Oct
25
I woke up this morning with the familiar mild feeling of weekday dread—three articles today, my god, it’s like shoveling sand, sand made of Justin Bieber’s smug mop-haired face and Kim Kardashian’s improbably-shaped ass—and a deeper, panicky sense of doom regarding a project that’s due in, let’s check the calendar, two days, oh fuck oh fuck. On top of that like a nice little layer of shit-frosting, an infusion of regret over my food choices over the weekend. Weeks of eating clean and having goddamned herbal tea instead of cookies at night, and I throw it all away for two days of a pumpkin-muffin-themed Roman gorge-orgy?
I should have worked more during naptimes and at night, I think. I shouldn’t have used a date night as an excuse to go completely off the rails with my diet. I should have vacuumed, I should have done laundry, I should have gone to the gym.
It’s too easy to focus on everything I didn’t do. The sort of weekend that if I were still watercooler-bullshitting with a coworker, I’d dismiss with the flap of a hand. “Oh, you know,” I’d say with a laugh, “ate too much. Lazed around. Not much.”
On Saturday morning I packed a picnic lunch—in an actual picnic basket—and we drove to JB’s office, where we spun in office chairs and sent the boys on crazy giggling missions to leap over cardboard boxes.
I had my first night out with my husband in weeks, maybe months. We ate sushi at our favorite place and watched The Social Network, which we both loved.
We drove out to Alki in the rain and gloom and had lunch overlooking the water, venturing out onto the dock afterwards and pointing out buildings and boats and seagulls.
We cooked a giant breakfast for Sunday night dinner, complete with bacon and jam-covered toast, and we started our meal with our version of grace: everyone with two thumbs upraised, a group shout of “Good food, good meat, good grief, let’s eat! Teaaaaaaaam Sharps!” and a clap at the end.
Riley sat on the counter in order to supervise the assembly of pumpkin-chocolate muffins, both of us stealing bites of chocolate chips.
We bundled up on Sunday night and walked around a nearby park, ducking our heads against the rain, teaching the boys how to stuff their hands in their pockets to keep them warm. “Keep ’em against your balls,” advised JB.
JB got a fire going in the wood stove and we all curled up together on the couch with the lights off, watching the dancing flames and telling ghost stories.
Before bed, we played “Roly Poly” in the living room, the kids hurling themselves in running summersaults onto sofa cushions laid out on the floor.
I napped on Saturday—so delicious!—and on Sunday I finished an amazing, can’t-put-it-down book.
I don’t know why it isn’t easier to think of all that stuff, instead.
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Sounds like a great weekend, full of fun! Good luck with the deadlines. What book was impossible to put down?
That made me teary. I think it’s because I’ve got the same things going on over here and my heart is bursting because I’m so damned lucky.
Sounds like a perfect weekend to me. :)
What’s the can’t-put-it-down book? Sounds like a great weekend to me.
Maybe it’s more difficult because they’re all in one place — the work, the laundry, the muffins . . . Harder to compartmentalize that way. (And I would imagine that it’s harder to focus in on any one thing too.) In any event, you write the everyday ordinary so well. Makes me cherish my ordinary.
The book was ‘Room’, by Emma Donoghue. It was rough to read at first but it’s pretty amazing.
Oh, my gosh, I love your “grace!” How awesome is that?!
The Monday morning guilt can be heavy at times. I have been trying to relish the moments of nothing and enjoy just sitting and relaxing without feeling guilty about the 987 other things I should be doing.
It’s hard to forgive ourselves for not being superheros sometimes. :)
This church-going girl thinks your version of “grace” is downright awesome. Loved it. Especially the “Team [insert last name]!” part.
Sounds like a great weekend to me. And now I am jonesing for a pumpkin chocolate chip muffin.
That weekend sounds awesome! And, you really liked room? I’ve heard it was good but since I have a 5 year old named Jack the thought of reading it gives me pause.
Look on the bright side: you don’t have to commute to downtown in this craptastic weather. You can stay home and hammer at those deadlines in your comfy yoga pants in front of a fire. :)
Sounds like a perfectly lovely weekend.
All THAT stuff sounds fantastic. Can I bring my family to live with your family? Cause it sounds like it’s way more fun.
I can so relate to this post and this weekend. I’m also trying to remember the good points of the weekend and stop worrying about the kitchen counter that is a disaster and the splatter of red I-don’t-know-what that I never cleaned off the floor.
Dude. I KNOW. Same thing over here. For some reason I can’t seem to help focusing on all the things I feel like I’ve failed at recently. Although I am finding that making a (short, manageable) list of things I plan to accomplish today and then actually DOING them is helping a lot.
These days I get to work on Monday morning and all I can think about are all the moments over the weekend that I spent screaming at my kids. “Don’t push your sister!” “Stop chasing the poor cat!” “GET OUT OF THE LITTER BOX” “Do not stand on the radiator!” And then, in an attempt to at least make some kind of impression on the four-year-old-who-won’t-listen-and-is-impervious-to-most-punishment: “Stop doing that or I won’t let you wear your new dress to school today… ok, take off the dress. Take it off now or I will take it off for you. IF I HAVE TO CHASE YOU FIRST I WILL THROW IT AWAY!!”
Good lord, who am I??
See, and THIS is why I feel like I can relate to you, regardless of whatever lifestyle changes you go through.
