On Friday night, since no one else could join us and since the music has ended at The Yards for the season, we opted to spend the evening at our local park with books and snacks. Rudi brought our travel hammock up there and I joined him in a beach chair. The temperatures were cool, as you might be able to tell from our needing to wear pants:

Yesterday, as I mentioned on the blog earlier, I biked up to Hyattsville and Julia joined me there for an arts festival. The festival was smaller than those we’re used to in D.C., but we still found jewelry we liked. We also made our way to Franklin’s for conversation over drinks and the first apple crisp of the season.

This morning after watering the garden, we drove up to Delaware to spend the afternoon at the beach. It was a lovely day for a drive: we turned on Rudi’s iPod and I knit on my shawl and we sang.

In Bethany Beach, we picked up some fish sandwiches, birch beer, and fresh, hot fries and ate lunch on the sand. A brisk, off-shore breeze made air temperatures in the mid- to lower-70s feel ten degrees cooler, but the water was temperate, if a bit choppy. Machinery surrounded us, as construction teams worked in the ocean and on shore, dredging up sand to replenish what washes away from the beach.

After the sun slipped behind the shoreline rentals, we decided to call it a day. With local businesses in the sleepy hamlet closing early, Rudi suggested we drive north to Rehobeth Beach to check out their downtown and see if they had a coffeeshop that was still open.

I sighted the sign for coffee tucked into an alleyway, so we stopped for half an hour to partake in hot drinks, a bookshop/toy store, and the most breathtaking sunset (my photo does no justice to it) before beginning the three-hour trek home.

(Weekending with Amanda)

Saturday I slept in and did far less than I hoped to or should have. I did get a load of laundry done, floors vacuumed, and bills paid, but no writing, knitting, cooking, or reading. I harvested tomatoes from the garden, admired the seedlings coming up already, and gave everything a generous dousing. Rudi and I concluded the night with a picnic dinner while watching Casablanca al fresco in a nearby park (where I also reached the disappointing conclusion that the new sock I began earlier in the week needed to go down a needle size). Oh, and I came up with an idea for a much-needed trip for me and Rudi.

Today, we hit the farmers market (plum jam!) and the local book sale (Jasper Fforde novel!) and the somewhat overrated Adams Morgan Day Festival. We met up with John and Nicole and ate cupcakes and had drinks (beer for them, hot chocolate for me) and dinner. Rudi and I finished the night with an episode of Doctor Who, while I worked on the sock I’d expected to be be finished with by now.

How was your weekend? Did you do fun things? Tackle projects you wanted to get done?

(weekending with Amanda)

Call me a nearly 40-year-old rebel, but there’s something about the word “should” that makes my skin crawl.

There are lots of things I like doing and some that I even love doing. But add “should” or “ought to” in front of them and suddenly I feel hemmed in, restricted, disinterested. I should spend 15 minutes working on my blog. I ought to work on that sock I meant to finish last month. Nope. I have other things to do — like wash the kitchen floor — that are more pressing.

I don’t know why that is except that I struggle with authority, even when that authority is my own. Who are you, or I, to tell me what to do?

So instead I work to abolish the word “should” from my vocabulary when I talk to myself, much like one might when talking to a reactionary toddler or teenager. I want to be able to cross exercising off today’s to-do list. I’ll be glad to have written a blog post. Finishing these socks will free up some needles so I can cast on something new.

Many times (and more and more often, since I realized the problem) the rephrasing/re-envisioning works. But other times I dig in my heels and say, who’s gonna make me? (I can be a real spoiled brat sometimes.)

And while I should be firm with myself and ought to have consequences for not following through on desired actions, we all know how that’s going to turn out…

A three-day weekend ought to mean tons of accomplishments, be they fun or necessary, but I feel like mine fell short, but that may be because it did not include the 40 bazillion things I always want to fit into my weekends.

We started the weekend with a night at the ballpark and a Mets victory over the hometown Nationals. We biked home via Barracks Row, where we heard the final song, with cannon fire, from the Marines’ band concert, and the Capitol grounds.

On Saturday, we slept in and took a leisurely approach to the day, which is probably where I fell down the rabbit hole of time. We went to our first same-sex marriage ceremony, a couple of cycley friends of Rudi’s, where we had a nice time, where I got to meet someone I “know” via social media, and where I came away with a literal bucketful of purple and blue flowers. I also finished knitting a pair of socks.

On Sunday, I hit the farmers market, where the highlight was vanilla peach jam, swam, and harvested tomatoes and basil from our garden. Caprese sandwiches (featuring the aforementioned garden veg) and corn on the cob comprised our traditional Sunday dinner.

And today was more of the same: swimming (one last time before they closed the pool), gardening (we planted some arugula and chard where we yanked up kale yesterday), and hung out at the park with cold drinks as the sun sank into the distance.

