The Megastore recommends.

I would like a patch for the
weather eye. Wouldn't you?

1. Keeping a weather eye open. I am, perhaps, in the minority here, but I do love a storm, and I do love a bout of weather descending upon us. I like the dark descending and I like it to descend decisively. This, however, is not what I am about to recommend. In fact, I'm starting to feel a little sheepish about my all snow or nothing at all! mentality.

What I'm recommending instead is the historian's weather eye, which is focused on the warm afternoon and the opportunity for a bike ride.


"I don't know if you're interested, but I thought I'd take Bruiser over the playground and let him romp around," he said to me, peering into my cave/study. Where I was huddled over my laptop, grading.

"Give me five minutes," I said, thinking, I can just finish this discussion.

Which I did, almost, and then put my shoes on.

"If you wanted to, you could ride your bike over," he said. "Or otherwise, we could take your car."

That's because the back of his car is filled with his bike. In case beautiful weather breaks out and he can take a spontaneous ride.

"No, I'll ride my bike." And, reader, that bike was a good reminder that on a golden afternoon, regardless of whether it happens to be in the first part of November when by golly it oughta be cold, you should bust out your bike for a spin if you can. And for heaven's sake, wear your helmet.

I personally like to don a pinafore
for my Friday morning writing.

2. Writing. This past Friday was my writing group. I kept thinking there might be a poem about to happen. I had been hauling around a lovely image for a week and a half, and then I came across another image and I thought I could get the two images together and they might copulate, as it were, and a bouncing new poem might be in the offing.

Alas, no. Even so, I did get the two images together and I thought some more about the slightly disappointing Michaelmas daisies that are in my front yard (they are a slightly wan color, where many Michaelmas daisies are a lovely more intense lilac), and so I looked up Michaelmas, which gave me plenty more material and I am BAM on my way to a poem, maybe. Feels good. I recommend it.

My quiet afternoons would totally
look just like this, if I were in Tuscany.

3. A quiet afternoon. Oh how I love a quiet afternoon. I sometimes fight with myself about the overflow of joys I have in my life (the fact that I fight with myself about them is absurd and yet ongoing). But when a quiet afternoon happens--unspoken for, without claim--I love it, and when I seize it with all my energy and powers, it makes me feel restored and capable, like I am living my life and it is not living me. You can grade, read the paper, and eat a sandwich, take a break. You can make a list and check things off the list one two three. Quiet afternoons are so choice! Should you have the means, I highly recommend that you pick one up.

Did you know that naps had science?
They do! This graph is science!

4. Nap Saturday. I don't want all my Saturdays to be nap-centric. But sometimes after a very busy week, when you haven't slept all that well and you have run hither and yon and you are perhaps behind in your work, a nap will be just the thing. A nap will make you lie down and stop running hither and yon. A nap will slow you down. A nap will let your cells unclench their cellular fists. A nap will make your limbic eyelids stop twitching. A nap will put you in your comfortable clothes and make you soak in the sunlight pouring in the window. A nap, in short, will save your life, if not forever then for today, and today is something worth saving, now, isn't it?