The past few months have featured some higher-than-usual and somewhat unplanned expenses (ok, yes, the flights to Germany were an elective expense, so I have no right to complain about the cost), so yesterday we wanted to spend our beautiful spring day having fun in a cheap kind of way.
We started out the day with a jungle trek through the wilds of conservation land in our town. That's one of the benefits of living in the middle of nowhere--forests abound. During the walk, I had two realizations: 1. I married a billy goat; and 2. Walking through the woods isn't as much fun as it once was. Babbling brooks are fun to look at, but figuring out how to cross one decreases the fun factor significantly.
As we were slogging our way through wet leaves, streams, and puddles (where did all of this water come from?? It hasn't rained in ages!), I had visions of being one of those unprepared city slickers who gets lost in the woods with only a bottle of water and a granola bar and has to be rescued by helicopter after being attacked by fire ants. I was paranoid that the piles of leaves held hidden bee nests and that I would be attacked by the bees after unknowingly destroying their homes, and what if I'm allergic to bee stings? I've never been stung and have no way of knowing. How on earth would we find an epi-pen in the middle of the woods?
Clearly I have issues. Perhaps woodsy activities are not for me. I became convinced of this when our trail let us out in the middle of a residential neighborhood that was a good 10 miles (ok, maybe 1/2 mile, but I was hot and tired and had had enough of the nature fun by then) from where we parked the perky Subie. At least the return to civilization was comforting. I considered knocking on a stranger's door and asking them to drive us back to our car, but I decided I could make it on my own.
After conquering the wilderness, B was still itching for more outdoor fun and wanted to hit up the local driving range, but I was ready for some fun of the armchair-travel variety, so he headed out for a field trip, and I stayed at home for some Italy trip planning. When B returned home, we enjoyed the last sun of a beautiful spring day and tried to figure out what else we could do to carpe diem without sacrificing our comfort again.
We settled upon making cookies, a fun, fabulous, and free activity because we already had all of the ingredients. And here is where one of the perks of adulthood comes in. Adulthood brings responsibility, but with increased responsibility comes increased freedom, including the freedom to decide what you want to eat for dinner. Dinner can include vegetables if you want, or you can skip the vegetables. Dinner can even be cookies--with ice cream, if you're feeling daring, which I generally am, except when there are trees and excessive quantities of fresh air involved.
And so our dinner was chocolate chip cookies, fresh out of the oven and hot, with cold vanilla ice cream, all thrown together in a bowl and eaten with a spoon. Dessert was popcorn.
It was a good day.
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