A Perfect Day - Somewhere Else

I have been playing around with what-do-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up questions, incited, no doubt, by my youngest's imminent departure for college, and I've been looking at websites focused on creating a life mission statement.  I'm sure that many of us have done this; it's an excellent method for procrastinating the actual getting on with one's life.  At any rate, one such site suggested as an exercise writing out your idea of a perfect day.  I had a lot of fun with that one, although I only chose one perfect kind of day.  Maybe I'll try another one in a week or so. 

In my first perfect day, I live in a condo on the ocean in St. Augustine Beach.  I have a particular condo in mind, because I've stayed there: it opens onto the dunes and has a huge deck from which you can see the ocean, and the master bedroom is on the ocean side.

I wake up to the sound of the ocean while it's still dark.

I take a sunrise 3-mile walk on the beach, come in and shower, and go back out to the beach to do yoga while my hair dries.

I spend the morning on the deck doing my own work -- writing, working on photos, preparing classes. I eat a light and healthy breakfast and lunch while I am doing those things.

In the early afternoon I go into town, where I teach a couple of classes or go to a meeting or two, and then meet a friend for an early Margarita on the porch of Scarlett O'Hara's or one of the restaurants on the bayfront.

I go back home (Imagine! "Home" is on the ocean!) and change and grab my gear and head over to the marsh for a little kayak trip to a tiny oyster shell-encrusted island so that I can shoot some sunset photos as the full moon rises over the Mantanzas River.  I am particularly fond of moonrises over the river as pelicans and herons sail toward their evening roosting spots. 

As it gets dark I am loading my kayak back onto my car rack and heading home for a late dinner and conversation with my husband.  He's made the dinner, of course, since I am a dreadful cook, and we have become very European in our dining times.

We go out to check on the ocean one last time before falling asleep.  It is, miraculously, still there.

Trillium -- Yes, In the Midwest