It’s another beautiful weekend & I’m alone again, naturally (but that’s okay)

 

This morning I got a call from a couple friends, asking if I had any plans today, and did I want to meet them on the Southside & hang out.  (Do fortysomethings still "hang out"?)  I passed on the offer and said I already had plans for today.  After having a cup of coffee on my balcony and doing some laundry, I planned to head to the local library (seen above) & donate some old books, then take my new sketch pad (a gift from my niece Sophie) and find a quiet park bench & do some people-watching while I "doodle".

Drawing has always relaxed me…  after that I supposed I'd walk to the drugstore and then to the Chinese restaurant for lunch.  Come home, take a nap and watch an old Joan Crawford movie I taped off TCM the other night.  

My friend Tom joked that it sounded nice for an old man.  (On the other hand, a special friend I later chatted with said it sounded like the perfect day.  I am very partial to that special friend, a little more on that later.)

 

Here's my favorite bench in the park up my street, a quiet spot to draw and be alone without being alone

 

Anyway, that's just what I did--the only difference is that I stopped at the bakery for a miniature lemon pie, and had lunch at the Bellevue Cafe instead.   I haven't watched that movie yet though.   Are you really reading all of this?  Anyway, it's been a good day, and other than a long phone call earlier this evening, I spent the entire day alone, doing a whole lot of nothing and that's okay.  

Actually, I wasn't supposed to be alone this weekend.  My sister Shawn and her husband Jim went on an overnight trip to attend a wedding, and my little niece was going to stay a couple days here with me, eating hot dogs and Oreos (and anything else she wanted); but work & other time constraints got in the way of things, so Sophie and Uncle Doug's adventures will have to wait. 

 

Sophie (bottom right) on a recent test run riding a real school bus, for when she starts kindergarten in the fall

 

That's pretty much it.  We're already into the second week of July and it's been a very quiet summer.  Well... quiet, but not boring.  I've recently become rather special friends with someone in the last couple months, it's just not something I'm ready to write about here just yet...

 

A surprise package in the mail from that special friend, filled with goodies

 

I have no vacation plans, but there is talk in the office of a few of us getting together and going to Las Vegas in the fall.  (Las Vegas?!)  Normally I'd pass on something like this without giving it a moment's thought, but I dunno.... the people who want to go are real friends, and I've never been further west than Ohio. 

I'm more comfortable with libraries and quiet parks than bright lights and gambling, but I almost feel like it's something I have to do.  (Not for them, for me.)  I told them I appreciated the invite & would like to go.

Well, I know I didn't really have anything worth sharing here, I just felt like I needed to write something.  It almost seems appropriate, given this time of year when everything seems more relaxed and slower than usual... I remember summers as a kid, after Bible school & the annual family vacation, having nothing better to do than lie in the yard and chew on grass and be bored out of my skull. 

I enjoyed every minute of it, and that's pretty much how this weekend has been.