This past weekend was desperately needed, so of course I packed it jam full, and now I need another weekend in which to recuperate. On Friday, I got out of work early enough to see the sun set and to do some reading in the park. On quieter evenings, you can hear “Taps” played from the Naval Observatory (where the vice president lives) a mile or so up the road, so I stayed past that point and to where the brilliant cotton candy clouds began to fade into darkness. Rudi and I spend the evening watching The Grand Budapest Hotel and both enjoyed it quite a bit. Should you have missed it back in 2014, it’s a Wes Anderson-directed, star-studded gem of a film about the relationship between a concierge and his latest hire, a young immigrant lobby boy, at a luxury hotel in a fictitious country at the beginning of World War II. While its tongue is planted firmly in its cheek, it also has a surprising amount of heart and, while it doesn’t take itself seriously, it does take seriously the situations and relationships of its characters. There’s a heist, some social commentary, and a delicious dessert I’m eager to make, and generally I just recommend it, even if you don’t always like Wes Anderson’s movies (I often don’t).

Saturday morning I slept in, then got up, read some over breakfast, and did some chores. In the late afternoon, Rudi and I got to see the second of four Mets-Nationals baseball games happening over the weekend. While the Mets did not win, they narrowed the gap enough you thought they might, if only they’d had another couple innings in which to play. We spend the afternoon at a friend’s 40th birthday party, which featured far less drinking than his 30th. Ah, age! Our friends had rented out a local clubhouse for the party, and it was a gorgeous evening to spend relaxing on the porch.

On Sunday, Rudi awoke with a cold, so I headed to the farmers market alone to buy breakfast and some produce. We ate muffins and raspberries and watched the end of the Vuelta bike race (it’s the Spanish equivalent of the Tour de France). I ventured out to the garden and pool for a while, but had to return early to make dinner (since Rudi was under the weather) before heading out with Sarah for the final baseball game of the matchup. It was actually a make-up game from July — when Sarah and I spent three hours at the ballpark waiting for a game that never came — so it was perhaps understandable that there weren’t a ton of people in attendance. Unfortunately, the Mets had used up all their winning earlier in the day, but I got to eat fried dough and cotton candy for dessert and enjoy the uniforms and nicknames everyone was sporting for the weekend. The game began late and the new metro schedule cuts off service at 11:30 on Sunday nights, which means that the final train pulls through the nearby station 45 minutes before that. So, I was prepared for the game to run late and me to have to get back across town on my own. Luckily, D.C. has a bikeshare system, so after Sarah and I walked back to her neck of the woods, I put on my helmet and hopped on a bike and took a populated route back to mine (the advantage of a city is that there is often a populated route). There was time for a cup of tea and some audiobook listening and then I went off to dreamland to prepare for another workweek.

How was your weekend?

While four weeks remain until Labor Day weekend and six to the summer season, it’s helpful to remember that time is fleeting and I should make the most of it, rather than sleeping until noon every weekend. Or, if I do, I should leap out of bed and on to my tasks at hand. This weekend that includes:

• Put the apartment back to some semblance of order. We’re still hanging the rug out to air, so furniture and containers are all over the place. I’d like to see all of them back in place, on top of a washed floor, by Sunday night, because until that happens, we have nowhere to dry laundry. To accomplish this task, I’ll need to buy a new Swiffer, since our first generation one finally disintegrated. I should probably also track down some new vacuum bags, since our last one has been loaded down with baking soda.
• De-stone whatever fruit remains in the refrigerator and freeze it.
• Go swimming. Because summer.
• Write an Into the Stacks post
• Refill the tea canisters, so I can have more choices again.
• Finish my library book and return it and several others, all overdue, to the system.
• Turn the heel on the sock you see above. It’s a Christmas present for Rudi. From last Christmas.
• Go to the garden. See if my tomatoes survived the deluge. Pinch back the basil. Maybe plant some beans.
• Buy corn, peaches, and tomatoes (also, maybe grapes) at the farmers market, because what meal is complete without at least one of those these days?
• Find out if the sunflower fields in Maryland are still in bloom. We were supposed to head out there on Tuesday, but then we returned to a flooded apartment, so now we’re aiming for Sunday.
• Attend the Miles Morales (Spiderman) book launch party at the comic book shop in my neighborhood. I’m really excited to read it, and not just because author Jason Reynolds is living in D.C. right now.

How about you? What are you hoping to do this weekend?

Rudi and I had a lovely weekend up in Connecticut visiting my parents. The drive north was relatively painless, and we got to see the new Tappan Zee bridge, which opens at the end of this month.

I read and knit and my folks stayed up late to keep me company on Sunday while I finished my project. We slept and ate good food and enjoyed my parents’ deck and gardens. My dad and I made scones. We went out for pizza. We drank daiquiris. We watched several good movies, including, to everyone’s surprise (except for Dad, who’d picked it out), Monster Trucks.

Karen and I got together for lunch on Saturday and got in a good stroll along the river. We checked out two Little Free Libraries, and although one tempted me with a Sarah Dessen novel, I felt virtuous in leaving empty-handed. Rudi biked out to join us, and he and I stopped for soft serve at a roadside stand on the way home.

