What a weird day. I thought it would be mostly a recovery day, after trying to do too much in the heat all week. Or at least, trying to exist at all during the unusual heat that I'm not used to in Colorado in an un-air-conditioned house. I had a massage scheduled, and I spent the morning making notes for the latest story I'm working on, until it was time to go to the massage. I lingered over my coffee, and I selected to take a cool Epsom salts bath to loosen up before I went. I carefully timed my routine. At 1:05, as I was drying off from the bath, about to dress and go, my phone rang. It was the spa, telling me that I was five minutes late, and did I want to reschedule. Uh... I know that my appointment was written as 1:30 in my phone, and I would have had to scroll down to the 30 minute mark in the app intentionally, so I know the mistake wasn't mine. I said no, I didn't want to reschedule and wait a week, I'd just throw on clothes and take the 45 minutes that I could get (for the first time in years, I reserved only an hour instead of 90 minutes, because I was broke while my rentals were vacant). I calculated that it was worth it to take 20 seconds to brush my teeth before I went, but otherwise, I was unwilling to do much to prepare. T-shirt, yoga pants, flip-flops, and out. I didn't even put moisturizer on my face, even though I've done that religiously every day since I was 16.
I zoomed down the street, trying not to drive more than about 5 miles over the limit on my street, but when the super-long streetlight turned green while I was still 3/4 of a block back, I pushed it a little, determined not to waste 5 minutes until it was green again. It's possible that my headlights were fully into the intersection when the light turned red, but no more than that. I went anyway. I cut down the 25 mph street, and managed not to top 35 mph for most of it. When I passed the cop, he was out of his car, giving someone else a ticket. The next stoplight turned green 5 seconds after I stopped at it. I don't know how I got so lucky, but a scant 10 minutes after I hung up the phone from the spa, I was walking in the door, ready to get a 45 minute massage. I announced who I was as I breezed in, and the young woman behind the desk said, "I don't know what happened there, but you were right. Your appointment was at 1:30. As it turns out, his 12:30 didn't show up, so he can take you back early if you want."
So was I lucky? I went from freaked out about missing time to getting 10 minutes for free. Granted, it took all of that 10 minutes to calm my racing heart and settle down to relax my muscles, but eventually I did.
There was haze over town today, probably from fires on the other side of the front range. Even though it was still in the upper 90s today, it felt better than the Easy Bake Oven that we were in over the last four days. I intended to go back out during the afternoon to take care of garden stuff once I got home. I watered the flowers, and then went in to make lunch. Never did go back and plant my new daylily. It wasn't until night was falling that I remembered I needed to pick cherries before they rot on the tree. The limbs are heavy with fruit, and I nearly ruined all the good from my massage leaning over snipping cherries and pitching them into a bowl. When we planted this tree three years ago, I hoped that it would grow big enough to block the streetlight from my bedroom window. Tonight I was especially glad that it was directly under the streetlight. I wonder what people thought as they drove by, to see this woman picking cherries in the dark. I kept expecting a cop to drive by and quiz me, as if I were stealing from a stranger's tree and hoping no one would notice in the dark. I practiced what I would say about why I waited until night to do it. I don't know where the paranoia came from. Maybe a little leftover anxiety from the weird afternoon.
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