A Perfect Saturday

1. Get up early – perhaps not quite as early as I did nor with as little sleep as I had, but certainly before you could go to the grocery store or run this errand or that. I’d say 6am at the latest.

2. Read – something light and fun but with enough biting with to keep it interesting. How about something like Jasper Fforde’s “The Fourth Bear”

3. Make a grocery list with all of the possibilities for lunches and dinners for the next week. It exciting to dream ahead to a grilled chicken salad adorned with tomatoes you’ve grown yourself (or picked up at the farmers market) grilled on your new back deck with its sweet little baby grill.

4. Have a lovely time at the market. If everything is not new to you, pretend it is. I walked down each isle marveling at all of the new stuff I could buy.

5. Arrange your new purchases in your cupboards. This is not yet habit for me. I am still deciding where things go and how to put things.

6. Have tea and toast with blackberry jam or, if you are feeling decadent – and I always am- with nutella. Nothing is better then sitting in your new little sitting room in your new comfy chair and reading that last chapter of the book you’ve loved from page one.

7. OK< Now you’ve pampered yourself and you’ve done your shopping. It’s still quite early. Ten am even. I went to run another errand. Pick up a few things for the new place at a local store. A brushed metal coat rack for the hall, a new set of sheets, perhaps a knickknack or two. Take them home and arrange them. I cleaned a bit as well and “finished” unpacking (are you ever really finished?).

8. Now it is noon. Time for a quick nip of a shower and a bite of lunch (Left over pizza from the night before) and off to a Belly Dancing class.

9. I highly recommend belly dancing, esp. with a friend. This was an introductory course. Having a friend along will allow you to laugh at yourself rather then take yourself so seriously. The instructor was marvelous. And marvelously six months pregnant. If belly dancing gives you that body, I am in, even pregnant she was tight and lean and sensual. I learned a few things in the 3 hours of class. It certainly made me want to take more. I am no dancer for certain, but feeling your body move to music centers you and belly dancing makes you pay attention.

10. After that class, hang out with that friend. Do some errands with her. Chat.

11. Dinnertime, already? But of course. Pick up a few small bites at the local organic grocery store. Don’t bother making dinner; you’ve had a full day.

12. Share dinner with another friend, one that doesn’t care if you are sweaty from dance class. One that will arrange the supper, pour you a big glass of wine and serve your dinner to you on the couch. This friend will also clean up after dinner while.

13. His cleaning up will allow you to take a long hot bath with a new book and a glass of wine. I chose to read Frances Mayes “A Year in the World”. What a better way to get to know a travel book then a hot soak. She describes a year of adventure she had while traveling to places she had always wanted to go. It’s your basic travel book. Describing places and food but this one hits closer to home. TO the elemental travel need that I have and the realization that my own journey, although it started 6 months ago now – almost to the day - is really as long as I make it and starts when I want it to. So I decided August 1st of this year was the beginning and it will run for 1 year. I will travel my own life and write about the new person that I am. Oh, there will be history thrown in, there has to be, it reflects and informs whom you are, but the history will not be the journey.

14. Dry off from your bath and move to the bed. Bring your book, but tonight you won’t need it, instead you will have long and slow sex many times over until the combination of the early hour you awoke, your dancing, drinking and soaking all catch up with you and lull you into a land filled, for the first time n months, with lovely dreams full of women dancing and yourself being free and floating. Taking control of yourself and your own world. This is your year. Your year to do as you please be, as you want to be. You are no in the world, you are the world.