If you have kids and if you are lucky enough to have someone in your life who can look after them beautifully for a whole day (in yesterday’s case, my kind husband), you can:

• leave the house lightly laden
• think
• jaywalk
• have a leisurely breakfast over four courses at the cool new café down the road
• write and edit a couple of blog posts during said leisurely breakfast
• read a newspaper for as long as you want
• walk at your own pace
• take the stairs
• do a small dollop of housework because you feel like it, not because you have to
• visit one of your favourite places in the whole world
• go for a longish run, using traffic lights and Fringe Festival art installations as excuses for a breather every so often
• check out the menus (and wifi provision) in new cafés and restaurants as you pass them
• admire dogs without actually stopping to meet them
• put out the recycling (as this involves a locked dumpster room across the road, it’s a bigger undertaking that it may first seem)
• hang out with your family and witness the most consciously cheeky act yet from the toddler
• go for a massage with the seriously amazing Mia at Articulate
• start your Generosity Kit coffee-voucher research at Midnight Espresso
• feel good enough to cook dinner (a triple batch, of course)
• feel very grateful to the husband and auntie who make the day possible.

If you don’t have kids in your care at the moment, maybe you could give the gift of this kind of day to someone you know who does. If you do, is there someone who could give it to you, if you asked? Highly recommended.

(As I passed Solace in the Wind yesterday, I heard someone say, ‘On a day like today, you’d think he’d just dive in!’)