I fell down on the writing program during the first week, when I was in Salt Lake and struggled to catch up while not getting further behind on week two, which essentially meant I sat, paralyzed, staying frantically at the assignments each day. Ultimately, I pulled myself together before week three started, finished up the missing week one work, and began anew with week two, seven days behind the rest of my cohort, but still working and writing, which is probably the key thing to keep in mind. (Incidentally, if you’d like some help establishing a writing practice or just want some help in being accountable to yourself for your writing practice, the next Write Now session begins Sept. 30 and I highly recommend it.)

Similarly, Laurie Halse Anderson, author of the award-winning Speak, has declared September to be a month for writing fifteen minutes a day (#wfmad on Twitter), and since that was my original goal with Amanda’s program, I shall make doubly sure I’m getting it done by committing to writing 15 minutes a day on the blog. (Admittedly, some posts may not require that much work, so I’ll add on to those days by working on some longer posts for publication on other days. (Remember when I did things here like review books?)

In addition to writing, the week ahead holds sauce making (and maybe pasta making if I can get my hands on some semolina flour), outdoor showings of The Avengers and Casablanca (on different nights; that would be a weird double feature!), and a picnic at the Yards. I’m also hoping to finish reading a book and resume knitting on either my shawl or a short-sleeved sweater. Oh! And sign up for fall volleyball. I’ve got to get that taken care of, too!

(Weekending, plus, with Amanda.)

Significant events inspire momentous change.

Folk singer Ellis Paul wrote a song when he and his wife were expecting their first child, “Nine Months to Fix the World,” that talked about his need to make the world a better place for his new infant. Ebeneezer Scrooge saw the past and the future and decided to turn his life around.

My event is neither so significant as a pregnancy nor my change so momentous as a complete 180 in my life. But it is somewhat important — at least to me:

Six months from today I turn 40.

And I want to be a different sort of 40-year old than the adult I’ve become.

A couple years back it occurred to me suddenly that my teen self would be highly unimpressed with the thirtysomething me. Oh, she’d give me props that I’d made it this far. I was a depressed kid and could never visualize an adulthood for myself, so to be approaching 40 would have been significant from that perspective.

But what I’ve done with the past 20 years would not have impressed her. I’ve spent far too much time coasting, treading water, allowing my life to be shaped by the currents around me, rather than being an active player in it. Sure, I have Rudi and my family and friends, some for decades now, who give my life flavor. I’ve done a couple of things in my professional life that are worth counting in the positive column, and certainly the organizations I’ve worked for have done good works.

But I’ve allowed any dreams I had as a teenager to wilt. And I haven’t planted new ones to replace them. I haven’t worked hard to improve the world around me.

So I’ve been taking steps to right my course. I started playing volleyball again once a week. I’ve been exercising more, trying to bike places more and to eat better (most days).

And when an online friend decided to offer a course aimed at improving your writing practice, after some deliberation and angst (and nausea), I signed up. I’m three days in and just received the assignment for tomorrow. In it, Amanda included a quote from author Anne Lamott, who mused about how the act of writing is its own reward. And suddenly I remembered I used to feel that way. I haven’t in a long time (although I do sometimes love having composed something). And I’ll be interested to see if I will again.

So I’ll be writing 15 minutes a day five days a week for the next while in an effort to see if putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) has a place in my life.

Because, honestly, if I don’t, if writing doesn’t hold a spark for me anymore, it’s time to let it go as a dream and to figure out what I do love.

Because life is too short — and too long — to keep doing things unquestioned or to stay the course when a change in direction will lead to a better destination.

Forty isn’t the end of the road, but it is a pretty good mile marker.

I’ve got six months to make my teen self proud. Starting … now.

I told myself not to forget the thing that early in the week I thought would make a good addition to this list. But as so often happens, it slipped my mind. It’s a possibility it will come back as I write, that my memory is locked in my fingertips somehow and it will burst forth into the keyboard any moment now. It’s also possible that it will return after I hit post, just to laugh at me, Nelson-style. Or perhaps it’s flitted off into the ether, leaving only its echo behind to mock me.

But with it or without it, I offer you a list of three beautiful things from my past week:

1. A beautiful, sunny, unseasonably temperate Sunday afternoon in August spent with Rudi at the pool, in the garden, and sprawled on a blanket in the park.

2. Rudi’s friend Chris won tickets to a Nationals game and invited us to join him at the park. The seats were close enough to the field that we could see Bryce Harper’s every grimace, that one of the coaches traded a baseball for a snack from the kid sitting in front of us, and that the ball girl was wearing a white sports bra under her jersey. I mean, if you’re close enough to pick up on someone’s undergarment choice, you’re close.

3. My best friend of 22+ years (Wow. I hadn’t done the math recently. We are old!) suggested that I could call her if I found myself without other occupation on Saturday night. Honestly, a couple hours with her on the phone is better than almost any other way I could spend an evening, save, of course, for spending it with her in person.

Nope, it didn’t come back. But those three are good, too, don’t you think?

How about you? What can you recall that’s been beautiful in your world this week?