Did you wear summer clothes to work or school Thursday? The day that witnesses a 20- or 25-degree temperature drop in Milwaukee--there are usually more than one in any given year--has a unique ability to inspire negative self-talk. Did you leave the windows wide open and return to a cold house or apartment? Stupid! Did you work all day, expecting the nice weather to be there when you left? As pro-work ethic as I usually am, I have to admit: possibly stupid. The moral of the story, perhaps, is to do it--whatever it is--before it's too late.
Saturday and Sunday, I have a plan: to go off the radar screen for 24 hours. It's a plan I've been hatching for the better part of a year. On my meandering way to Crystal Lake, Illinois (oops! Guess I won't be completely off the radar), I'll search for the area's best hidden-away place to get a piece of pie and cup of coffee, and an atmosphere so friendly I forget I ever knew Alterra. Before that, I'll stop at the Blood Center and hope that this time, it's again a special order for Childrens' Hospital and not used to test the effects of some antidepressant or erectile dysfunction drug. Thankfully, the specter of ED has passed over this, um, door, but I certainly have felt like a guinea pig for antidepressants often enough.
Why these resolutions? I'm all too conscious of life's coming "stupidstice", when it will be too late to carry out the plan. Someday, there may no longer be that quaint place to get a hipster-free serving of coffee and dessert. More certainly--and more importantly--there will no longer be the desire. Such considerations will someday go on the back burner, and from there into the oblivion of being forgotten during the inevitable years of being grateful to be able to eat and drink at all.
While I prudently plan for a ripe old age, let it not be said that I didn't live while the days were long and hot. Let me savor every sunbeam of life's noon. To the last!
