How Was Your Day?

It was all the things. It always is.

You wake up thinking your day is going to go one way and then it goes another. It zigs and zags and winds up here where your mind can’t settle. You’re not sure how you’re feeling or what made the day — this day — so quirky. You play back the reel, but not in order; snippets come at you randomly, trying to align themselves into a narrative. You lasso them and throw them down on paper.

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I am leaning into a garden fork in the cold and the damp, a pile of leaves at my feet that I fear are tick-laden, all in the name of digging up the rest of my dahlia tubers that I’m sure are beginning to rot due to the wet weather and a freeze two nights ago.

I’m standing in the sun-warmed hoop house with a mask over my face, packing dahlias (divided crudely with dull pruners) into boxes of peat moss I reuse every year. The peat moss sends up so much dust that it lines the insides of your nostrils – nice, I know.

I am driving to the office for the weekly news meeting, parking and walking down the brick sidewalk on a quiet winter street in Edgartown, wondering how it is that I live in this place, this Island, which comes back to us when the people go. I am sitting in the newsroom with the reporters and the editor as the familiar round of story ideas and assignments for the week begins.

I am in Vineyard Haven, having lunch with a sweet, handsome black Lab (my heart!) and his owner, a dear friend (my heart!), at her kitchen table inside her warm, lovely home that is so much an expression of her personality and personal style and that literally feels like a hug when you walk into it. We are talking, catching-up. This is the shiniest bauble in my day.

I am at my desk, talking to a wise advisor on the phone about a conundrum.

I am posting a story online. I am emailing my sister. I am paying a bill.

I’m scrolling through Instagram.

I am answering a call from a friend who needs to vent about something they are experiencing, and I am finding myself angry for them, angry at the way they are being treated. I hate when people are not given the respect they deserve or are not listened to. It makes me crazy.

I am fretting over my husband, who is walking around with a giant bandage on his swollen face after his fourth Mohs surgery yesterday, this one requiring plastic surgery on his nostril! Basal cell skin cancer, the “good” kind. His upper lip is so swollen from the surgery that he looks like Homer Simpson.

I am obsessing about rugs. I have fallen down an internet rabbit hole so deep that I seem to not be able to get out of it. (The hours spent on this hunt for the perfect living room rug – at the right price – are unconscionable, really.) I have gone from cotton rugs to wool rugs, jute to sisal, power-loomed to hand-knotted, coastal to Bohemian, floral to geometric, Danish flatweave to Turkish kilim to Persian vintage. I am currently stalled out at Persian vintage, which are out of my price range. So of course I’ve fallen in love with them.

I am thinking that rugs are my new chocolate. Or would be, if I had given up chocolate, which I did for two and three-quarters days using some strategies my dietician gave me. She is convinced I can get this chocolate thing under control; I am not.

I am writing with a (small) bowl of chocolate chips next to me.

I am making dinner with fresh cod my husband bought at The Fish House. I am mixing up a crumb topping (without the cheese), slicing fingerling potatoes and grape tomatoes to roast, squeezing lemons for our salad dressing, refilling the olive oil bottle again. Stepping over the spot on the kitchen floor where Farmer still lies in my eyes.

I am walking a short bit, early in the day, hoping for mood-boosting sunlight and endorphins.

I am walking again at the gray hour, dusk, aiming to get my 10,000 steps in.

I am filling up the car, the old Ford station wagon, at the airport station. I am holding the lever back on the nozzle carefully so that the gas flows very slowly. Any faster and the gas will begin to drip on to the ground, thanks to a leak in a part that we can’t replace.

I am writing way too late at night.

I am remembering that tomorrow morning I must go to the winter farmers’ market at the Ag Hall to pick up my fish share and to meet a friend for a cup of coffee in front of the roaring fire.

I am hoping the rain will be done by the time I get home so that I can finish digging, hook the hose back up, and wash the rest of the dahlia tubers. So that I can then go inside and figure out what new recipe I’m going to make for the Cook the Vineyard newsletter this week, since we have covered Thanksgiving to a fair-the-well and really need to move on.

I am wondering if my stepsons will be coming for Thanksgiving dinner and when it is that I will decide it is time to make a menu instead of keeping my holiday blinders on.

I am plotting to find inspiration at the farmers’ market, which I now realize is happening not tomorrow, but later today, because today has become tomorrow. The clock has ticked past midnight.

And already another day begins in a way I had not expected or planned, but which I should have known would occur, because that is how I roll. Always thinking I can dish out extra helpings of time in my day, I am. Ha!

The Time gods are laughing at me – again.