6:07 a.m.

That’s when I left my house this morning. (The precise details of why I was leaving before dawn are not important, but I will admit that I got up early to do work that I should have been doing last night when I was watching the latest episode of Bones with my housemate.)

Anyhow, I came downstairs, and the front hallway wreaked. For a few seconds, I thought the neurotic chihuahua (is that redundant?) upstairs had skunked himself, but I quickly realized that the smell was coming from outside. I walked up the hill looking all around so I wouldn’t end up accidentally tripping over one of the neighborhood skunks.

Then, as I was standing at the bus-stop, I noticed a raccoon sneaking out from between the laundromat and the neighboring house. It snuffled around the sidewalk for a few minutes. Every time a car went by it jumped on to the closest tree trunk and clung for dear life.

Finally it started waddling across the road with me stage whispering “hurry up, hurry up!” as truck headlights bore down on it. It made it to the other side unscathed and went straight up onto the front porch of a house, presumably to root through their recycling bins.

BTW, I don’t think I’ve mentioned here that my favoritemost word in Swedish is tvättbjörn, raccoon. It literally means “wash bear.” The Norwegian version, which has the same literal meaning, might be even better: vaskebjørn. Try saying it to yourself to see what I mean.

Vas’-kuh-byern. Vas’-kuh-byern. Vas’-kuh-byern.

If there’s any smell better than honeysuckle after a late afternoon thunderstorm, I can’t imagine what it might be right now.

I slept in today.

I don’t know when I last managed that. (Last weekend when I slept through the alarm clock on the morning after the time change doesn’t really count since I had been up until 2 a.m.) Waking up early is one of the curses of adulthood. Barring too many late nights, it’s hard to sleep much later than whatever time your alarm clock usually rings.

Today I woke up at  7:30 and decided that was far too early to be awake, so I went back to bed. And, miracle of miracles, I actually fell back asleep. The falling back asleep part is always the problem. I’m one of those people who’s much more sensitive to light than to sound, so once the sun’s up, I’m up.

Not this morning though. I somehow managed to nod off until 10:30. Then I stayed curled up in bed with my blankets and my heating pad and my pile of pillows and read a novel until noon. I may have wondered, just for a second, if I should have been working on homework or cleaning up my room, but it felt so wonderful to do nothing but have fun.

Eventually I got up and ate buckwheat pancakes and surfed the Net for a while. Then I watched a sappy movie on TV and played piano for a while. I know that I titled yesterday’s post “Weekend Project #1″ — as if I were going to accomplish a lot — it’s just that it’s been so long since I’ve both managed to do nothing and to not feel guilty about it.

My only regret is that I never did end up making chowder. And that had nothing to do with my day of self-indulgence. My local grocery store, with its limited selection, didn’t have any leeks, so I’ll have to go to the next town over to get them tomorrow.