Week two: small pleasures

Sunday: a wandering tour of Boston with K, hands snaked together. Two more tshirts to add to my growing cotton collection, postcards to shuffle through, and a swan boat ride around a pond, K allowing me to take photographs of us, hands stretched out. Genuine New England clam chowder, incredible and creamy, perched on stools just next to K, pushed up against the counter in a busy market. Bagels balanced on my knee, juice in a cup, plotting out our day on the map.

Monday: online catching up on Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives. No rehearsal (any more, strike last Saturday and a band concert tonight, which means it is all gone, only traces stacked in the scene shop. Penelope and Zephyr, home again, leaping about with muddy paws, home again. Reading in bed for an hour before sleeping, able to stay awake beyond a page or two, light on until I am reading for slumber. Not wanting to put the book down. Reading can be so difficult when you are stripped of all else, exhausted from fourteen hour days at school.

Tuesday: Teacher Appreciation Day. Allowing myself to realize that I am not terrible at this job.

Wednesday: Took a luxurious two hour long nap. Woke up sweaty and mildly distressed that I would have to find a way to fall back asleep in order to teach the next day, but I needed it. I came home cranky and exhausted. I woke up in a much better mood, not even annoyed that I would have to clean up dog diarrhea. (Which is, by the way, the grossest thing to scrub from a carpet.) Realizing patience when I also had to clean up more dog sick, celebrating what maybe would have dissolved into tears of frustration before, but now, another part of life, another moment that allows me to take care in the dogs and the surroundings.

Thursday: The color of the sky as I drive in, such a perfect multitude of blues, the kind I hope to see at my wedding. Puffs of white clouds sifting through the sky. An early release day today. Little bursts of color along the edges of the road, the edges of our lawn.

Friday: Quiet respect, standing at the edge of the school, watching as those in mourning circle around the rock. Standing next to a friend I am so glad has entered my life, so glad I can talk to about these things, so sad I will have to say good-bye to being a colleague. Every once in a while, the thrill of a Friday strikes me, as it did when I was in high school myself. This was one of those Fridays, full of anticipation. K and I celebrated our three months-away-from-our-wedding day by visiting the place where we will get married (it was the same on our one year away). We watched the sun set and danced in the sand.

Saturday: So much today--letterpress invitations, visiting campus, buying poetry for our walls, walking by the theatre, buying honey in a glass jar and lavendar soap, petting small dogs. Taking our own dogs into the woods, watching Penelope leap about without our hand tugging back at the leash, small butterflies in the forest. Dreaming of one day, when we might move there, our house a cabin, a light burning bright at the end of the night. Eating out at a fancier restaurant, ordering a martini bearing the name "Mississippi" and gazing across the table at the man I adore.