May I strongly recommend another book that, while not exactly uplifting through most of it, might really resonate with you? Lit by Mary Karr. http://www.amazon.com/Lit-Memoir-P-S-Mary-Karr/dp/0060596996/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288032899&sr=1-1
I’m local and will certainly give you my copy if you’re pinching pennies. I picked it up at Costco.
Oops, if you want my copy of Lit, you can reach me through your sometimes dog sitter, Valria.
This post is why it’s hard when my childless co-workers ask me what I did over the week-end. Impossible to explain that I did both nothing and everything at the same time.
Your life is AWESOME. So happy for you!!
Yeah, I hear you. The guilt from all you didn’t do over the weekend may hit hard the Monday after, but the joy of those moments from the weekend will still with you a lot longer.
Good for you for having some fun this weekend and ignoring the laundry! Besides, freshly washed clothes are overrated ;)
Oh yeah, I meant to mention before – a weekend of pumpkin muffin gorging doesn’t erase two weeks of healthy behavior. You still rocked those two weeks. And now you can starting rocking the good habits again.
I know it’s frustrating to eat uncontrollably (trust me; I ate almost nothing but cream cheese frosting and pumpkin cake on Saturday!), but you still need to give yourself credit for when you’re good!
I’m going to de-lurk for a spell and tell you how much I look forward to reading your blog EVERY DAY. No matter what your job or mood or level of contentment, you always have something to say. You are LIVING your life, not just breathing and doing.
I had the opposite of your weekend and this piece made me grateful. I got to cheer on marathoners with whom I used to run (before I got knocked up!). I saw Orion beside a full moon then watched the sun come up over the race course. I took my kids to the park and counted ducks. We hung fake cobwebs in the yard even though it’s going to rain tomorrow. I ate many glorious slices from BOTH of my birthday cakes.
My carpet is so dirty right now that I have to wash my feet to take a nap…and I do. Your writing reminded me to see these things, not the unwritten thank you notes, the dead bug on the stairs, the gakky old milk smell in the car and the sinkful of dirty dishes.
The nice thing about the freelance life is that because it has its own schedule, or at least a flexible schedule, Monday doesn’t necessarily have to be the day where you get back into it full tilt. I’m a freelancer/contract worker, and I pretty much make myself take time off on the weekend to just relax or be with my husband and friends, because I know if I don’t, I’ll start to resent my work, and that’s the whole reason why I left the 9-5 grind in the first place. After my own weekend of fun time, I haven’t gotten much done today either, but I know I am going to be busting ass the whole rest of the week, so I let it go. Hard to do sometimes, but life is always a balance. :)
I can’t even begin to tell you how much I loved this.
Emma Donoghue?! You HAVE TO read Slammerkin! I’ve read it twice and it’s awesome.
Your weekend sounded great. Mine was spent with family at a nephew’s college football game. It was chilly and we stuffed our faces with food all day long.
Life IS the everyday ordinary. It’s easy to forget that sometimes. Thanks for the reminder.
This made me cry. All stuff you did do is so awesome. Fuck the other stuff. :)
“I don’t know why it isn’t easier to think of all that stuff, instead.”
Fear, plain and simple. And don’t I know it myself.
Fear that you’re on the slippery slope that we all know so well. Fear that we’re not doing enough for him, her, them. Fear that one weekend of indulgence negates a week of eating right. (This one I can particularly sympathize with, ugh.) Fear that this was the week that we finally screwed up and let the universe down.
Fortunately, it’s never as bad as we fear. “Let those who have eyes, see; and those who have ears, hear.” Which is not some mystical formula, but just an invitation to see things as they are, which is (almost?) never as bad as we fear, in fact usually fairly OK…
“Room”? will have to look that one up. Never heard of it, thanks for the pointer!
Even though I am a “childless co-worker”, I can always appreciate (some might even say RELATE) when my co-worker tells me about her wonderful family-filled weekend that wasn’t anything special but something she really enjoyed all the same.
Hear, hear, what Victoria said!
That sky! Weather like that makes me want to snuggle with people I love. Sounds like you had a great weekend!
I can totally relate to what you are going through with food right now. I have been experiencing the same thing lately.
What a great post….a reminder to focus on what is good everyday instead of the stresses.
I have so much to be thankful for: A supportive husband, a healthy baby boy, a roof over my head…etc. And yet it is so easy to go on feeling like a failure because the house is a mess and my to-do list is too long.
Congrats on getting in a night out with your hubby!
I honestly don’t know how you manage to write about Kim Kardashian…but three pieces on celebrities should be easy enough to bang out!
come on, who broke up with whom? Oh, and I hear (via the VERY reliable OK! magazine) that there’s trouble in the ranks of the Sister Wives…
very stimulating stuff, that.
Keep kicking ass. When you are old, you are gonna remember the pumpkin muffins, not the deadlines.
I actually wrote something similar today on my blog so it’s funny to come and read this. Often times, we forget about things that we have (or do) and focus too much on what we don’t have (or don’t do). Love that picture of your boys looking out at the water, it’s priceless.
I know this was a sweet post and I loved all of it. BUT I cannot stop thinking about….”Keep ’em against your balls.” I am laughing so hard over here with JB’s man-vice. LOLOLOLOL
your weekend sounds like perfection. two days of throwing the diet out the window. good for you!
It is SOOOO much easier to focus on the negative. I LOVE your positives!! Great counteraction :D
What a beautiful weekend!! I wish you many more just like it.
ugh I didn’t feel like getting weepy today
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