Saturday perfection

it's the very best if you can start your saturday on the night before, playing soccer in the sudden, sodden spring. this means you'll sleep a sleep so untroubled that the only dream you'll remember in the morning is that you started a new tube of toothpaste. you won't even remember that dream until you go to brush your teeth and think: that's odd.

take your coffee back to bed. say good morning to that sleepy person lying next to you. snuggle the cats. leaf through the globe and mail, saving some for sunday. when you get up, tell yourself you have to drive to the farmers' market rather than ride your bike because they'll have bedding plants. then buy a huge hydrangea with eight blue globes: there, you had to drive. run into jen, smiling in the sunshine. run into carmen, who tells you todd is still in the hospital but doing better. carmen herself is doing better, you note. load up the car with hydrangea and go back for an herb garden.

at 11:45 you realize you're going to be late for your lunch date. at the exact moment you text ted to say "i'm running ten minutes late," he texts you to say "i'm running ten minutes late." over vancouver rice bowls at the ARTery, mutual friends trickle in. karen's taking her dog to hip hop in the park. amy's maybe going to check out the office show: me too! the vue writers are staying for the live music, a girl named jill and her ukelele, but we sneak out.

hey, do you want to just park at your place and walk down? i do. the show is ... well, i like blair brennan's shrink-wrapped tools. gerry morita dances. someone sings. alice major reads. it's the office as figured by people on artists' grants. as you walk back out into the sunshine on 124th street, you think how this is ultimately what you'd want, artists on grants thinking about an office rather than artists in offices dreaming about grants.

ted says he'll walk you a bit. then amy runs after. we meander until we're at our place. does anybody want a drink? better: a fudgsicle. we haul mo away from her yard work, sit on the deck drinking ice water in glasses with green palm trees. our grass is greening too.

after ted and amy leave, you do a little solidarity yard work: put the amazing hydrangea into a pot, clear a couple of beds. just when the heat is starting to feel oppressive, you hail your new neighbours in the back alley: lovely liliane, 8 months pregant, and 3-year-old julia, who has a new bike. romanian, edmontonian, downtown dwellers, friends of david and susan's: me too! julia is determined to get herself up on the swingset, then the rings. we women watch her, our chat sweetly empty. the afternoon melts away.

what could make this day better? you grill your food: no cleanup. you get a message from dear friends saying that all is well, meaning they are well, meaning all is well. you put on the etsy dress you bought on impulse, which of course fits perfectly. you walk to the roxy to see darrin's new play buddy. you hold hands.

walking home you catch the scent of night blossom. you can't tell what it is, exactly, and you can't tell where it comes from, but you can't get enough of it. you would lose yourself here if you could. too soon, it evanesces, and you are home.

Market value

i always mean to go to the farmers' market on saturdays, but the truth is saturday mornings seduce me into other things, like reading the globe and mail on the front porch, or catching up on wordscraper, or sitting on the deck feeding peanuts to the bluejays. the thought of navigating a crowd of smug edmontonian locavores is always enough to send me straight back to bed with a second cup of coffee.

come sunday morning, of course, i'm full of regret and find myself schlepping to safeway, which is always, always more depressing than anything i might have run into on saturday. i kick myself, resolving anew that next saturday really will be the day. cue weekly cycle.

but this saturday actually was the day, and and i set myself up for it by getting the right equipment: a new bike.

actually, it's not really new. i finally relieved my mother of her 1974 peugeot girl's bike and took it to redbike. "pimp my ride!" i said. (actually, testimony to the fact that i have truly become an old fart, i said "pimp my bike!." one of the guys corrected me.) they tuned it up, replaced the brake cables, and put on new wheels; when i picked it up i had them throw on a little black bike basket and a bell -- and then they charged me $122.85. just so you know i'm a moral person, i did argue with them about it at the till. i mean, the basket alone was twenty bucks. did i bring this bike in on free cable day or what? they insisted that was the right price, so for what i normally spend on coffee in a month, i had a whole new way to get around.

and boy is it great. it's heavy and black and substantial. it's cool. and it's fast. i've had mountain bikes for the last few years, and skinny tires make a huge difference. i love sitting more upright, too. it's what you want in the city, to be able to look about you a little. this is the first "girl's bike" i've ever had, having disdained them my entire life to date on the basis that -- well, that they're for girls. but i find the retro dropped bar actually quite charming. i can never find the gear shift -- it's down on the upright, not within thumb's reach at all -- and in any event there are only ten gears, not the 27 i have on my mountain bike, which is kind of a relief. i mean, seriously, what casual biker uses 27 gears?

best of all, it comes with an unexpected whallop of self-satisfaction. every time my heart thrills to my new commuter bike, i think, "it cost a hundred dollars! and it's recycled!!"

today was the big test: the downtown farmers' market. i dug out the ancient canvas panniers my mom offered me a few years ago, the ones i accepted mostly because of their ebay resale potential. they're heavy and black and perfect for the ole peugeot. i set off, feeling very cosmopolitan right from the start. but once i filled those puppies up with organic produce? shit. i was downright annoying. i mean, think of it. is there anything more virtuous than the lesbian loading duck eggs (less alkaline! more sustainable!) and heritage greens into 1970s saddlebags fixed to a recycled bike?

i can hardly stand myself.