Today is brought to me by:

1. The men and women of the labor force, who work hard to make a living and support their families (today is Labor Day, a holiday in the United States).
2. My parents and grandparents, without whom I would not be here.  While I didn’t agree with everything, they all influenced me and made me what I began with to become who I am today.
3. Warm, humid and overcast weather.  It seems that this day off is often accompanied by bad weather for some reason (the afternoon cleared out to gorgeous skies, a brisk wind, and very hot – triple digit heat index, so still no trip to the botanical gardens, even in the afternoon).
4. A day off to rest and relax.  Now I whether I do either one remains to be seen!
5. A sense of sadness that summer is winding down, the pace is picking up, and things / places will become busy again.

In fact three weeks ago, I noted how much the pace had slowed down everywhere, both at work and in my personal life.  I wrote in my Moleskine journal:

I’ve been enjoying this summer, especially this week.  It’s been much slower at work – people are on vacation and things are less frantic, more measured.  I wish it could be like this all the time, but of course that wouldn’t be good – for business, my job security, even the economy.

The weekends are good too – so much less personal E-mail, less blogs being updated, and most of our subdivision seems to be gone somewhere else.

It’s been nice taking a little longer lunches, leaving a little earlier than usual, having less news and updates to skim and delete.

And everywhere we go, we can get good parking (even at work) and wait in less lines.  Everything is emptier than usual and I am just enjoying – reveling in – this slowdown of the world and some time to decompress a little.

School starts tomorrow here in Virginia, so our neighbors will be flooding home shortly.  The roads will be crowded tomorrow as people head back to work.  But it was nice for a brief time to slow it down, sniff the breeze, and just relax for a few days.  Here’s a post from several years ago, that also commented on the end of summer and how I enjoyed the slowing down that came shortly before Labor Day.

As a side note – today’s prompt is from a challenge I’m doing this month, 30 Days of Lists.  It’s to encourage journalers and scrapbookers.  Some people are doing paper, others are doing it digitally.  I’m doing it in my regular spiral bound notebook that I use for all my jottings.  That way I can scribble out, add things, clarify, and not worry about how it looks. 

#30Lists

 

30 Days of Lists Daybook Spending The Day 30 Days of Lists 30Lists dragonfly grandparents Labor Day Lewis Ginter Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens parents Richmond slower pace summer's end Virginia