Only 1.5 more weeks to vacation and I’m getting a little antsy. I want to stop setting an alarm for more than the two days of the weekend. I want to have long, unstructured days where I can do whatever I want, or nothing. I want to spend time anywhere but in front of a computer for 8 hours at a stretch. I want my shoulders to go down to where they belong and stop being hunched up around my ears. I want to read a book a day. Or play games, or read or watch TV or do things on my to-do list that I don’t have to wait for the weekend to do.
The cockatoo next door is outside in his cage, screeching. It’s one of those perfect summer evenings with a light blue sky fading to white, a little breeze that is ruffling the treetops and almost no noise. I can hear far-off traffic, very faintly, and the occasional yip of a dog and voices of children. I can hear bird songs and calls but very little else. It’s nice. After I write this, I’m going to go sit on the deck and read, and stare at the honeysuckles and if I hold still enough, maybe some of those birds will come visit the freshly filled birdbath for a drink.
After work, I dialed down for about an hour, and then I went for a long walk, longer than usual, around the village. The sun felt so good on my shoulders. I went up the side of our neighborhood, over to the school, and then down along Promenaden around the other side of it. Then I followed a tiny footpath along the back of some houses, next to a huge field full of tall golden-tufted grasses that were swaying in the breeze and glowing in the sun. Along the west side of Körsbärsvägen, and then I turned and went west, chasing the sun down Tulpanvägen all the way to the main road that leads to Skarhult. It’s a tiny narrow sidewalk for part of that street, and I passed the old bakery and the entrance to the snail trail and turned right on Slåttervägen.
The house on the left has a huge fenced-in area behind it which is home to two goats and two gigantic rabbits. If you greet the goats with a ME-E-E-EH, they stop and stare, and then they bleat back and come running in the hopes that you will stop and pull up some fresh long grass for them to eat through the big wire squares of the fence. The rabbits just look at you with disinterest and stay where they are. There are only a couple of houses, then it’s open fields and horse pastures all the way along the gravel road. There are always a few horses out grazing, and occasionally one will come over to the fence by the road to see what you are up to, if you stop, but mostly they raise their heads, check you out, and flick their tails.
There are two houses at the end of the road, one of which is the house across the ditch at the back of our yard, and the other, which is the neighbor on the other side of our house. But you can’t get through to our neighborhood from there, you have to go around, following another tiny footpath along the edge of the horse pasture, and then through a tiny grove of woods, until you come up out behind the school and can follow the path around and back into our neighborhood. Altogether, it’s a decent walk and it has long stretches in shade and long stretches in sunshine.
We had a couple of very hot and humid weeks, but the last few days have been perfect, in the 70s and sunny, with some thunderstorms and downpours to shake things up. It’s supposed to start edging back up but I really hope it doesn’t get as hot as it was. It’s hard to wish for more of this perfect weather when so many parts of the world are suffering from climate change weather patterns that are indiscriminately destroying things with flood and fire. And yet.