The Weekend Rundown

Hello, all you beautiful people.

I hope your (collective) weekend has been as fantastic as ours, if even just a sliver as fantastic as ours. What, you may ask, did we do that was just so thrilling? Why, not much.

But it was fantastic, just the same.

Friday evening my folks watched the kids and Stephen and I managed to sneak in a date at a real-live grown-up restaurant, a local Italian joint. We sort of called it our anniversary date, as we hadn't really celebrated our 4th anniversary from 2 weeks ago with anything more formal than a coffee date. The restaurant earned our loyal patronage forever by giving us some free food for our slightly prolonged wait, and I allowed myself a Long Island Iced Tea. (Which I just looked up on Wikipedia and ohmyword, no wonder I felt a tad squiggly afterward.) We ate so much that I could hear my thighs, heavy-laden with calories, groaning in protest as I dug into our shared tiramisu at the end of the feast. We had a gift card, so it was nice to spend someone else's money. I think we do that well. Perhaps it's a shared spiritual gift: Spending Other People's Money.

Afterward we zipped over to Barnes and Noble, our fall-back date locale, and read for awhile before heading home. All had gone well there, and I actually turned down an offer of Dairy Queen from my parents (because of the aforementioned tiramisu.) I don't think that has ever happened. I hope someone recorded that for the history books.

I spent Saturday morning with two of my favorite people, my sister and my mom, doing two of my favorite things: going out for breakfast and then hitting garage sales like the hard-core thrifters that we are. It was heavenly. I got, among other things, a small blade ceiling fan for Charlotte's room (I have been eyeing these at Lowe's for a long time, but they are priced at more than $4, I assure you), several pairs of play shorts for the boys (ones I won't feel guilty about them staining with mud, sidewalk chalk, and charcoal dust), an unused coloring book, and a ruffled swimsuit for Charlotte. It wasn't a big ticket item day, but it was still fun.

I did once again encounter a person who was under the impression that she was holding a High End Merchandise Retail Sale for big profits instead of a common yard sale for getting rid of junk. You know how I feel about these people. She had gone so far as to put big signs labeling the designer brands of chairs and tables and such alongside their prices. I asked if she would take $5 for a 3-light chandelier, thinking it would be perfect for my bedroom. She pointed out that it was a Lennox and then said she needed to remember how much she originally paid for it before countering with a price of $15. I declined and thanked her. She then said, "Oh, I'll just put that on eBay if I can't get what I want out of it." Fine. It's a free country. She can do what she wants. But I wonder if, a year from now when she rummages in her basement and finds that chandelier crammed in between her other, designer label cast-offs, she'll kick herself for not unloading it on a willing buyer standing in her front lawn.

P.S.: I didn't really care what brand it was. I just wanted to spray paint it black and hang it in my room. Oh, well.

My mom, sister, and I generally behaved in our typical Frick and Frack fashion, and I came home in high spirits. Stephen did a little lawn work, the kids did a lot of playing, and I got in some quality time with my recent trashy acquisitions:

Aren't they just fantastic? Someone in our neighborhood was throwing them out. Evidently many, many large and careless people had taken repeated turns jumping on the seats, which I have cut out and cast aside. Believe me, the seats were beyond salvageable. You'll have to stay tuned to see the finished product. I think you'll be proud of me.

(Note: Another thing I find amazing is that, in this day and age of popular and expensive wicker furniture, the people who had used, abused, and then tossed these babies had simply bought two brand-spankin'-new ones to replace them. I'll be delicate and just say that I'm surprised these people, whose house looked like it might be crumbling in its foundation, were able to afford two new wicker chairs, which are very much beyond my means. Thus I find my wicker in the trash. Oh, well. Their loss, my gain.)

Saturday evening was passed in individual pursuits (reading, sewing, cursing under my breath at the sewing machine). Sunday morning was manic, as usual, though the mania had a sweet edge to it: We took communion for the first time in the Orthodox Church. It was meaningful and dignified and mystical and anticlimactic all at once. Our kids took it, too, as is tradition in Orthodoxy, and they seemed to think it was fun. Oh, and this may have been the hardest part for me: I had to fast coffee. Get out of town, right? I brew Starbucks that could peel paint off of walls and put hair on a hairless chest simultaneously, and I love it, and I nurse large mugs of it every morning, and I had to forgo it because Orthodox fast on Sundays before they partake of the elements.

I know we sacrifice as Christians, but really.

We lazed our Sunday afternoon away with long, languid naps, and in the late afternoon we made our way over to my parents' house, as is tradition every Sunday. There we played in the sandbox (on Jack and Baylor's parts), ate wipes (Charlotte), and read the newspaper. There we also realized why the boys had been so cranky and whiny: We, their parents, had completely forgotten to feed them lunch, so by 5:30 they were, naturally, starving. Whoops. On Sundays we get home from church early enough that we just put them down for a nap and don't feed them until afterward. Today we simply forgot to feed them altogether. Poor little guys. Kids don't fast breakfast, so at least they had that in their systems.

After panini sandwiches and s'mores, we all walked down to the marina (my parents live just a few houses away from the river) to see boats, as well as people drifting down the river in their party barges. It was almost as pleasant as actually floating down the river in a party barge ourselves. After that we walked back to their house for the kids' bath, then into the car for a quick grocery store stop before coming back home.

Now the kids are asleep and Stephen and I are sitting together on the love seat, our feet propped up on the ottoman (which Baylor generously covered in crayon graffiti yesterday), doing Very Important Business on our separate laptops. (He is on Facebook. I am blogging and looking up highballs on Wikipedia. Like I said, Very Important.) I hope you can see, as I do, just how wonderful our weekend truly was. We are blessed, as very nearly every weekend follows these similar patterns of equal parts play and work, sprinkled generously with a lot of love and laughter.

Anyone want to embroider that on a pillow? Because I might pay good money for that. Well, good money at a garage sale rate, that is.