Tuesday, May 31, 2005

A day in the life of leisure

Summer is here! What a beautiful day for not having to go to an office. So little motivation to work on job hunting today. Someone asked me the other day what I do with my time since I'm not working - that it must be boring. Here's today in the life:

  • Get up around 10, no need to get up too early (plus I was on the net late the night before)
  • Water the front and back gardens thoroughly. This is something that was totally neglected when I was working full time and I wondered why everything died. Water does do wonders for plants.

  • Have some breakie (aka the boy delivers a chocolate croissant)
  • Paint some terracotta planters - I'm going to use them as hanging planters and I wanted them to match my porch colors. (work in progress, the bottom will be dark green)

  • Bike with the boy (oh what a gorgeous day to bike) up to the house we are garden sitting to water the garden
  • Try to set land speed records on the little hill on the way home - its urban, the speed limit is 40km/h and there's not much room to work up momentum before traffic lights, but I hit 50 km/h and the boy hit 58. We were also both on the mountain bikes so we didn't have a very big gear and no drop bars to duck further from the headwind.
  • Move the deck chairs into the sunny spot on the back lawn facing the garden, sit and munch chips and salsa and barbeque (great day to bbq) some burgers for lunch, and chat a bit before the boy needs to get back to working.

  • Read a couple blogs and emails.
  • Go back outside to put more paint on the planters, and to sand the folding stool I picked from the garbage that I'm going to transform into a fab deck accent piece.

  • Smile as my neighbour that usually drives everywhere is biking back to her house. Discuss possibilities for equipping her bike to take her dog to the beach.
  • Bike to the library to return books.
  • Bike to the open air organic farmers market at Riverdale Park to buy ingredients for dinner. Buy basil and cilantro plants while I'm there.
  • Sit on the porch and say hi to a few more neighbours passing by, including a longish friendly chat with a neighbour that we previously weren't on good terms with. Although I must admit talking to the neighbours sometimes depresses me when the subject of stuff people steal and/or drug dealers that live in the area come up. I like being totally oblivious to neighbourhood problems. It feels nicer that way.
  • Walk to the store to pick up a few more dinner fixings and to try to find a plastic planter box to transplant the herb plants I bought at the market into. Want to build a cedar railing box to house the plastic box, but that will be tomorrow's project.
  • Find the neighbour that was going to photocopy flyers for the street sale I'm trying to organize to touch base. She was also mentioning the drug dealers. Doh. Don't want to know these things. Why if everybody seems to know about it, and people actually see them drop packages to vehicles over their fence, and the police don't do shit about it, is beyond me. (I always thought they were white trash, but never suspected the dealing part) She was also mentioning about riding her bike to work and getting buzzed too close by cars despite having her 2-year-old on the bike seat on the back, so she prefers the sidewalk. Cars not passing adults safely is bad enough, but a toddler? Sad. I didn't mention the hazards of the sidewalk as I'm assuming she rides slow and cautiously while on the sidewalk (or else she would quickly not find it preferable) Maybe next time I will tell her about the Can-BIKE II course the city offers for defensive cycling and she if she wants to sign up with me. I wouldn't mind learning some new defensive just in case maneouvers.
  • Cook up the farmers market goodies (asparagus and mushrooms) into yummy pasta.
  • Veg in front of the t.v. and eat
  • Wanted to knit more of my Soleil tank top but its now 11:00 and I'm writing this, and I'm at the point where I have to divide for the neckline so I should probably concentrate.

See time just flies by when yer having fun. Tomorrow I hope to finish the planters, paint and buy fabric for the stool, do some knitting, and attend the cyclist memorial. I may get sidetracked by the sunshine into just sitting and rocking in my chair that came back.

Comments (3)