The rhythm of the weekend, with its birth, its planned gaieties, and its announced end, followed the rhythm of life and was a substitute for it.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
1. 4-day workweeks
2. A good book you don’t want to put down
3. Tacos
What are you happy about today?
In Scouting, a boy is encouraged to educate himself instead of being instructed.
— Sir Robert Baden-Powell
It’s fortuitous that NaBloPoMo ends Friday. Tomorrow’s Three Things Thursday, and for Friday’s post I just have to put the finishing touches on something I’ve been working on all month and put it up that morning. Then, David and I are flying to Detroit for the weekend, so blogging probably won’t happen, but Saturday’s the 1st, so I’m home free!
David’s brother is being promoted (is that the right word?) to Eagle Scout and the ceremony is Friday night. David promised TJ that he’d be there, so off we go. I’m looking forward to it, actually. I really like David’s family and I’m excited to see them again. We’re actually going back at the end of August for several days before heading to Buffalo (with a side trip to Toronto) for my cousin’s wedding Labor Day weekend (I’m a bridesmaid yet again, and the dress is awesome – I’ve have very good luck in the bridesmaid dress department). I’m hoping we’ll get up to the Northern Penninsula on that trip; I hear it’s beautiful.
That’s all the vacationing we’re doing this summer. David has tons of vacation time saved up – so much so that he’s got to use something like 10 days before the end of the year or he loses them – but I don’t, so I’ve got to save some for the holidays. So I want to live vicariously through all of you: Where have you gone so far this summer, or where are you still planning to go?
If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?
— Vince Lombardi
Yahoo! We did it! We finally won our first game! 16-11! And I hit a double, and had an RBI, and fielded some balls out in right field! And kept a mean scorebook during the innings the subs were in! Yay!
P.S. I just made up the title to this post. I don’t actually know if we’ve played 13 games and lost twelve, but I know we’ve lost every game we’ve played until tonight, so I just picked a number out of thin air. I suspect I’m not too far off.
I remembered my secular father’s only strong spiritual directive: Don’t be an asshole, and make sure everybody eats.
— from Grace (Eventually): Further Thoughts on Faith, by Anne Lamott
Five more posts, including this one, and my NaBloPoMo experiment will be a success. Good thing, too, because I’m running out of ideas!
Here’s one thing I’ve been thinking about, though: Are there any rules you had growing up that you hated or thought were stupid, but which were so ingrained in you that you still follow them now?
This came to mind this weekend, when I set my alarm for 9AM even though I really wanted to go to bed without setting it at all and just sleep as long as I pleased on Saturday morning. Growing up, mostly when my brother and I were teenagers or home from college for the summer, my mom’s rule was that we couldn’t sleep past 10 in the morning. In her words, any later and “you’re wasting the day.”
And as much as I hated it then, I’ve come to really believe that my mother was right. You can accomplish so much before 10AM – gym, errands, laundry – and then you have the whole day free to do whatever else you want to do. Since moving in with David, I don’t get up as early as I used to on the weekends (8 or 8:30), but I do usually still get up by 10. It’s just pathological; I feel bad about wasting the day if I stay in bed any later.
So what about you?
You need three things in the theater – the play, the actors, and the audience – and each must give you something.
— Kenneth Haigh
I’m really pushing it today to get this in under the wire. As it is, my posts on Reader make it look like I missed a day and posted twice on the 24th, but I swear that’s Reader’s fault for not updating in a timely manner and not mine!
Today, we finally got to go see Second City’s Barack Stars. There was a snafu with the tickets last weekend and we didn’t get to see it then, but we got it all worked out for today. The theater was quite small – intimate, I believe is the proper term – and every seat was filled. The show – the parts I could understand – was great. But there was a lot of fast talking and dropped punchlines (you know, how sometimes you lower your voice at the end of a joke to make it sound funnier?), and, of course, laughter that obscured some lines, so it was enjoyable, frustrating, and sad for me all at once. David, though, was cracking up the whole time, and he’s been having such a crappy, busy time at work the last month or so, so it was so great to see him smile and laugh for two hours straight. The best line of the show? “Honey, what do you think about this abortion bill?” “Pay it.”
At the end, after the show, the actors – there were six of them – came back on stage to do a little improv exercise. They sent two of them (one man, one woman) out of the room, and the others asked the audience for three words – we came up with bodacious, legerdemain, and conjugate. The other two came back in, and in teams of three (men v. women), the two that had heard us choose the words had to act out each of the three words. It was like the very best game of charades I’ve ever seen. A lot of fun to watch.
We just got back from playing putt-putt at the hardest course I’ve ever played. Remember back in September, I planned a date weekend for me and David that included miniature golf? And remember how I won, and David kept insisting I cheated (because he’s a sore loser – though he’s totally teasing)? So this was a rematch, and man, did I ever tank. Though I was, again, the only one of us to score a hole in one (and I got to yell “Get in the hole” like the spectators do at real live golf events), I still lost by eleven strokes. I’m not even kidding. But David was happy so that was good. I’ve been kicking his behind at tennis for three weeks running (10-4, 10-8, 6-4) and on the way home tonight he said, “Finally, I beat you at something besides thumb wrestling.” Hee. For the record, he also beats me at arm wrestling and checkers. Like, kicks my ass at checkers so badly it makes me cry.
Anyway, it’s bedtime now. Maybe I’ll get some reading in. I’m reading My Sister’s Keeper by Jodie Picoult because I want to see the movie and I know the movie ends differently from the book, so I want to be able to compare them. Have a great Monday, everyone – see you tomorrow!
Hear Me in the Harmony 