It felt like summer this weekend, of which I’m glad. I spend too much time in summer moaning about the heat of summer when really, I should switch modes so that I enjoy it like some plant lapping up the sun.
Stuart and I went home to Rhode Island for Father’s Day and if I’d taken the camera – if I hadn’t just fled our hot apartment on Friday with nothing but a weekend bag and a cranky mood – I could maybe show you how my parent’s house was the perfect place to be this weekend. We woke up late on Saturday and had breakfast while watching the unbelievable Ghana-Czech game (1:09 in, first goal to Ghana!) and then we lazed about and I did laundry and sat in the fragrant shaded garden sipping water with my mom and let my hair dry by hanging it over the back of the comfy chair.
We curled up into the TV room to watch the USA game while dad went to the store for dinner and man, was that game a bloodbath. After the game Stuart and I jumped in dad’s truck and went to Swan Point Cemetery (so gorgeous) for Stuart to practice his driving. Is that weird? Apparently, everyone in Providence does that and it’s one of the oldest, biggest cemeteries around – the back end of it is quiet and empty on a Saturday afternoon and the curved roads are perfect for driving practice. When we got back, my parents and I flitted around getting dinner ready – steaks and hash browns and salad and wine – and after dinner, we watched the meerkats on Animal Planet (Stuart: “Shouldn’t the little ones be meerkittens?”). Bedtime got stretched back because I couldn’t stop reading Scott Westerfeld’s Pretties until I finished it, ditto for Stuart and The Gods Themselves. It’s so nice to fall asleep right after finishing a gripping book.
We woke up Sunday, early, and jumped in the car to drive over to Seekonk to pick up the wicked cool Auto-Wrench I had reserved online from Lowe’s for dad. All the cool dads have those, they’re flying off the shelves. A special stop at McD’s for dad’s favorite bad indulgence – sausage biscuits – and we were home.
By the time we left RI at 4PM, we were stuffed with saganaki and fresh corn and watermelon, and the IKEA stop went well – new organizational tools for the office, whee!
Doesn’t that all sound boring? That was my weekend. But it felt so good, so relaxing, all the rush and hurry of my city week just drained out of me. My parents’ house is this oasis of neat and comfortable calm and their company buoys me up. I wish they lived closer, I wish I had a car and I love my city life and the subways and the heat and the calamitous fun but this weekend, a little, I wish I lived someplace where it was easier to remember what’s great about summer. Fresh corn, flip-flops on grass, afternoon rests on cool wide sofas, the sparkling bay blinking through the trees as you turn onto a quiet boulevard in the air-conditioned car … I will just have to make all those things happen for me here.
Except the car part. After two hours approaching the Trib in traffic last night with a seriously full bladder, I don’t need the car much.
OMG, I can’t WAIT for “Specials” to come out. I liked “Uglies” better than “Pretties” but devoured them both with the same intensity and am looking forward to reading the final installment.
Love the part about letting your hair dry over the back of a chair. *sigh*
i too retreated to the “countryside”…or at least out of the city for the weekend. VA hills, farms, and beaches never seemed so good.
summer is the doldrums of blogland. everyone is sunny, social, drunk and sleepy and no one has time to be angsty. it’s a seasonal thing. hooray for being dull and happy!
I think that one of the reasons you’re such a wickedly talented writer is that you have the ability to make everyday banal tidbits somehow unusual and flair-y. I don’t know what flair-y is, precisely, but I know it’s good.