The perfect summer day

Contains:

A lengthy breakfast of Mt. Bakery granola and fruit, black coffee and an almond croissant, all eaten with one hand while holding a book (The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan) open with the other.

A likewise lengthy perusal of my favorite bookstore, which is composed of several rooms (so many, in fact, that I somehow managed to lose my dad the last time we went to the bookstore together--after searching every possible room that I could find, including such unlikely sections as Popular Romance and Self-Help, I finally had to go up front and ask the clerk if he'd seen my dad. He had. He steered me to Music, where my dad was scanning How to Play the Blues Harp Today). In one of the rooms (containing Poetry, Women's Biography, Theater, Theology, Travel and more), the lights had been accidentally left off, and I snuck back in the darkest farthest backest corner for a few minutes, feeling the store big and silent and dark around me, the bookshelves looming and indistinct, before tracking down the aforementioned clerk and informing him about the outtage.

An afternoon at home with the kittens, practicing playing the guitar and the egg shaker at the same time (that's right--the egg shaker. And the guitar. At the same time) while the kittens climbed in my lap and attempted to nibble on my fretting hand.

A trip to the river with a sweaty, grumpy and fresh-off-work-from-the-farm Mitch, where we hiked out to a nice swimming hole and met Morgan and, by coincidence, Morgan's parents, and splashed and swam and floated in the current for a nice, long while. It was hot enough that we dried off in a matter of minutes after getting out of the water.

Stopping by the farm on the way home and harvesting salad greens, cherry tomatoes , cucumber and cabbage, to be used on Sunday for a scrumptuous farm-fresh lunch with friends.

Stopping by a berry farm after that and picking over some rather picked-over raspberries for a nice after-dinner treat that we later forgot to eat.

Spending the rest of the evening at home, drinking beer and eating veggie-rich quesadillas and playing with the kitties.

Going to bed sunburnt, slightly drunk and completely tuckered out.