It’s been a pretty busy weekend, as I had family in town and was occupied by going to the locks and going out to dinner and going shopping and going on walks. This week is full up too, as is next weekend. I am happy to be so social and to be running around and making plans and using the car a lot, but it was a nice little surprise to have all of yesterday absolutely to myself in Ballard, I have to say.
Mom and I went for a quick walk around the neighborhood before I had to take her to the airport, and as I was driving back I wondered what I would do with the rest of my day. All my housemates were out of town and I was slightly at a loss of what to do with myself. I started things out on a good note, though, by spontaneiously stopping at the Safeway on 15th and by serendipitously running into Mrs. Roboto. I have never seen Mrs. Roboto in anything less casual than a skirt in heels, so the only excuse I have for not realizing I was standing next to her in the 15-items-or-fewer aisle (I was getting plastic bowls and a cake pan) was just that I didn’t recognize her in shorts. She was wearing a very nice necklace though so I was sure it was her. We talked about book club and various kinds of berries to be had at the Sunday Market and as we parted I raised my fist in the air and went “BALLARD!” and she went “BALLARD” right back. I feel all denizens of my neighborhood should end conversations with each other that way. Seattle is a very neighborhoody city, if that makes sense, in a way no other place I’ve lived is, and of all the neighborhoods in which I lived since I’ve been here, Ballard is so far the most into itself. Capitol Hill is similar, I think, but I can never move there because my hair is all one color and also I don’t know how to parallel park, so I will have to be content with “BALLARD!” instead.
Anyway, I happened to have a tote bag on me and it happened to be Sunday, the day upon which the Sunday Market occurs, so after a mere twenty minutes of swearing under my breath trying to find a parking space I was out in the sunshine heading down to the market, feeling very…”jaunty”, I think, is the word I want. It’s hard to explain. Mom had bought me a new shelf-bra cami, and I was wearing it with nothing over top because it was hot and if I bother people because of the way I look in a shelf-bra cami with nothing over top that’s their problem, right? I was a little nervous wearing nothing over top but I was also wearing some new big hoop earrings and a scarf in my hair and I pretended to be a very cute French girl, all pointing with a smile to the exact pint of blueberries I wanted and weighing various bread options very seriously. I even talked to myself in French a little (“Okay, voici nous avons des fraises, et ici il y a…um…qu’est-ce que c’est le mot pour “pluot” en francais?”) I took some cheese and granola samples and listened to crazy hippie autoharp music and looked at handmade jewelry and thought about having a crepe for lunch. I bought a couple of pluots. I made it back to the car, still talking to myself in French (“Peut-etre j’ai besoin de la crème solaire quand je porte celle nouvelle shelf-bra cami”) and immediately ate a bowl of raspberries and blueberries and yogurt and some amazingly expensive and stunningly yummy honey that looks and tastes just like I imagine liquefied gold dust might. And it was only 1:00.
The rest of the day was soft and easy and friendly. I kept my scarf and earrings on while I I did some laundry and cleaned the kitchen and got a sort of sick sense of satisfaction from both. I made my breakfast and lunch for today and made sure to compost and recycle appropriately. I decorated my room with garlands of flowers and strings of pearls leftover from Burning Man two years ago and I finally felt justified lugging all that stuff around through two moves in two years because my room, I have to tell you, looks pretty great. Ooh, and I finally put up all my postcards on one of the walls that doesn’t have clouds on it so it looks even greater. The internet didn’t work in my room and so I was cast back to the time when I couldn’t check my email every five minutes and read a book instead. iTunes was especially psychic and gave me Aimee Mann and Stevie Wonder and Reindeer Section and Beastie Boys right when I needed them. I had the leftovers made by my mom the preceding night for dinner, which included a giant artichoke, which is always good and was snuggled in my clean-sheeted bed at eight thirty with a movie. This morning I woke up fifteen minutes ahead of my alarm because the sun was so bright in the windows.
Contentment is a hard thing to appreciate, I think, if you’re wanting excitement and change and newness. If you let it sneak up on you though, if you let in come in through the windows of a orange-smelling kitchen you’ve recently cleaned and up the stairs into a blue-carpeted room with flowers on the walls, it can gentle you just to the level of quietness your heart needs at the moment.