While April isn’t coming to a close just yet, we are into the final third — and the last full week of the month. As such, here are some things I’m hoping to cross off my to-do list before next Sunday:

• Get my volleyball team sorted for next season. The location (the Mall) is set; I just need to look at everyone’s schedule and get as many of us on the same page as possible.
• Send out a resume. While Sarah and I have met a couple times this month to work on job-hunting and while I’ve found several leads, I’ve puttered through revising my resume again and trying to pull together some pieces from my last job to include in a portfolio. This week, I should get something out the door, just so I don’t lose momentum.
• Coach three times. My second job has not been as communicative as I would have hoped after they pushed the start day for our clinics back, but as far as I can tell, we are still on for next Saturday.
• Dine with my friend John. He mentioned he was excited to do dinner after volleyball next Saturday, and since Rudi will be out of town, I have underscored that I’m in.
• Do an Earth Day event at the garden with a local nursery school. My dad suggested Rudi should dress up as a rat to represent the local fauna, but I’m 75% sure he was just kidding.
• Get at least one more person signed up for a garden plot from the 150-person waitlist. The three people I contacted last week were no-go’s, so I’ve already reached out to the next three. Fingers crossed.
• Get the rest of my plot weeded, the potatoes planted, and the trellis erected for the peas.
• Watch baseball. Rudi and I have tickets Thursday afternoon, and we are both hoping for a warmer time than the game we attended earlier this month, which had us dressed into our winter coats.
• Bake bread. I just need to dig the breadmaker out and get it going.
• Trade some books with the libraries. One is overdue, but I’m hoping to finish the humungous graphic novel I have out and get it back to them as well, since I have two books on hold.
• Finish my pair of fingerless mitts. There’s literally an hour’s worth of knitting (max) left to do on it and this week looks like I might want some help with handwarming.

What’s on your agenda this week?

I’m hoping this weekend includes:

• Playing volleyball
• Baking bread
• Planting seeds
• Taking part in the garden cleanup
• Going to the library
• Buying spring produce at the farmers market (ramps, asparagus, and morels were checked off last week; this week I’m hoping to spy some rhubarb and maybe an Easter bread if the Greek food stand pops up for the Orthodox holiday)
• Finishing a book and a knitting project
• Doing laundry
• Vacuuming
• Changing out the litter box
• Watching a movie
• Writing my March Into the Stacks post (only 3 books should be reasonable!)
• Sending some mail

It may not all happen, but I’m certain some of it will. And the list is here if I falter and wonder what I should be doing.

I was supposed to start part-time job #2 this week, but it was unexpectedly pushed back to the end of the month. While this frees up a couple hours on Saturday, I have more than enough things I’d like to fit in to fill it up. Here’s some of what I’m hoping gets done:

• Dye eggs.
• Play volleyball. (I already have a dozen people interested in joining me on the Mall tomorrow, which is forecast to be warm and sunny.)
• Work in the garden. I have seeds to plant in my own garden, but we have a work day scheduled that I was originally going to have to miss. As of this spring, I am suddenly co-garden manager for our whole community garden and there are some things that need to happen in order to get new gardeners in where they need to be.
• Bake. I have sourdough discard that needs to be used, bread to bake, and a scone mix that would make a nice breakfast for Easter. (I picked up a jar of clotted cream when I knew I would be down here for the holiday.)
• Mail cards. There are a couple birthday cards that are going to be late and some overdue letters I need to get out.
• Do laundry. We’ve been whittling away at Laundry Mountain, but it has shown no interest in helping us out. I have clean clothes for work on Monday, but not Tuesday, so we need to throw on at least one more load.
• Change the sheets. Laundry Mountain teeters against the bed, so if I can get it down to hill-size, I can change the sheets to the new floral set Rudi gave me for my birthday.
• Wrap up a couple books. Some materials are due back to the library next week, and it would be nice not to have to just put myself back on the holds list.
• Finish my fingerless mitts. I have one thumb to knit and the last ten rows of the other hand to reknit. (I’ve already ripped it back and have it on the smaller needles, which was actually the hard part.)
• Find the hat I started a couple years back. I found the beads that I bought last spring, so now I just need to reunite them and pick it back up. If past me was as helpful as I believe she was, there is a Ziploc with the hat brim on the needles, all three balls of yarn, and the pom pom in it. But it has proved elusive thus far this spring.

Some of this will probably not happen and some other stuff likely will. We’ll see how it goes — and how rainy Sunday ends up being.

I’ve been feeling unmotivated lately (it’s the grey and the lingering chill and the mud season preventing us from playing volleyball outdoors and everyone else’s beach vacations), so decided to resurrect an older blog feature — the weekend planning post. I never expect to get all of the items accomplished, but it’s helpful to giving me some shape to the next couple days and to use to refer back to when I falter a bit. Here is a baker’s dozen activities:

