Cloudy Days

Don’t let the title of this piece fool you. This is not the Carpenters’ “rainy days and Mondays always get me down”. It’s not Springsteen’s “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day” either. You see, I don’t want anyone to chase the clouds or the the blues away.

Let’s face it, cloudy days have an undeserved bad rap. When people report on the weather, they don’t usually note cloud cover with any degree of enthusiasm or approval. Who says, “by God, what a perfectly cloudy day?!” Yet sometimes I find that cloudy days have their own special appeal; they are an invitation to scale back all the super amazing things I would expect myself to do if it were a sunny day. Play tennis! Clean the grill! Then work in the garden and pull, pull, pull those weeds! Maybe divide the densely packed patch of yellowing daylilies, bunched together resembling Times Square on New Year’s eve, and transplant them to the scraggly hillside on the far corner of the yard. That’s all before lunch, and perhaps in the afternoon doing a few more super productive things to earn a little downtime in the hammock later in the day.

The cloudy day lays no such claim in my psyche. No, it comes with a sense of permission to do little all day, to hit the hammock right after breakfast with a good book. I don’t have to accomplish things or prove my worth, and what’s more, I don’t have to be in a good mood either (unlike the sunny day with its subtle pressure to match my disposition to the weather). In psychosynthesis terms, I can put my “false positive” persona up on the shelf, the one who has value because he gets shit done — it’s cloudy, yay! Let’s hang out in first or second gear for a bit, see what happens, maybe (just maybe) vacuum the bedroom rug later in the day.

But wait! What’s that distinct brightening in the lining of the clouds as I settle into the soft, delicious hum of my own internal engine on idle? And good heavens, do I sense a slow yet persistent creep of ambition rising in my veins? Suddenly, the permission I had just moments ago to do nothing is weakening in the face of the growing light. I am visited by images of brush piles, bike shorts, and barbecues. Resist! Resist!

But it is too late. I am already searching in my mind for where I put the vacuum bags, because first I will score a few extra productivity points by changing out the old bag before I hit the bedroom rug. I am in third gear already, and once the new bag is installed the vacuum is in fourth! With a great surge of power, we begin the great cleaning and admire the parallel grooves in the rug created by the machine, like those cool patterns on the manicured baseball diamonds after they are groomed by the giant stadium mowers.

We move past the bed and begin cruising the edge of the dresser when the immense suction from the fresh bag somehow pulls in a random lightweight athletic sock on the floor, and before I can switch off the beast, it immediately gets sucked up and disappears into the mysterious inner sanctum of the vacuum. Houston, we have a problem.

Maybe I can just ignore the fact that there is now a sock inside the vacuum cleaner, it still goes “vrooom” and seems eager to do its job. Really, how much damage can one little sock do? Then I remember I once heard that a swallowed sock can be fatal to a puppy. Hmmm… there must be a Youtube video for what to do when your Hoover eats a sock.

I am deep into an evening stint of paying the bills when I hear my wife moan that her tennis game tomorrow is in jeopardy due to rain in the forecast. That brings a smile and a slow, deep breath… anyone up for joining me in the hammock for an absolutely gorgeous, picture-perfect cloudy day?

Amy Spalding-Fecher