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It is an overcast, gentle Saturday, and I am looking forward to spending most of the day with my lawfully wedded husband (I like to emphasize this, as he and I legally have a same-sex marriage. His transition to male has happened largely off of the books).
It is early afternoon, and I'll wake him soon to get the day started, but not quite yet. My husband has a sleep 'cycle' that deserves scientific study. It's like if someone from a nocturnal species also had sleep apnea. He does have sleep apnea, but that can't be all that's going on. In any case, I'll let him sleep a bit longer and then harass him once we're into mid-afternoon. I would prefer he enjoy date night too and he'll have more fun when well-rested.
It has been very hot recently, but the edge of a hurricane has covered the sun and cooled the air as it pressed it down. The world outside is wet and anxious, aware that something big and dangerous lurks not far away in coastal waters. These days grow violet, opressive, and strange as they go on, but today is dove-gray and diffuse with veiled sunlight. My acre of kudzu and poplar is heavy with dew outside.
Once I wake my lawfully wedded husband we will go to a nearby waterway which is owned and preserved by a small local university. They keep it both clean and public, so it is safe to swim in their half-mile of happily crashing waterfalls, sloped steps of stone rich with tactile moss. There are always children happily swimming and couples on the swinging benches, but I usually just take my shoes off and walk the wilderness of wet stone and shifting current on my bare feet. It reminds me of when I was a child and my park ranger grandfather would take us to the county park he helped maintain and drive us on his golf cart to go climb waterfalls.
After we get all damp and buggy we'll go to a small, middling restaurant downtown that, for some reason, my husband loves to death. We do usually go to my favorite restaurants so I'm not at all aggreived by going to his preferred 'standard fare' place from time to time. Though I find the food to be 'just fine', one thing we do both love about this place is that it has very casual service. I worked in a restaurant for years and anymore, servile, forced-cheer table service just makes me uncomfortable. This place, however, is I think the only restaurant I have ever been in where waitstaff will on occasion just plunk down at a spare seat at your table, prop their elbows up, and take your orders from there. The waitstaff can and will respond to 'how's the day been?' with total honesty. I love that, even if I've never had an exceptional meal there.
It is another beautiful day in the world that made me and the biosphere that evolved to love and nurture me, whether or not some small fraction of humanity thinks I shouldn't be there.