The Simple Life

I was laying in bed early this morning with hot cup of coffee on my nightstand, my window open with the scent of the breeze and the rain wafting in,  Wuthering Heights in hand.  I’d made finally making it to the end of that book my Saturday morning goal.

I hate it when it takes me a year to get through a book, and when I finally reach the end I think, “That was so worth it.  Why didn’t I settle down and read it a long time ago?”

Just pages from the end, it occurred to me just how much I missed how simple life can be.  How nice it is to listen to the rain and lay in bed with a book, or take a walk to the antique store downtown to look around and dream about what it might have been like to live in the 50s, 20th century or 19th, wherever your whims might take you that day.

There was a time in this world where people worked just as hard as and maybe harder than we do now… but they also knew when to slow down and start a fire and turn on the radio and just hang out together.  At least, I’d like to think they did.  When we didn’t need new cars every other year, phones that played our music, or twitter to let everybody know exactly what we were doing every free moment of our lives.  I’m not knocking any of this stuff.  I want some of it.  I have some of it.

But sometimes its nice to think about just sitting and getting to know the people around you.

Sometimes you just want to drive back in to North Dakota and talk baby talk to the babies and walk to the bowling alley for lunch and spend the rest of the day on the swing in the back yard, watching the kids ride their bikes up and down the back streets.

To me, that’s where life is the simplest.

But if I can’t make it there, I’ll lay in bed with the window open and a cup of coffee next to me and a book in hand.

That’s a beautiful way to spend a weekend morning.