Not much better than no boat . . . .
I have "Little Red Rented Rowboat" playing on repeat in my head. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?! I'm going to blame the ongoing jet lag, even though I think the ongoingness officially ended this morning when I slept straight through to 7 a.m.
So those in the know know that I've been working weekend shifts ever since I started working at Global 6 years ago. I started off with a 3 pm to midnight shift for a few years, then was transferred to a 5 am - 2 pm shift, and then involuntarily moved to a 10 am - 6 pm shift. On paper (screen) the 10 - 6 shift looks like the superior shift, but in my opinion, it's the worst. Yes, the early morning shift means getting up at the evil, horrendous, illegal hour of 4 a.m., and the night shift means saying goodbye to any kind of weekend soirees/hootenannies, but at least you still get half the day off. A 10 - 6er sucks up your entire weekend and puts a sizeable dent in one's Mini Cooper-sized social life.
But. I've been given a reprieve by a recent schedule shift. My weekend shifts remain unchanged, but now the guy who is scheduled to work the 3 - 12 every weekend doesn't want to work the 3 - 12 every weekend because his recently-acquired girlfriend works 9 - 5 every weekend and if he works the 3 - 12, he never gets to see her. But if he were to work 10 - 6 . . . . . yes. So we're trading shifts with great regularity, and I'm working just as many weekend nights as weekend days.
WHY AM I BORING YOU WITH THIS LONG, DRAWN-OUT BIT OF EXPOSITION?!
Because I wanted to tell you how much I love having weekend mornings off and going to events that only occur on weekend mornings. Like the farmer's market, for example. I love the farmer's market. Uh . . . . okay, there's not too much more to it than that. I don't really care if it's more expensive . . . I love buying several pints of fresh local blueberries, or apples right from the tree, or carrots and tomatoes that actually TASTE like carrots and tomatoes. I bit into a farmer's market carrot the other day and had one of those instinctive eyes-closed-deep-sigh moments that I reserve only for chocolate. It made me think of the carrots we used to grow on the farm, and how we'd pull them out of the ground whenever we wanted, run them under the garden hose and eat them like candy. It was a very, very good carrot.
Of course, there's other fun things to look at too . . . the preserves, the handicrafts, jewelry, pottery, etc. And at the Ambleside market, there's a booth that sells bouquets of fresh-cut dahlias. I love this booth. The giant sized bouquets are literally two feet across and are magnificent to behold. For plebs like me, they have "small" bouquets for $6, which I will gladly pay direct to a grower who grows them in her own yard without sprays or pesticides, as opposed to a store that imports bouquets from South America incorporating toxic dyes and who knows what kind of chemicals. (Oh mah lanta . . . I'm sounding like one of those pretentious eco-organic snobs, aren't I? Uh . . . I need a distraction!)
LOOK AT THE PRETTY!!! Seriously, isn't this the prettiest, most spontanesously cheerful bouquet you've seen in awhile?
Aaaaaaaaaand a thing from yesterday. I got home just in time to watch it. We've been having fantastic sunsets all week, which is unusual. Our sunsets are either very boring, or drowned out by rain clouds. But autumn usually stokes the dusky skies into something more consistently spectacular. I wonder why that is. Anyway, I can't wait until we start having bouts of marine fog sunsets. I love watching those from my perch up here on the north shore.
