No Better Place

It was a sunny Saturday, but it wasn't a warm day -- it felt warm because there was so much sunshine and everyone was happy.

The day was so nice we spent 40 minutes of boxing class outside in the parking lot. We warmed up as cars came in and out behind us, scooted away from them, and continued to shadow box as people stared. We ran rounds around the block and then sparred for an audience of impervious people coming in and out of Starbucks across the street.

Then I headed over to Cubs Care Park, the YMCA ballfields at North and Clybourn, for a little volunteering, and after that, volunteered my manual services to Christensen, who continues to work on the new apartment.

Now, there are a million ways to spend such a lovely day. I bet there were people biking, playing catch, dawdling on the lakefront, shopping, drinking outside, whatever. All good times. But painting the kitchen and swigging root beer and cream soda, Johnny Cash on the boombox and sunshine tanning my arms through the skylight, I just couldn't think of a better thing to do. I whitewashed the kitchen nook and Christensen painted the rest of the kitchen "eggshell" yellow, two people with vertigo problems at times perched at the top of ladders cutting and trimming and touching up. I managed OK, but had my confidence shaken at times by yelps from the other ladder. (There was one stray yelp of pleasure at chocolate-covered pretzels from Trader Joe's.)

Things started to go downhill a little when we went from root to regular beer, but we were done painting by then. So we started peeling off wallpaper (circa 1970s?!) that had been painted over. By this time, Pat and Ronnie were on and the Cubs were losing to the Pirates 0-2. So we called it a day and got Mexican from Los Nopales with Grzeca and the other Christensen and I polished off my entire Bistec a la Mexicana clean with four tortillas, a glass of horchata and chips and salsa.

The Johnny Cash record we were listening to was "Unchained," one of his earlier collaborations with Rick Rubin. There's a song called "Country Boy" on it, and it goes something like this:

Well, you work all day while you're waitin' to play
In the sun and the sand with a face that's tan
But at the end of the day when your work is done
You ain't got nothin' but fun