SOLSC '25 Day Twelve: Fifteen minutes

 

I am participating in The Two Writing Teachers' Slice of Life Story Challenge, writing every day during the month of March.  My theme this year is "Outdoors".

Thanks to the time change, it was still broad daylight when I walked out of the school at 6pm this evening.  Spring break is coming up fast, and so are deadlines on projects at work.  The to-do list remained long as I shut down the computer, but there was a cake to be baked and iced for my husband's birthday before tomorrow.  Besides, by six, my brain was shut down, too.

I admired the looming clouds on the horizon; it looked like somewhere west-ish of us was getting some much-needed rain.  It blew right past us on my three-minute drive home, the auto-setting on the A/C prompting it on in the eighty-five degree heat.

I need to rest a minute, I thought to myself as I unloaded my purse inside the door and went to the bedroom to take off my nametag and unload my pockets.  I need sunlight, too, I added as I headed back outside to sit on the porch a bit.  Sometime during that short walk from door to bedroom to porch, I made a SMART goal for myself.

Fifteen minutes of sunlight a day.  I set the countdown timer on my Fitbit and the sun complied, popping out big and strong from the few clouds left behind, warming my face.  I closed my eyes and enjoyed the glow through my eyelids.  A Bewick's wren chirped loudly from across the street, then moved on down the road, its trill getting fainter as it called from each tree-stop.

I opened my eyes to see my husband's car pulling into the driveway.  Not long after he went inside, I felt the buzz on my wrist and followed. There was, after all, a cake to be baked and iced.  The sun'll come out tomorrow...

 

Evidence that I did, indeed, bake a cake.