Simple Pleasures

Contrary to the impression I may have given, grad school is not all stress positions in front of the lap top, being forced to read endless pages in dim light, hearing 26 year old experts wax pompous on any subject, getting car butt from all the commuting, or any other violation of the grad school Geneva Conventions. Lest anyone worry that I am not being honest by understating the effect of grad school on my life, my definition of torture has not changed.

There are days that make grad school a guilty pleasure. I manage to get my bags packed the night before I had to leave. I get off early enough to make it to the Highland Coffee Company in Louisville before 10 a.m. Of course I had to drive behind a livestock truck loaded with pigs on the way to the slaughter house to get there. Let’s just say sometimes it’s good not to be hung over or have morning sickness.

After some more than civilized study time and a damn good latte – Starbucks has nothing on these people – I set off for campus. I have figured out when to go to get a good parking spot. I should get an “A” in my research class for that bit of information and, no, I am not sharing. Getting a parking space does require that I get to campus with some time to kill before my class, which had not been all that pleasant since Cincinnati and Louisville are no longer located on planet earth, but in the hottest bowels of hell – that is until this week.

Fall has arrived and with it temperatures appropriate to the season of trick-or-treat, turkey, and hot cider. For me, this is the perfect weather to sit outside in the sun, listening to my music while knitting a sock and watching all the students walk by as I wonder if I was ever really that young and stupid pretentious, a thought that is soon dismissed because it is impossible that I was ever anything but the witty intellectual.

What makes knitting this sock even sweeter is the knowledge that it will be worn by my own little Flintstone feet later in the season. No, this is not the time to knit another Christmas sock. I need the simple pleasure of sitting with a beautiful skein of Opal sock yarn knitting a plain sock while my brain rests and the rest of me revels in the day.

Perhaps I should feel guilty. After all, it almost felt like playing hooky. Then I realize that soon the leaves will be gone and the crisp fall breeze will turn to a biting winter wind and I will wish for just one more day to sit in the sun, listening to music and knitting a simple sock.