a perfect day :-)

Today was gorgeous, one of those rare, late-summer jewels of a day where the sky was an absolutely perfect, clear blue all day long, and the air was fantastically warm. An I-think-I've-died-and-gone-to-heaven kind of day.

I'd gone up to the north end of town to run some errands and get breakfast, and got so caught up in the beauty of the day that I ended up spending two hours wnndering just to be out there as much as possible.

I started out with a short list: Breakfast; laundry; find motorcycle boy's work place; and stop at the co-op and Whole Foods for various things I couldn't get elsewhere.

***
Over the last few days I've thought about motorcycle boy a lot, wondering if I'd hear from him, if he got my email. After trying the phone number he gave me and getting that woman, I tore up the piece of paper he gave me in irritation, and deleted his email address and the email I sent him. I thought about calling the phone number again and seeing if the person on the other end knew anything - I had this idea that maybe she was an old girlfriend? And he'd given me her number to get even? Though I'm not sure exactly who he would have been getting even with. Very strange.

And the fact that he even thought to give me a wrong number - I mean, why not just say, hey, I'm not comfortable giving out my phone number, but I'll give you an email? But then that would have gone against his apparent urgency to go do something now rather than later. Still, very - what - hostile??? Why on earth would you be hostile to someone you just met and are trying to get to go somewhere and do something with you? (Scratching head in puzzlement.)

He'd given me enough clues about the boat shop where he works (which he said he's owner of, but I'm skeptical of *everything* he said, at this point) that I thought maybe I could hunt him down, and at least ask him about the phone number, and see how he acted/reacted in a non-spur-of-the-moment, late-night, slightly drunken situation.

I was thinking about it this morning, trying to explain why it matters. The explanation I came up with is that it's like an anchor point: I felt a strong connection with this guy, and I want to know where he IS. It's not that I want to *see* him, exactly, as in necessarily spending more time together; it's more like, if I know where he is, then - I'm not sure I can capture what I'm feeling in words.

It's kind of like a security blanket - if I know this guy's real, solid, actual, and that SOMEthing he said was true, such as that his place of work actually exists and I can find him if I want to - it has something to do with being abandoned, emotionally, over and over and over again in my life.

It's like, if I know where this person IS, then they can't abandon me, not really - because I know where to find them. It's not that I necessarily want to BE with them, I just want to - regain MY power in the relationship?

***
So I had that in mind, and it turned out that the laundromat I was thinking of going to is right near the area he described his shop being in. And the breakfast place I was planning on was pretty near by, as well as a couple of other errands I had on my list.

So I headed up there, but I got going too late to go to the breakfast place I"d originally planned on. I thought, well, there *must* be someplace up in that part of town. Then I remembered a place I"d tried before and not liked much, but which was very close to the laundromat. So I put everything in the car and headed up there, determined to just simply FIND a place that suited me for breakfast.

I got down there, and was suddenly intent on seeing if I could find motorcycle guy's place. Even though I was really hungry, I was even hungrier for a kind of - closure? that I think has haunted me through many, many relationships.

So I cruised around the area I thought was most likely, and in the process, came across a new restaurant I hadn't seen before, right on the corner of a very busy intersection, but with the dining area right adjacent to the busy bike trail rather than the street.

Not only was this place cute and clean, but the prices were cheap, and best of all, they serve breakfast all day! I'd been wary to even walk in to the place because it looked so high-end and urban yuppified. But I braved it, and was glad I did.

The cook took my order himself, so I was able to tell him exactly what I wanted. He fixed it PERFECTLY. Nirvana! Heaven! Sitting at an open-air table, in a gorgeous, sparklingly clean cafe, with



***
Days like this have to be saved up, savored, and stoppered away carefully against future chill, a talisman to ward off those bleak, dark, dreary days of winter.

***
Noticing (and I've noticed this before) that I have (or used to, getting better)
a tendency to 'forget' the good stuff that happens and focus on the bad.

So today I want to capture all the FABULOUS things that happened and not let the few relatively small annoyances get me down.



*don't think I've gotten into the whole chemical sensitivity thing much, here, but it's an ongoing battle. The washing machine here (that I share with the smoker neighbor in the downstairs part of the duplex) is a refurbished, replacement machine that my landlords got when our old machine died.

The old machine was great; the new one, not so much. I spent an insane amount of time when we first got it trying to get my clothes to come out not full of soap, but ended up, over and over again, with soap-filled, gray laundry that was getting shredded and stretched and basically ruined by this piece of crap. Plus, I was beginning to be able to smell cigarette smoke on my clothes, too - I think the old machine was good enough to keep that from happening, but the replacement machine was so lame and feeble that it just wasn't rinsing ANYthing properly, no matter how many times I put it through the rinse cycle. All it was doing was destroying my clothes, a little at a time, leaving them progressively more gray, dingy and damaged.

So I finally gave up, and eventually found someone who let me borrow his machine for about 6 months. When that stopped being an option, I tried *another* friend, who said I could come use their machine any time I liked, but they live 45 minutes away and are in the process of a massive remodel, and the first load I did there was fabulous, except - it all smelled of drywall dust. Sigh.

I'd been hunting around for a laundromat for a long time (since the old washing machine died), but every one I visited was so overwhelmingly toxic that I'd have a headached within seconds of walking into the place. Sneezing, eyes burning, etc. Just not worth it. Plus the idea of any of that touching my skin, or trying to sleep on sheets with that smell - I've been struggling with this for 30 years, ever since I first had a reaction to fabric softener in college.

It's never really let up, and was compounded during my architect years by 10 years of working in (what I'm pretty sure was) a 'sick building'.