Saturday adventures

If you've read my last post, you probably guessed that I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed and under-rested recently. I'm not talking about a lack of sleep, though that probably doesn't help, but rather that sense of a busy life lived in a succession of endless Mondays.

Yesterday morning, I decided that I needed a change, a "let's pretend we're on vacation" kind of change. Something exciting and different needed to happen and I was bound and determined to go for it. Fortunately, my husband was more that willing to set aside his work for a few hours and humor my energetic whim.

The adventure began at 11:14 AM as we snapped a nearly-sleeping baby into his carseat and headed off to the St Paul Farmer's Market. We had never been, and it seemed like it might be a rejuvinating (free) adventure. It was wonderful! We ended up spending a whopping $3 for 2 basil plants and 5 honey sticks - yum! It was very refreshing to be surrounded by home-grown produce, plants, jams, cheese, and assorted meats and jerkies, including bison!

After that, we meandered across town to Bruegger's Bagels for lunch, with a brief stop in a small but nicely landscaped "central park" that we discovered. Lunch was followed with a frozen treat from Starbucks.

3 hours later, feeling like life had taken a wonderful turn for the better, we headed home to indulge in everyone's favorite Saturday activity: chores. Iain napped, Mark plugged away at work and I accomplished a week's worth of cleaning. Meanwhile, that energetic frenzy still brightly burning, I managed to talk Mark into an after-dinner family excursion to an Observatory.

We arrived just before the mosquitoes came out in full force, and aside from the 15 minutes we spent in the car to escape them until they settled down for the night, we enjoyed our little adventure in star-gazing. The telescopes were enormous (and free!) and we were able to catch sight of Saturn, rings and all, Mars, Jupiter, the moon (of course), and the Hercules cluster. It was thoroughly enjoyable, even in spite of the bugs, though I think if we return, it will be in the Fall when there are no bugs, it gets dark earlier and generally the humidity is less. For those of you who are not avid star-gazers, apparently the humidity causes "atmospheric turbulence" which affects the quality of telescopic image. And of course the best sights are seen after "astronomical twilight," according to a volunteer who Mark guessed is also fluent in Klingon.

Iain did amazingly well, especially considering our adventures disrupted his sleep a bit. We arrived home before midnight and I felt as though we had lived an entire wonderful vacation in less than a day! Thank you, Lord!