Just Another Day

The weather this past weekend was nothing short of perfect.  

In between various necessary chores*,  I rode over to Deltaville with my friend Thomas Buchanan,

who drove all the way from Pennsylvania just to take me to dinner on Saturday.
That's just how nice and thoughtful he is.

This sailboat was quietly soaking in the beauty of the blue skies and the slowly setting sun.

*Some of the necessary chores on Saturday included weeding the beds in the back of my house, where I perhaps naively intend to plant some tomatoes, peppers and cilantro this week on my "days off" from work.

(Although I gave myself Saturday evening and Sunday off, all I've done is work around here otherwise, and there is so much that still needs doing. It's rather depressing.)

Hoping to multitask and catch some rays while weeding, I donned a two-piece bathing suit, cranked up the iPod for musical motivation, and focused intently on the waist-high weeds in the heat of the late morning sun.

Memorial Day weekend is a very busy one on Queens Creek.  If the neighbors aren't lounging on (or diving off) their docks, the boaters are busy pulling gleeful tubers and boarders at wide-open speeds or trolling for fish.  Or just cruising along admiring the scenery.

Sometimes that scenery can be frightening one-of-a-kind.

In between mopping the sweat from my brow and fending off ants and other creepy crawlies while laboriously plucking weeds in the gradually overbearing heat, secretly seething inside that all these other people were out enjoying the very creek I only admire from my yard--on a holiday weekend no less--I noticed peripherally that a boat was slowly approaching my shoreline.

Oh please don't let this be someone I know, I thought.

I was covered in dirt, sweating profusely, and wearing a two-piece bathing suit as if I ought to be even though I shouldn't be--a combination in very clear violation of Rule #2 in the You're Almost 50 Even If You Feel 18 So Just Stop It Now-- Please! book.

It's a book I've been writing in my mind for a while now, with an entire chapter devoted to this bathing suit thing. There is lots of back and forth between surrendering to the skirted two-piece (which is really a one-piece--with a skirt!) vs. forcing an older body into a two-piece clearly designed for someone who hasn't eaten anything except air for 49 years.

Anyway.

I was in a bathing suit I would never wear in public, pulling weeds on a hot, sweaty day with very little good to focus on except the music which happened to turn to a song I love. With a great beat.

Breaking into a spontaneous dance, weeds held high like pompoms, I completely forgot about the boat that just a few short minutes earlier was hugging my shoreline.

Well, they saw it.

They saw my spontaneous, motivational, refocusing-on-weeding dance in a bathing suit that only the ants and creepy crawlies were supposed to see. Weed pompoms and all.

The reason I know they saw is because when I went indoors to get some water, I sat down for a break and happened to check Facebook.  Although there thankfully was no photographic evidence, there was a quick line written on my wall, "Come weed my flower bed next," from friend Thomas Hunley.

Who saw the whole thing from his boat which was hugging the shoreline on Memorial Day weekend.

Life in a small town in the age of modern technology.

I am eternally grateful that the ants and creepy crawlies do not have Facebook access or cameras on their cell phones.

Note to self:  Get a new bathing suit and think long and hard about any future attempts at yard work during one of the busiest boating weekends of the year.  Especially with dance music playing in the background.  Thanks in advance. From everyone.