Ahhh, weekends. PDM and I have a pretty comfortable routine on the weekends. We vary it to fit whatever plans we've made, and abandon it completely if we're working on a project around the house, but lately the combination of summer heat and my need to spend large chunks of time studying for the board exam have caused us to make fewer plans and to totally eliminate working on home improvement projects. We've had plenty of lazy weekends in which to perfect the routine.
Without boring you with a blow-by-blow description of what we do and when, here are some of the things that make weekends so enjoyable and different from weekdays. This isn't all we ever do of course. This is just the stuff we do all the time.
Friday nights at the pub. Yeah, we're regulars. The bartenders pour our usual drinks when we walk in the door. We know all of the bartenders and managers and most of the people at the bar. It's a little like what went on at Cheers, only without all the Sam and Diane stuff. Everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came, yadda yadda yadda. We enjoy visiting with our friends there, especially the group of old retired guys who are there early in the evening. Sometimes we play trivia, sometimes we eat, and sometimes we just sit and drink. It is a sports bar, so we might come back on Saturday or Sunday to see a game, depending on what sports season we're in.
Saturday morning radio shows. We're geeks. We admit it. Perhaps that is why we find Inside the Black Box, Car Talk, and Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me! so amusing and interesting. I also like This American Life, but it isn't a Saturday morning radio show, technically. But you can listen to any of their shows on the internet any time you want, including Saturday mornings, so I will leave it on the list.
Mornings with a pot of hot tea, the internet, the newspaper, some retro music and a cat or two. I'm a tea drinker. Never liked coffee. I like to wake up, make a big pot of tea, and consume it while I read the fun bits in the newspaper. When not listening to one of our favorite radio shows, I think swing and big band makes a fine sonic backdrop for a morning with the paper. I read most everything except the actual news part (which, frankly, is already stale when the newspaper gets plopped onto the driveway, and besides - the news is always depressing these days) and the ads (I could care less what is on sale at Walmart). For actual news, I check the internet, make sure no catastrophes have occurred in the last 24 hours, then move on to recreational surfing. I can usually convince one of the cats to drape herself on the couch with me. Zima is doing the honors right now. Moxy already had a turn while I was reading the paper. She chewed up the sports section while I wasn't looking. This would be a problem during football season, but today I wasn't going to read it anyway.
Not setting the alarm. One of my favorite things about weekends. PDM gets up by 7:00 most days, because he is insane. Just kidding. He is not insane; he is a morning person. I am not. I crawl out of bed any time between 7 and 10. Our arrangement works fine. I get private time at night and PDM gets private time in the morning.
PDM likes to get up early and invade Belgium. Or liberate Tunisia from fascist oppression. Seriously. I've seen him do it. You see, we have a room downstairs that we refer to as The Bunker. PDM keeps a war game set up all the time. The old fashioned kind, with the map, and the complicated rules, and the little cardboard square pieces. We have to keep the door closed at all times, because cats and wargames do not mix well. We'd hate for the giant cat of doom and her sweeping tail of destruction to cause mayhem on the battlefield. I don't pretend to understand this particular hobby. But it makes the man happy and that is what weekends are for.
Puttering around in the yard used to make me happy on the weekends. But lately it has been hot and muggy, even early in the morning, and it never rains, and we have very restricted watering times. That pretty much killed the joy of gardening for me. I'll do some more landscaping in the fall, provided the water situation is better then.
What kind of stuff makes you so happy on the weekends that it turns into a routine?
5 comments:
Regarding "This American Life," do you remember listening to The House on Loon Lake (11/16/2001)? In a number of ways, it reminds me of myself when I was a kid in South Dakota. My friends and I used to explore old, abandoned houses in the country, and we would inspect the items left behind to try to piece together the lives of the people who had lived there. I've also loved genealogy since the early 1990s, so the two things tie together very nicely in this story. It is also a very strange mystery.
I don't like a lot of the stories on TAL, but when they are good, they are really good.
Act One of this episode had me laughing at times too: Allure of the Mean Friends (09/05/2003).
P.S. I linked directly to the audio files since I couldn't find another way to do it (except to give you the dates they aired).
Agreed, The House On Loon Lake is a good one. I wish there had been places like that to explore when I was a kid. I grew up in Atlanta. Most of what we explored was wooded areas, or undeveloped properties (many of which would later turn into shopping centers and parking lots).
On TAL I find that even topics which don't sound very appealing end up being engrossing. "Telephone" (1/16/98) is a great one. For laughs, you can't beat "Squirrel Cop" (Act 2 of "First Day" 11/13/98). I had to pull over the first time I heard that one - I was laughing too hard to drive.
I will definitely listen to them.
I have missed most TALs when they were broadcast on radio, so my favorites list is probably pretty short compared to yours. "Letter to the Lady of the House" (Act One, 02/14/98) is very depressing, yet it almost (emphasis on "almost") makes a person feel good at the end anyway.
Regarding Atlanta, it's depressing how development ruins everything for the sake of profit. It has been happening even here in the middle of nowhere too.
Did you live far away from Atlanta during the years you were gone?
I lived in a small town in rural Massachusetts. Very different from Atlanta in so many ways, only one of which was the latitude and longitude. I believe you should bloom where you're planted, and tried to make it my home, but it never truly was 100% my home. I miss the friends I made there and I did love the land I owned, but I'm much happier being back down south. This is the place that is in my blood and will forever be Home to me.
I'm so rarely home on a consistent basis that I don't really have a particular routine. But I do enjoy sitting in a lounge chair on my balcony and reading. Of course, the balcony is so rickety that one of these days I will likely plunge to my death. But at least I'll die with a book in one hand and a beer in the other.
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