summer days afford a few extra minutes every day to extend the walk, take a morning bike ride, do additional stretching, or lift a few weights just for fun. I will do the basics but won't get to enjoy the extra moments of deep breathing and feeling my body thrive.
Now, lest you get the impression that there is nothing good about treadmill days, I leave you with a hint about another day's post. Treadmill days bring pleasures of their own. I'll let you know about those later.
I am counting down the days till my kids start school. I can't wait for structure to return and for my own trips to the gym at an early hour when all the machines are free and it's not 105 degrees outside.
ReplyDeleteToday I woke early just to make sure I could still do it. I can, but I think my kids are going to have a rude awakening in three weeks:)
I always think about the deliciousness of an extended time away from work and am always brought short by the mostly undelicious return. Nicely written.
ReplyDelete