lazy day | Bertram's Blog

Bizarre Day

May 12, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I don’t know what got into me yesterday morning. I started out as I always do, just taking it easy, checking the weather, doing a puzzle, posting a blog.

Then out of nowhere, for no reason, I did a load of laundry. It’s not an onerous task by any means — it’s not as if I have to lug the stuff down to the river and beat the garments on the rocks to clean them — but my washing machine shakes and pounds during the spin cycles, and I can’t always deal with that awful noise. I could buy a new washer, of course, but that brings a whole new set of problems, mostly logistic, but still, not something I want to deal with right now.

Figuring I was inured to the noise, when that load was done, I stripped my bed and washed the linens and mattress pad. Oddly, the machine never made a sound. So when that was done, I did my last load of laundry just to get it out of the way.

Meantime, I emptied the dishwasher, rotated the mattress, cleaned house (dusted everything and dry mopped the floors), went down to the basement and changed the furnace filter. Then I packed up a book to mail, took it to the post office, ran a few more errands, and checked on a friend’s house for him while he’s out of town.

Utterly bizarre. I don’t usually do that much in a month!

The afternoon was a lazy one since I’d done everything that needed to be done, and besides, I was exhausted.

Today might be another lazy day. I don’t have to water, though I will go out and check on my newly planted petunias, and probably grab a few weeds while I’m out there. Then the rest of the day is wide open. I’m not sure what I will do with all that freedom. Just enjoy the clean house and pretty yard, I guess. Not a bad way to spend a day!

The photo below is what I see when I look out of a back window. Whenever I’m waiting for something to cook or boil or steep, I go to the window and just marvel at the beauty.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, blogging, gardening, home, house, life. Tags: busy day, cleaning house, doing laundry, lazy day, washing machine shakes and pounds. 7 Comments »

Lovely Lazy Day

March 13, 2021 — Pat Bertram

It rained most of the day, which was very nice because . . . well, because, for one thing, rain means it was warm enough that we didn’t get the snow so much of the state received, and that means I won’t have to spend this evening or tomorrow morning shoveling snow.

For another thing, rain means I don’t have to water my outside plants. It’s been so dry, I’ve been thinking I need to drag out my hoses to prevent everything from succumbing to the drought, but whew! I won’t have to do that chore quite yet. Even better, because of the rain, tulips from last spring that I thought were dead have managed to resuscitate themselves. I still don’t know whether I will have flowers, but the green tips peeping up from the soil are a welcome sight.

And finally, rain means that I can be lazy without having to offer excuses why I’m not out running errands, or cleaning up the yard in preparation for spring, or taking a walk, or any number of things I could be doing. Not that I would be doing these activities, you understand. It’s that I have an excuse not to do them, rather than having to face the truth of my indolence.

I started the day as I normally do, with a some stretching, picking a tarot card to study, folding a few origami cranes, reading (lots of reading!), playing a game on the computer, fixing myself a bite to eat (several bites, actually — I don’t eat much, but even I need more than a single bite for subsistence), coming up with a new password for online banking (the passwords become defunct every six months), and staring out the window at the miraculous sight of water falling from the sky.

I even caught up with a friend via telephone, and now here I am, posting to this blog.

Listing everything I’ve done suddenly makes it seem as if it wasn’t such a lazy rain day after all. But it certainly was lovely for all that.

***

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Posted in books, life. Tags: creating a new password, excuse to be lazy, lazy day, rainy day, spending the day reading. 5 Comments »

Lazy Days

May 13, 2016 — Pat Bertram

I am taking a hiatus from travel for a week. I was offered a place to stay in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, while a friend went out of town, and I jumped at the offer. I’ve been moving around for so long, driving vast miles (9,000 miles seems vast to me, anyway), that I’ve sort of lost tr rainbow ack of myself — I could be anywhere. At times, it’s disconcerting to realize I am so very far from where I’ve lived the past few years, so far from anything familiar, and yet, in a way it’s all familiar.

A gray, rainy day in a room in an apartment in Wisconsin is not a whole lot different from a gray, rainy day in a room in house in the desert.

Lazy days.

I had planned to get recentered while I was here. Stretching every day (which I actually have been doing). Walking every day (which I have only done a couple of times because of the rain). Eating better (which I hava bit better, anyway — more vegetables, more protein, no wheat, only trace amounts of sugar).

I sit here staring out the window, thinking of all the things I could be doing if I weren’t so lazy — working on my dance class novel. Shopping to replenish my stores for the last few weeks of my journey. Repacking my car.

That’s what I really need to be doing. Repacking.

I unloaded all my gear before I took the bug to a mechanic because it was going to be at his shop for a few days, and it didn’t seem prudent to leave everything in the car. If it were just a matter of stuffing it all back in, I could do that before I leave on Sunday, but I need to reorganize. During my more than three months on the road, and despite my best efforts at being disciplined, things have become a bit discombobulated. Maps unfolded, used bottles stuffed in any which way, scraps of trash, accumulations to be organized.

And yet here I sit, staring out the window. Occasionally I drag my attention back to this page, but then, I lose focus again.

Lazy days.

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)