Stringing one good day onto the last

I think I said at some point that I would, given the choice, maintain my 4:30am Fuck Yeah Early Early Wake-up Time even if I weren't working around a 9-5 job.  That I'd still relish those early morning hours before everyone in my house was awake.

Turns out I lied.  

I made that bold assertion before I had any notion that a break from the 9-5 was just around the corner, let alone a 6-week break, that I would get to experience what it's like not to have to cram the best parts of your life in before the job for 4 hours, then after for another 4.  

Since surgery on May 16th, the earliest I've gotten up is 5:30am which may seem early, but which is the just the normal weekday time around here. 

And after that?  The time after I get up? It's not the big rush-rush that characterized My Life Before.  It's something altogether different, something thoughtful, something in which I'm not madly "multi-tasking" (since there's no such thing).

Instead today I got up, swallowed the ibuprofen that is obligatory to my mornings right now, mozied to the coffee pot, took out and measured the unsalted butter I'll need later for the apricot tart that's happening in a couple of hours.  Then I thought about what I would need for the quinoa salad, also on deck for this morning.  All of that not so much slowly, really, as without tension, without zinging around the kitchen wildly like a fly searching for the exit.

Slowly.  Thoughtfully.  While still breathing.

And I think this is what The Good Life is all about.  All those people who talk about slow food have always made me a little bit crazy.  Or used to make me crazy in my old life, that is.  Because when you're living the way I was, banging about wildly from one thing to the other, trying to cram it all in, get it all done, meet all the deadlines, push the hamster wheel to the breaking point, who has the patience for food done slow?  Hurry the fuck up, went the voice in my head.  I don't have time for this shit.

That's a problem, right?  Sustaining that pace just destroys time altogether.

This leisure is temporary for me, but I'm hoping that the new tempo is not.  I want to be done completely with the headless-chicken rush-rush.  I really do want and need my own new sense of timing, this delicious taking of enough breaths and minutes to get stuff done consciously.

So that's what today's about, really.  In a little bit, after I post this, I'll cook the quinoa.  After that, after I've wandered around in the garden thinking of what I can pick to include in our lunch, then I'll make the tart.  Mid-day some friends will come for lunch, one of whom I haven't seen in 32 years.  We'll catch up, hang out, eat and laugh.  

It'll be another precious day in a string of precious days, like a figurative little rosary or mala I make for myself day after day, adding to this long, tasty memory of what it's like to live inside my life, how good everything is when I slow it all down and see it.

When this break is done, when in two weeks and two days I am back to my job, I'll still have this sense of ease and space. I'll carry it around in my pockets and under my skin, knowing I have it, coming back to it, feeling its beads under my fingers.