THANKFUL FRIDAY

The longest day of the year happened on Wednesday and we have official entered the time of year when all I want to eat is some kind of a salad. I’ve spent my free time this week collecting salad recipes into my NY Times Cooking app. Most of them are just variations of tomatoes and mozzarella tossed in a bowl with olive oil and salt. I plucked a red cherry tomato off of the plant in the garden this week and handed it to Michael. He promptly popped it into his mouth and exclaimed “Holy crap! That’s so much better than the flavorless cherry tomatoes I bought from the store!” The plant is loaded with tomatoes. The problem is they are ripening slowly, one at a time. I shouldn’t complain. Last year, I planted two tomato plants. They grew tall and leafy and green, but they did not produce a single piece of fruit. This year, I have a plethora of green tomatoes.

And I’m going to eat them. With mozzarella.

I’m normally not the type that pays much attention to solstices, but this year I couldn’t help but notice that the longest day of the year happened in the middle of the week, a short week for some. Short weeks are tricky because they always feel like extra long weeks. Maybe it’s because I try to cram in all the work I didn’t do on Monday into the rest of the week. Wednesday is that day of the week that is generally harder to get through on it’s own without making it the longest day of the year. It is a rough place in the week for that amount of daylight.

I have ridden my bicycle to work every day this week with the exception of today. Fridays are for scooters. By the time I made it home on Wednesday, I had decided that I was done with the bicycle for the week. I was tired. It was hot. My bicycle was still making a rattling sound like it was about to fall apart. Michael had already tighten up all of the things and determined that the sound was coming from the battery being a little loose in the housing. Nothing a piece of tape or velcro couldn’t fix. We just hadn’t gotten around to doing it and once I knew my bike wasn’t going to fall to pieces while I was riding, I didn’t care about the rattle. But Wednesday felt different. For some reason, probably because I was tired and hot, that rattle was the worst. Plus, I just wanted to be home. That night, without any prompting, Michael went out and fixed the rattle. It turned out to be more than a loose battery situation. A screw fell out of the battery house when Micheal took the battery out to check things over. The rattle was indeed, my bike falling apart.

I still wasn’t convinced that I would ride the bicycle on Thursday though. I sat slumped on the couch and told Michael that I wasn’t going to ride the bicycle for the rest of the week. He asked me why and I said “Because I’m tired.” He told me that was a valid reason, but even though I was moving a little slower than usual the next morning, it was the bicycle that I pulled out of the garage. I did for a micro second almost change my mind when I had to turn around a block later because I’d forgotten my helmet. I spent most of my ride peddling away while lost in my own thoughts. The morning weather was pleasant. I was exercising without really exercising and I wasn’t mad about any of it. I’d just finished mentally scanning the grocery list and reminding myself to add ‘coarse ground coffee’ to the list when I looked up to see that I was only a few blocks from work. I felt really proud of myself because I had made a goal at the beginning of the year to ride my bicycle at least three to four times a week to work. Michael even purchased the things my bike needed to install a basket and bought me the case that fits on the back of my bike so I have something to carry my lunch box. He did that so I could ride to work. This is week four of consistent bike riding meaning at least three days a week I have ridden my bike to work and this is the first week I’ve been on my bicycle four days in a row.

This makes me want to high-five myself with gratitude.