An almost perfect Saturday

Get up at 7:30. Drink some coffee. Run a slow but steady 14 miles with B. Enjoy the sun, the tour of the local towns, and finish, feeling great.

Shower. The post-long-run shower is truly one of the greatest things in the world. Ahhhh...

Lunch with E at a local diner. Cheeseburger with garlic fries. Tons of diet coke. A glass of white wine.

Nap.

Wake to go to the grocery store and collect the ingredients for a long, slow, home-cooked meal.

Spend the better part of 4 hours cooking, mainly making acorn squash, sweet dumpling squash, potato gnocchi.

Prep the vegetables by washing and piercing. Bake the vegetables. Peel the vegetables. Rice the vegetables. Kneed the vegetables with flour until they are the right consistency. Roll out the dough into tubes. Roll the tubes into snakes. Cut the snakes into gnocchi. Boil the gnocchi a few at a time (lucky_girl helped with that one).

It's a long, repetitive, labor-intensive process. It's also an awesome opportunity to meditate, daydream, and mentally relax. I found myself free-associating for hours. At one point I cried at the strength of the memory of my dad in the ICU before my wedding.

Then, lucky_girl and hubby arrived to enjoy (and boy did they, I love feeding lucky_girl, she's so verbally appreciative!) the fruits of my labor.

We (me, E, lucky_girl & hubby) sat at the table for hours, enjoying wine, the delicious asparagus salad that she brought (mmm...asparagus, cranberries, and goat cheese), the gnocchi topped in a sauce of home-grown tomatoes (supplemented by some store-bought heirlooms), home-grown basil, sage in browned butter, and, of course, bacon.

For dessert, we had fresh-baked peanut butter cookies with Vin Santo.

Then tea, and a long lazy evening of socializing including the South Park episode of "Smug" and chatting on the couch as I dozed off.

Comfortable. Relaxed. Unhurried. And, you might note, not a single mention of work.

I can't remember the last time I had such a wonderfully lazy home-bound Saturday. Sadly, after checking my calendar, I can confirm that it has been at least 10 months, more than likely much longer. Perhaps I shall try to make it less than 6 months before the next one.