On a Day Like Today...

I simply can’t bear to be indoors...it’s just too perfect! Really, how many days do we get like this in the Midwest! If I could clone myself, I’d have one of me working on jewelry in my metals studio, but since I don’t have that option, I’m going to just hang with the cats...they truly are the best example of not having issues with doing nothing! I’m relishing the comfortable temperature, gentle breezes, and the sounds of late summer. So many people complain about cicadas, but I love their songs! The constant clicking and hissing takes me back to summers long ago spent visiting my grandmother, aunts, and cousins during vacation from school...it was a happy, carefree time. Twelve weeks spent away from nuns, readin’, writin’, and arithmetic were so welcome! Grasping onto sturdy vines and swinging to and fro on my Aunt Dorothy’s huge backyard willow tree, cannon-balling into the municipal swimming pool, catching fireflies in a jar, climbing onto the kitchen counter to help stir up a batch of cookies, playing Post Office and Spin the Bottle with my cousins and their friends...these memories come flooding in like an old friend I haven’t seen in such a long while! Last year at this time, I spent days beading on the screened porch, but as I’ve mentioned in recent posts, my beading muse has vanished and frankly, she needed a vacation! Perhaps it’s a function of age or maybe it’s that I’ve had my “shoulder to the grindstone” for most of my life, but I’m truly content to just “be”. I’m taking in what feel like the dwindling days of summer. Our prairie is showing signs that autumn is approaching as summer blooming milkweed, wild flowers, and grasses are trading their vibrant greens for shades of yellow blending into ocher. I don’t feel an inkling of guilt about doing nothing. Let’s face it, guilt is a useless emotion that serves no beneficial purpose.Old habits and work ethics nag and tell me I should get back to work, but my answer is “Maybe tomorrow or the day after, but not today!”