Our Nearly Perfect Day

As far as Thursdays in July go, our Thursday this week was nearly perfect.  I say “nearly” because, well, a million tax-free dollars didn’t suddenly drop out of the sky and onto our front porch.  Nor did world hunger end and/or world peace begin. 

But it didn’t rain, which has been par for the course most of this summer in Central Ohio.  And it wasn’t humid. 

And, best of all, Vince had the day off so we could spend it together.   

We slept in a little until the sunshine beckoned.  We drank some coffee until my eyes willingly stayed open on their own.  And we talked and relaxed in our living room watching our cats tussle over the prime critter-watching spot by the front window.

We discussed everything from life in general, to our day in specific.  As in: “Which would you prefer? Ending world hunger or creating world peace?” 

Or the more confounding question: “What should we do with our day, today?”

Since we couldn’t come up with a solution to either world situations, we focused on our plans for the day.  After another cup of coffee, inspiration struck and I suggested we rent a pontoon boat and putter around Alum Creek. 

Now, Alum Creek is nobody’s idea of a major waterway, but it is close by and, according to Wikipedia (I don’t, after all, have these minute facts stored away in my cranium), it is 58 miles long. 

Oh, and its official name is Alum Creek Lake, which seems a little redundant to me, but what do I know? I’m not exactly well-schooled on the differences between Creeks and Lakes and perhaps they can be used together to describe a channel of water 58 miles long.

But…I digress.

We tried reaching out to some friends to see if they were feeling spontaneous and up for a day in the sun but, alas, could find no takers.

 

Fortunately, Vince and I like hanging out with each other, so we were okay with it just being the two of us.  We fixed a couple sandwiches, grabbed some cold drinks, put on our water wings, flippers and swim goggles and off we went.

No, not really. We don’t own water wings.  Or flippers, for that matter. But picturing Vince wearing flippers makes me laugh, so pretend like we were wearing those things, okay?!  And just so I’m goofy, too, pretend like I’m wearing one of those old-fashioned rubber swim-caps with flowers and a chin strap.

Lovely. Now, we’re ready to go!

We tried to rent a middle-of-the-line pontoon with a medium-sized engine, but they only had one and it was already rented.  We didn’t think we needed the biggest pontoon for just the two of us, so we rented the smaller one. 

This, in hindsight, may have been a mistake.  It had a tiny little engine and it took the entire two hours to cruise around Alum Creek Lake once. And we never once stopped. Turns out we used only a little over a gallon of fuel, so I guess we were being economical. 

But Vince later said that if we could walk on water, we could’ve moved faster than that pontoon boat!

On the other hand, it was relatively quiet at Alum Creek on Thursday afternoon and we certainly weren’t in any sort of competition with the few boats that were on the water. 

The weather was absolutely perfect. There were only a few white, fluffy clouds dotting the expanse of bright blue sky.  And there was a gentle, cooling breeze riffling the flowers on my swim cap… 

…Oh, wait a minute.  I was really kidding about that swim cap.  But the breeze thing was true.  And it was heavenly.

We returned to shore and headed back home, where we continued our day of leisure.  We cleaned up (those rubber swim caps are hot!) and relaxed on the patio with some crackers and cheese and a bottle of crisp white Bordeaux. 

We chatted on the phone with several long-time friends and relatives, so it was a fun catch-up day with people we care about.  And we listened to music on our sound system and whiled away the time.  Eventually, Vince grilled hamburgers for our dinner and we stayed outside until the solar lights clicked on.

Most of the time, we spend our days rushing from Point A to Point B or checking off items on our to-do list.  So to spend an entire day slowing down and relaxing and taking the time to simply enjoy life, well, it was truly a little slice of heaven.  

And it was nearly perfect. 

Now…if we could just do something about the peace thing and ending world hunger, we’d be all set.

And I wouldn’t complain if a million tax-free dollars dropped out of the sky.  After all, that would buy a lot of swim caps with rubber flowers and chip straps.