the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

i remembered how it felt to be 11 again.

Today, all day, I've been uncharacteristically mellow. When I woke, my legs were tired, probably from a brief period last night when I succumbed to Zsa Zsa's efforts to get me to play with her. I decided not to ride my bike to school. The morning was chilly, but the day was otherwise wonderful. I took the buses to school, gazing at the snow-capped mountains in the sunshine and framed against an impossibly blue sky.

Class was good. I was prepared and interested (always helpful). I'm where I should be with my reading and my research for my papers, so while I don't have time to lose, I don't feel rushed.

I'm trying to recall the last time I didn't feel rushed. It must have been last summer when I was on leave, but still, I had projects to be working on and guilt when I didn't get to them for a while, so I still that vague underlying sense of running behind. Even when you have no externally imposed deadlines, you have the internally implied ones. They take the form of "this summer, I will...." Most of them don't get done, of course.*

* Why do we do this to ourselves? Even when I know I've piled too much on my own plate and won't get around to everything and will plague myself with feelings of worthlessness because I don't care to meet my own deadlines, I don't seem to know how to not make them.

After class, I felt...free. It wasn't an exhilerated freedom, like when you were a kid and your parents left you alone in the house for a few hours and you raided the kitchen watched shows you weren't supposed to on TV. It was an easy freedom, a "world is my oyster" freedom. It was a calmly interested freedom.

I took the bus back to the Broomfield Park and Ride, then decided to walk to Lisa's from there. It's about 3 miles, which is a comfortable walk for me. I was wearing jeans, a comfortable teeshirt, and my Birkenstocks. I had been listening to Daniel Deronda on my phone, but realized I was no longer listening to it when I struck out, so I switched to Pandora,* where I have an odd mixture of music types, such as Loreena McKennit, Beth Hart, Cake, and Collective Soul.

* In case you've been under a rock, Pandora is an internet radio station. You select the type of music you like, and it will selected several artists and tunes which are similar to the type you have chosen. You can fine-tune your station further by giving specific songs a thumbs up or thumbs down. It's a wonderful way to find other artists you may like.

I ambled home in the spring sunshine, with the breeze blowing strands of hair in my face, and Pandora crooning in my head. I paused to watch a pitch or two of a little league game at the city park, smiled at a young man teaching his son to field a ground ball in his front yard, admired artwork and architecture, looked at the buds on the trees, stepped aside to let a kid on a bicycle pass on the sidewalk, thought about how soon we'll be mowing the grass again....

It was a moment in time. I took a vacation in my head. I'll be back and busy tomorrow. But today...? Today was a good day.

d