delights and disasters

This is a long four day weekend. My office was closed on Friday, but nevermind, I'm off on Fridays anyway. Monday is the 4th of July. I don't have to go back to work until Tuesday. I had made up my mind to treat this long weekend as a holiday and only do things that I really liked to do. It could be work as long as it is work I like to do. No dusting or vacuuming. Friday morning as I was leaving for my final physical therapy session B told me that he had forgotten to take in his car to the dealer the night before. There had been a recall to fix something. We had settled in on Thursday evening and watched The Rite. Any scary movie that turnes out to be half way decent is a delight to me. I love scary movies but find it harder and harder to be scared by them as I get older. The devil is always someone who can shake me up a little.
So I followed B to West Herr and dropped him off again at home causing me to be a half hour late for my appointment. But they are pretty lax over there about appointment times and that's a delight. I graduated from PT and that is also a delight. I'm fixed! Stopped at Starbucks for a coffee and a vanilla bean scone and enjoyed it outside while sitting in the sun on a perfect day. Another delight. I followed this up with grocery shopping which is a task that I enjoy.

I told B that I would like to go on a bike ride with him if he had plans to go. He did have plans so he took my bike from the hook where it hangs in the garage and pumped up my tires for me. I felt a bit wary, leary of having my feet clipped in again. Every year on my first few rides I have to get used to this feeling. On more than one occasion I've stopped my bike, forgotten to unclip and fell right over. Also the heavy traffic on the way to the bike path makes me a bit nervous. But once on the path I become one with my bike. It has always fit me perfectly and together we are a well oiled machine. Our ride takes us from the house to the UB bike path through Ellicott Creek Park, along Tonawanda Creek Road



and into downtown Tonawanda

to the Erie Canal where I stopped to eat an apple and B saw someone who works at the college. He called to her and she looked at him with a confused expression on her face. He said you're Sandy and she said yes but clearly still did not register any recognition of him. He said I'm B from the college. Still confusion clouded her face. He finally told her his last name and she said oh my yes! She is used to seeing a serious looking man dressed in a suit. Not a man dressed in Spandex bike shorts and a colorful Tour de France bike jersey with a smile on his face placed there by performing his favorite activity. I didn't fall over, I rode fast and didn't feel worn out (only invigorated) by our 25 or so mile bike ride. Also at one point along the path a young buck (deer) pranced alongside me not to mention all the other young bucks I saw on the path. So my bike ride was a delight. We ended our day watching the movie The Mechanic. I didn't think I was going to like this movie so the fact that it wasn't bad at all was also a delight. The temps were in the low seventies all day without a cloud in the sky.



Saturday....another beautiful day. Just a little warmer, still cloudless. I decided not to go to the BAC like I usually do on Saturday morn. A delight not to go. I made delicious waffles for B and I. Then I took my book out on the patio and vowed to finish it before I did another thing. The thing is...I have always loved to read...but I have read less and less over the past few years because it seems there are always other things that need doing and when I sit down to read I fall asleep. This has made me a slower reader. Seems you need to practice your speed reading skills often to remain a speed reader. So now I seem to hear the words in my head when I read. It distresses me that I read like this. This is a disaster. I'm making an effort to improve. I've read three books in the past few weeks. So I'm reading and reading and time is passing and I should be done but I'm not. Lunchtime comes and I'm still not done with my book. I have some lunch and finally finish at about 1:30. The delight in this was sitting on my patio in my beautiful yard on a beautiful day and seeing this delightful baby bunny who posed for me so nicely.



This post is taking me a long time and I am starting to feel anxious. I know there are other things I should be doing. Other things I want to be doing. But I like doing this also so I breathe deeply. I listen to the words of my wise sister who says that nothing is more important than what you are doing at this moment. No task is more important than any other and I should live in the moment. So I continue on even though I wonder why I am doing this. Who am I doing it for? I am doing it for me I guess. Because I want to.

This above photo points out both delights and disasters. The most obvious disasters are the mess and chaos. The metallic speckled white Formica countertops with the metal trim. The Margarita is a delight and a disaster. It tastes so good and it makes me happy. I love to drink it out of that beautiful glass. But I also worry that it has a lot of empty calories that I don't need and there is a lingering worry that maybe I've been drinking a little too much and deriving a little too much pleasure out of it these past few years.



This is lemon sugar. I bought it several years ago because the container delighted me. I'm using it to sprinkle on sage cookies made with sage from my herb garden. The first batch I timed and they came out perfectly. The second batch I forgot about for a few minutes and they were browned just a tiny bit too bit. But this turned out to be a delight. They are crunchy like a cracker. Is it a cookie....is it a cracker? It's both and they are both delightful.

I started this post because I wanted to see if I had experienced more delights or more disasters these past couple days. I felt like they were maybe equal. But I'm seeing by writing this that the delights are far outweighing the disasters.



these are the sage cookies



Now these really are a disaster. These are my favorite cookies in the whole world. I make these often. They are made with special dark cocoa and a whole teaspoon of pepper. Something seemed wrong when I was cutting these cookies for baking. It didn't seem like it was making as many as it usually does and they looked so smooth.



Here they are baking....another disaster...my dirty oven



and here they are in the trash.....I forgot the sugar. The recipe calls for a cup of sugar. Cookies with dark cocoa and pepper don't taste so good when you forget the sugar.



This a dish from my lusterware collection. My lusterware collection never fails to delight me.



These are marbled eggs.....or they were supposed to be. After boiling them I cracked the shells and soaked them in strong Earl Grey tea. I don't know how anyone else does it but even though the shells were cracked the membrane underneath prevented the tea from getting in and marbling them properly. These are a disater if you compare them to how they are supposed to look but they still look kind of pretty.



This guy is always a delight.

For dinner I steamed clams for me (a delight), barbequed chicken for B. I made potato salad with fresh dill and parsley from my delightful herb garden. We followed this with the movie Devil. Another scary movie that turned out to be a little better than expected.

I should do this more often. My life seems a little more delightful than I expected.