It's Such a Perfect Day - Part One

I wake up on my own, without an alarm, at 9:30 a.m. I am well rested, but I haven't slept in too long; a full day is ahead of me. The woman I love—the woman with whom I share a committed, passionate, and meaningful relationship, free of uncertainty and lacking overly adult obligations (i.e. children)—lies beside me, still asleep. I relax on my back, hands behind my head, and look at the ceiling as I remember the high points from my dream. The dream featured myself, an unlikely group of my friends, my grandfather, and two celebrities I admire. The plot didn't make any sense. The dream was full of impossible, fantastic events that cannot occur in normal time and space. It unfolded at a steady pace and felt long, making modest amount of sleep seem even longer. The dream made me happy—characters within did not upset me or taunt me, so I did not wake up angry or regretful or sad.

The woman I love wakes up on her own, not because I shift or make noise. She tells me what happened in her odd dream, I tell her what happened in mine, and we speculate about what the dreams symbolize. We do this because it's fun and neat, not because either of us puts much stock in that sort of thing.

We make love. We are both really pleased with the effort, which included one thing that I did on a whim, not knowing exactly how it would go, but I was “in the zone”, so to speak, and she truly enjoyed it. (Two days later, when it occurs to me that the woman I love may have just said that she liked it, I am unsure of myself. She directs me to a entry in her journal that lists all of the things she likes, and I see that the thing has been added to the list—it’s dated correctly and everything.) We take overlapping showers; she enters and exits first, and we are dressed and ready at the same time.

Outside, the weather is finally nice. It's been cold, but today is sunny, and I feel like a cat sitting in a bright window. We walk a few blocks to our neighborhood diner/bakery that's named after the owner (he's an older fellow, and doesn't work in the kitchen most days now—he leaves most of the café's day-to-day operations to his two sons, and his daughter does the accounting). It's active, but not crowded, and we're seated easily, in a window booth. We watch people walk by on the sidewalk and speak softly. We each tell one personal anecdote about elementary school before our food arrives. My meal is split into three courses:

*One*
Four cubes of cantaloupe, two of which are lightly sprinkled with salt.
One half of one small clementine.
One small glass grapefruit juice.

*Two*
Two slices of french toast under warm maple syrup and powdered sugar.
One sausage link.
Two very crisp bacon strips.
One small glass orange juice.

*Three*
One cinnamon scone.
One small mug of cocoa, layered with normal-sized marshmallows—not the tiny kind, not the big kind used for s'mores.