It’s a neighborly day in the beauty – would you be mine?

Yesterday was seriously the nicest day of the year. The weather was clear and fair, so everyone who lives in my neighborhood really made the most of it.

Brandine and I enjoyed our afternoon walk. The woods are best this time of year because the canopy hasn’t grown in yet and the sun reaches the forest floor. Meadows of wildflowers look like yellow and white carpets. Also, it is not humid and there are no mosquitoes yet. Brandine romped with two other retrievers and splashed around in the creek. The other dogs’ owners were both women about my age, so we socialized when the dogs did.

Later, I walked to the community center for Spanish class. On the way there, I passed a woman who shook a cherry branch, showering cherry blossom petals over her little boy, who spun around and tried to catch them. It was such a sweet moment that I think even Jimbo’s cynical cone-heart would have warmed up.

In order to get to the community center, I have to walk between a baseball field, where a team was warming up for the season, and a playground, where little kids pretended they were on the baseball team. Again, it was ridiculously cute and the kind of “All-American” scene that you want to show to people from other countries.

After class, during which I told my instructor that “mi grammatico esta como mierda,” (or is it “es”? See what I mean, Buns?) I walked home during that “golden hour” that moviemakers like, when everyone looks younger and prettier. When I walked by the elementary school, the field was full of grownups and children. They were playing soccer and softball, laying out to catch the last bit of sunshine, or training their dogs. There was a couple in their twenties sharing an ice cream cone. Birds chirped. A sentient trolley whistled. King Friday XIII issued a decree. And this lady got some football players to dance in the “Neighborhood of Make-Believe”:

If I wasn’t on such a seratonin high, I might have been just a little nauseated.