The Remains of the Day

This was supposed to be a posting celebrating and recounting the adventures of yet another September backpack trip into the Pennsylvania wilds. We had glorious weather all week, crisp mornings with warm and sunny afternoons. Weather beautiful enough to make all of us who were trapped inside at work during those days want to cry. I scheduled Thursday as a vacation day from work, anticipating that I'd seize the day!

Wednesday night, I began packing my backpacking gear, as the cat looked on anxiously. However, on Thursday morning, we awoke to rain. Drizzle at first, and then more of a pouring rain. My husband and I sat inside watching and waiting, but the forecast said there might be more rain in the afternoon. Shoot. So much for our backpacking trip. I went and put my gear away.

Shortly after noon, I was sitting reading my book, pouting a little, I'll admit, when my husband came to me and asked if I could go out and check out the "dead smell" in the shed. Well, of course, I ended up in the shed, pulling items out, checking for a dead mouse, which I eventually found and escorted outside. (If you are chasing dead mice, you will learn that they do not run very fast.)

In the meantime, my husband discovered that one of the bicycles in the shed had better tires than the ones on his go-to bike, so he set about changing tires from bike to bike, as I assisted and he swore. It was not how I had pictured things would go. I will sum things up succinctly: this was NOT the day I had hoped for.

By late afternoon, I was feeling pretty cranky indeed. What a wasted day, and using vacation time for it too! (Though I did pretty much read a whole book, so maybe it wasn't entirely wasted.) And then the sun came out, and my husband said, Why don't we go up to Jim's for a chef salad and then out for a little hike somewhere? And so we did. We seized what remained of the day!

And so we had a lovely meal at Jim's, featuring chef salads and crispy golden cottage fries. Everything was delicious and we ate every single bite. And then we stopped at a little park called Buffalo Run Park along route 550 on the way home to get some fresh air.

Golden light shone down on us, through the green trees. We walked along the creek for a little while, and we sat in our chairs for a little while and read, and then we played frisbee (a thing we have not done in YEARS) until dusk, and we drove home under a beautiful pinky-peach sunset. It turned out that it WAS a good day indeed.

The soundtrack song is for the sunshine that greeted us and changed everything after we almost gave up on this day: Katrina and the Waves, with Walking on Sunshine.

P.S. In a totally unrelated note, I received a lovely gift in the mail this week from a dear friend whom I've never met face-to-face. In honor of my oldest sister who passed away this summer, my friend (initials TR) made a blue butterfly for me. The Crittergators, Dancing Girls, and the trusty steeds all gathered around to enjoy the beautiful butterfly. You may see that photo in the extras. Thank you, kind friend!