balance...

I wanted to give a peek into my life.  The stuff that makes me happy and peaceful and full.  Days like today.  Nights like this one.  It just makes me so thankful for the gift of life, for friendships, for wonderfully perfect weather.

I am blessed to have Wednesdays off.  Each week, like clockwork, a day off in the middle of the week.  How crazy is that?  And, for the most part, they are just the best days.  Not because it's a chance to sleep-in, or be a bum, or have a marathon TV series session.

The days are much too precious for that.  Instead it's my time to be purposeful.  There are things that need to be done, of course, but whatever it is - it's done with purpose and joy.  Morning Mass, meditation, and restful solitude.  The most extraordinary way to begin any day of the week.  Calm, peaceful quietness.  Coffee with a friend usually follows.  Maybe for an hour, more likely two.  The farmer's market, which happens to be open Wednesday mornings (hello fresh peaches - yes, more please).  Then back home for a few hours of photography-focused progress.  Ordering, emailing, editing, educating, planning.  And then a nap.  Definitely a nap.  Thirty minutes to avoid bad-nap grogginess.  No one likes bad-nap grogginess.

Roommates come home.  Play cribbage and pretend to forget we were going to workout instead.  Paint nails with purple sparkly polish.  Roommates note how (ahem) classy it looks.  Try to shuffle cards with wet nail polish.  Fail.  Take a walk to make up for the cheese and crackers consumed during cribbage.  Soak up the most gorgeous, most perfect temperatured weather known to man, also known as autumn.  Exclaim loudly about how awesome it is and how you can't get enough and never want it to end.

Walk to friends' house who's having people over for wine and snacks.  Converse too long then walk back in the dark.  It's okay - roommate was loaned a head lamp.  Talk about boys and God and relationships and bras and joys and frustrations and life all the way home.

Read the comics and the advice column of yesterday and today's paper.  Laugh with roommates about our favorites.  Successfully complete the Sodoku.  Let out a little whoop.  Well, it's only Tuesday's puzzle, but still...

Attempt completing roommate's freshman theology exam she recently gave in class.  Have little success, but learn things in the process.  Write brain-flow post about this day and how all days should be like this.  How every day should be purposeful, restful, joyful and, at least part of the time, spent in good company.

Read myself to sleep.