New, Improved Wednesdays

I love the New Wednesday Afternoons. I really hope I get to keep them.

See, work decided that they definitely needed someone to update the website on Sunday nights, so there will be fresh content for the Monday-morning blog rush. Agreed. So now I work at home for three hours on Sunday nights, and leave work three hours early on Wednesday afternoon.

This afternoon was the first time, and I felt a little criminal just walking out the door with everyone else still in there, banging away at their keyboards...

But once outside I realized, the New Wednesday Afternoon just might save me.

Nothing major. It was threatening rain. I walked into Sephora with no intention of buying anything. A tanned woman with a reassuring basso who kept calling me "girlfriend" and "sister" demonstrated expensive skin creams on my hand for a while. The sky was threatening rain in a serious way.

I went to the Union Square greenmarket. I felt like a hummingbird, flitting from stall to stall, plucking up vegetables. I'm on a radical budget (umm...about $20) till the 15th, when I get paid again, so I felt the thrill of the person who's getting something good for very little. A very "yeah, we can do this! And eat well too!" kind of feeling.

Three tiny zucchinis (fry up in olive oil, a little red pepper, lemon juice, a little parmesan, serve on pasta, yum), head of red boston lettuce from a woman who liked that I used the word "delicious," a head of arugula, a bunch of beets (actually two gigantor beets), a cucumber. A small container of blueberries.

Now that I'm not drinking, I suddenly feel justified in buying extravagant fruits. So far: two mangoes, a pound of red cherries, a small thing of raspherries, and this afternoon's Hudson Valley bleuets.

Then I went to Trader Joe's, because nothing says luxury like Trader Joe's with almost no line, for some olive oil, chevre, bread, and sardines.

And then I came home. The F at 14th Street took forever, and by the time I emerged at Bergen it had started to pour, torrentially. Luckily I had patronized an umbrella-wallah in Manhattan, but still, I made it home just before my two nested Trader Joe's paper bags gave out.

And now I am sitting here, waiting for one giant beet to cool. I'm trying to put together a homemade version of Cafe Luluc's unbelievably addictive beet salad. We'll see.

I am also making some fennel.

In conclusion, yay Wednesday. A little time with the pressure off is just the ticket. I feel more like myself when I've got no particular place to be, and nothing very pressing. (That is why there is a particular kind of cheerful relaxation that I can enjoy on a random Wednesday afternoon but not, say, a Saturday night, or even a Sunday evening. Because Saturday nights and Sunday evenings each have their telos, and we all know what it is.)

This feeling can only be enjoyed in limited doses, though, or it shades from 'pleasantly liberated' into 'aimless and disconnected.'

Three hours of work on a Sunday are a fine exchange for a three-hours' early release on a Wednesday afternoon. Now cross your fingers and hope this sweet deal doesn't get taken away from me.