• There is a Holi celebration at Dupont Circle Saturday afternoon co-sponsored by the Indian Embassy, and I am curious about this celebration of color, spring, and the triumph of good over evil.
• It’s the member celebration sale at Politics and Prose, and while I absolutely do not need more books, I might still like to pick a particular one up, since it hadn’t yet been published when I went looking for it on my birthday bookstore jaunt last month. I should probably peek at the calendar to see if there are celebrations that will require a book in the next few months.
• Buy cleaning supplies. The main P&P store is up by Rodman’s, which is an independent shop with a little bit of everything (groceries including their renowned international section, home goods, deodorant not behind a locked case, a watch repair counter). It’s a throwback, and I need sponges and cleaning supplies and a new toothbrush and cat food and Hobnobs, so I’ll be heading that direction.
• Eat pizza. My favorite pizzeria completes that northern-D.C. triangle. I mean, at that point, do I even have a choice?
• Make bread. I literally just need to spend five minutes putting things into the bread maker and then commit to 3 hours at home waiting for the reward of a hot, fresh loaf.
• Change the cat box liner. I bought new litter earlier this week, but I’m a few days late with this monthly chore, since I haven’t yet dug out the new liner.
• Tidy the living room. (Such a short sentence. Such a Herculean task. But the only way through is through, so let’s make some inroads.)
• Hit up the farmers market on Sunday. While I can take compost to a number of receptacles around the city, the pickup at the farmers market in my neighborhood is most convenient.
• Watch the UConn-Georgetown playoff game on tv.
• Finish knitting the mitt I’ve been working on. I have an inch left, plus the thumb, and then I probably need to tear out the bind off on the first mitt and fix it, but my best guess is that’s under two hours of work. It’d be nice to have these ready to go for chilly spring evenings.
• Write a letter. I owe cards and letters to a few people, and it would feel nice to send them some cheer in their mailboxes.
• Tackle the February Into the Stacks post. I only read five books, so it should take half the time the January post took, right?
• Saturday would have been my grandmother’s 105th birthday, and it feels like I should make one of her recipes to celebrate. A cookie and a cuppa while reading a mystery feels like a good way to remember.

What do you hope to get to this weekend?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is a Thanksgiving freebie, so I’m going to share ten of the things I’m most grateful for this year:

1. Shelter and food: I know it sounds trite, but I pass by people living rough all the time, literally with their coats thrown over themselves, sleeping on the sidewalk. And I was up at a soup kitchen on Friday night, and we served people for hours, including a family whose child was celebrating a birthday. It’s just not possible to take a roof and meals for granted.
2. Rudi and my family: Rudi and I have been together now for 30 years. If our relationship were a person, it could run for Senate. (It would do a better job than some actual people currently serving in that role.) I love him more every day, and I’m so lucky that he loves me back. Add to that that I am still lucky enough to have both my parents and my brother. You don’t get to be my age without understanding that’s not a given.
3. My friends: How are there people who I met 35 years ago, who know me inside and out, and still want to hang out with me? Who call, and have lunch, and walk me home even though I tell them they don’t have to, and text, and find me coaching jobs, and answer my insecurities with kindness over and over and over again? And how are there people I’ve known for only a few years who want to continue getting to know me? Some people don’t have a single friend and I have more than I can count on my hands.
4. Coal and Ember: Our cats have lived with us just over a year now, and I cannot think of how we existed without the color and love they add to our lives. I walk into the bathroom, and Coal is asleep on the bathmat on his back, lying like a drifting otter and hoping for a belly rub. Ember naps on the router, running the internet, or curls up tight against me in bed after Rudi has given her breakfast. They chase bubbles and lasers and balls and fruit flies and steal my hair ties because Ember figured out that rubber bands make a satisfying twanging sound/vibration. And they are so happy to have found us, and we them.
5. Volleyball: Honestly, who would have thought a sport could bring someone so much joy — and particularly so many decades after I first started playing it? I love playing it, I love coaching it, I love watching it. It has brought me a team I hold dear and a group of friends who love me off the court and forgive my missteps on it. It gave me a work-study job that led to a real job. It provides me with structure when few other things do. If someone said you’d have to take up jogging in order to keep playing volleyball, I’d seriously consider it.
6. Libraries: There is no way I could afford to buy all the books I want to read. But libraries do that and then let me borrow them, sometimes for months at a time, for free. They let me print things and answer questions and download music and stream movies and tv shows and have free restrooms and meeting rooms and just come in from the elements space. And because the libraries around me are cool, I have access to all of that from three separate systems, and could utilize others.
7. Writing: I know I don’t write as much as I mean to. But when I craft something I’m proud of (to be fair, these days it’s usually a particularly nice email to the volleyball team), man, does it feel good! I hope to be more disciplined moving forward.
8. Books: I’m on my way to reading 60 books this year, and while I haven’t grooved with all of them, I have enjoyed the vast majority and loved a solid handful or so.
9. Knitting: I knit way less than I used to, but I have lots of yarn, so I expect to cycle back to it, hopefully this winter. (Maybe the sweater I’d planned to make when I sprained my wrist over the summer will finally become reality.) In the meantime, there is a pair of socks that needs maybe only 100 more stitches I hope to finish this week so I can wear them on Thanksgiving.
10. Gardening: There is something really satisfying about eating food you’ve grown, be it a pod of peas or a squash or basil or purple potatoes. Or seeing the pop of color of flowers that have finally bloomed. Without my community garden plot, I would not be able to grow much of anything.

How about you? What are you grateful for this year?

Rudi’s got a busy coaching week, so I’ll be on my own starting today. Let’s see how much of this baker’s dozen to-do list I can tackle:

• Play volleyball (My game is at the ridiculously early hour of 10:30, which is painful but doable. I am hopeful I will be ready early enough that I can catch the bus, rather than having to bike to the game.)
• Get rid of the compost
• Reach out to some friends
• Write a post about the books I read in January
• Hit both libraries
• Work on my journal
• Bake (Maybe bread, maybe cookies.)
• Read the book I started this week
• Send some cards
• Watch some of last year’s All Creatures, so Rudi and I can start the latest season this month
• Take 10 books from the bin of books I culled from my shelves to either the Arlington Library or a Little Free Library
• Find yarn for Sergio’s baby’s sweater in my stash
• Change the sheets

How about you? What are you hoping your weekend includes?