Holiday weekend

It is the early morning of the third day of a three-day weekend. It is Columbus Day, or rather the day of the observance of Columbus Day. I doubt that many people other than east coast Italians know anymore what Columbus Day is meant to celebrate. If you're going to the parade, it starts at Fifth Avenue at 44th Street at 11:30 this morning. (In a nice balance, today is also Indigenous Peoples Day. I didn't know that until just now when I looked for a link for Columbus Day.) I will not be at a parade today. I will be doing my civil-servant-on-a-holiday-Monday thing, which is to say, whatever I want. I've been counting the workdays (20) since Labor Day and I'll be checking to see the number of days between now and Veterans Day. 


By happy chance, and perhaps a measure of God-knows-we-deserve-it, the weather has been glorious for the last several days. On Saturday I was out bright and early to get the dogs to an overdue grooming appointment, came home to do the Dance of the Washer and Dryer, mowed the lawn, sweating, cooled by the breeze while I filled my head and my lungs with the sweet yellow scent of freshly cut hay and the rich green billow of freshly cut grass. There was a particular area where, when I wheeled and faced west, the bouquet was head-spinning. The sun and the shadows, the aromas, the sight of the grasshoppers and crickets leaping out of my path, the small yellow butterflies arcing and dipping . . . pure intoxication. 


After the mowing, after the clean and trimmed dog retrieval, on the final round of laundry, pleasantly sluggish as the windfall-apple-drunk wasps, I sat at the shaded picnic table and read. 


What a gift is an eighty-degree day in October.