A Good Day Off

I was at another conference for work over the weekend, so I took yesterday off. First day of Spring in the Southern Hemisphere. I’d got home tired and cranky on Sunday night, fit for nothing but shoveling down the lovely dinner G had waiting for me, but Monday was bright and sunny and I thought, even though I had a lot of errands to do, that I would have a nice day.

My first order of business was to go to the dentist: for a check-up, this time, instead of an emergency. (I turn forty in six months and feel I should have conquered this adult thing by now). There’s nothing like a trip to the dentist to make you really understand the social determinants of health: 120 dollars for a fifteen-minute consultation wherein he took some x-rays (hence all the dollars, I guess) and scraped at my teeth a bit only to tell me that one of my many many fillings is loose and needs to be replaced, for even more money. I paid my bill and counted my blessings and went home to meet G, who texted me right after he got to work to tell me he’d decided to take the rest of the day off so we could hang out together.

We went to Zealandia, one of my favourite places in Wellington. It’s just a wee bus ride up there and we’re both members so it’s easy to go just for a couple of hours without having to make a big deal about it and bring a backpack or something. We had lunch at the café and went for a walk through the lower parts of the sanctuary—to go all the way up the valley you’d want to pack a snack. We saw four extremely fat and unconcerned kererū, a pair of my beloved saddlebacks, what maaaaaay have been a grey warbler but I was too far away to really tell, pied shags on a nest, kaka, the elderly takahē who use the sanctuary as their retirement village, and of course the extremely loud and ubiquitous tūi. I love being able to go there with no purpose or goal—no desire to Have An Experience–other than to walk around and look at things for a while. It was sunny at first but too chilly to really enjoy it after a while, so we bussed back to town and I bought some fancy face oil and then we went home and ate cheese.

During all these pleasant activities (except the dentist visit, wherein I mostly thought about my escape and how soon I could make it) I thought about: what the native New Zealand bush would have been like before humans got here; what the best way to give to charity is (monthly direct debit?); Dirty Politics; my job or my career or whatever; how glad I was that G took the day off to spend with me; how glad I am that I am able to keep my pantry stocked with good food so that when I come home from a day out I can put something together for dinner quite easily, without much in situ planning; my mild anxiety concerning my upcoming haircut with yet another new hair lady and how I hope it will be a less disappointing experience than my last haircut with my last new hair lady; if I should even be worrying about my stupid hair at all when there are much bigger and more important things to worry about; how much I love peanut m&ms; how grateful I am for flannel sheets even though it’s technically spring now.

It was a good day off. It was a good day.