Yesterday, we visited two sets of friends in New York before continuing our drive south. Again, there was some ice cream and some catching up.

We arrived home shortly before sunrise this morning and as we were cleaning up after the cats, Rudi noticed that the three-plus inches of rain D.C. received on Friday and Saturday had not left the Burrow unscathed. Realizing that it had already sat mildewing for a couple days, we decided the sane response was to go to bed and tackle it later in the day (I had taken today off, too). Our braided rug took the biggest hit, but we’re hopeful that draping it over the bannister outside with signs asking people not to steal it — and sprinkling it with a good amount of baking soda — will work. (A surprise rain shower shortened our remediation efforts today.) The other rug also got wet, but in a smaller area, so corners of it are propped up to get the air circulating beneath it. Furniture and containers are askew all over the living room, and various books and bags are drying on the radiator and on coat hangers hanging from the bathroom shower rod and towel rack.

Tomorrow is another day, though, so here’s hoping for a less Mondayish rest of the week!

After the museum trip on Friday, the rest of the weekend was uneventful but pleasant. We watched Tour de France coverage both days and I made progress on my Tour de France Knitalong project, the baby blanket, which needs to be done in less than two weeks. The cotton is starting to take its toll on my wrists, though, so I’ll be glad to see it done. I mean, plus the baby is already here, so there’s that.

We visited a new-to-us pool, as well as our usual one. The new one was nice and had the advantage of being fully in the sun and smaller and shallower than Francis, which meant it was a lot like floating around in the bath, if you shared your bath with a bunch of kids who didn’t especially care you were there. I’ll definitely stop in at Jelleff again if I’m trying to fit both a trip to the library and one to the pool in and am inching toward closing time for both.

We picked things from the garden and mourned another tomato lost to the bite of a squirrel. (I will steal pieces of strawberries back from slugs, but I’m not convinced that’s so healthy to do with rodents.) We did chores and ate homemade pizza, and I sat in the park. and the middle episode of Tennyson and cheered that the next Doctor Who is a woman.

Today was National Ice Cream Day, but I thought it was yesterday, so we had to eat ice cream twice. Shucks! Darn! The first time we topped it with homemade dulce de leche Rudi’s friends gave us and the second time with raspberries and blueberries.

I traded books and dvds at the library and finished two books, one on audio and one in print, both of which I enjoyed. I started a new one I just picked up that got a lot of buzz at one of the conferences earlier this year. Doesn’t it look good? I hope we can judge it by that metric!

Things got a little wonky with our plans last night when the other person with whom we were supposed to picnic got sick and then failed to let us know he wouldn’t be joining us. With the concert on the other side of town and Rudi not loving the music, he and I decided to abandon that and to head up to the outdoor movie happening on our side of town — except that, it turns out, that the movie we’d wanted to see had been shown last weekend and the inclement weather had moved the event inside. So, we recalibrated once more and opted for pizza with the possibility of watching a film later, either at home or at the theater a couple miles up the road from us. We ate the pizza, which was delicious, if haphazardly served (we’re thinking that location is in danger of closing), and then walked home, whereupon we decided we were too sticky and tired to even think about a movie anywhere.

This morning we slept in and now are facing the remainder of the weekend — how shall we spend it?

Here’s what I’m thinking:

• Work on some job stuff (I have to work an event tomorrow afternoon, and there are some other things that need to get done before Monday)
• Refill the tea canisters
• Do laundry (and deal with my clothing piles)
• Knit on the baby blanket
• Paint my toenails
• Make something that uses the berries in my fridge (maybe blueberry muffins?)
• Post my February reviews (if I want to be caught up by the end of the month, I really need to get cracking)
• Watch a film (I have Moonlight out of the library and Wonder Woman might require a second watching)
• Talk to my dad (and my mom)
• Visit the garden (I really need to spend a chunk of time there digging up my strawberry/violet bed and replanting, but I’m thinking this weekend isn’t going to offer me that quantity of time)
• Picnic at the park (did you know tomorrow is National Picnic Day?)
• Eat ice cream (because shouldn’t every summer weekend include this item?)

How about you? What’s on your weekend to-do list?

I’m off to jury duty in the morning, so thought I’d get this posted now. (I don’t actually mind jury duty in theory, but the realities of serving on a jury can be frustrating.)

Rudi was away for the weekend, which meant I could do any fun thing that came to mind:

On Friday, it was heading to the Yards for our first summer picnic. The band was fine, the food was tasty, and the company excellent. The moon rose over the river a brilliant orange. I finished the evening with a scoop of ice cream from the local parlor, since it was mostly between the metro station and home.

On Saturday, I slept away the entire morning and then lazed away the rest of the day. I watched the Nationals game on tv and read a book, which I eventually took up to the park, from which I could hear the Pride parade without having to be in the crowds. I made myself a yogurt parfait for lunch. I did some laundry and vacuuming. I went up to the bookstore for the member sale and took care of some gift shopping. I redeemed my Tuesday voucher for a free ice cream come from Baskin Robbins.

Today, my plan was to rise early and head out to pick blueberries before the heat kicked in, but I overslept my alarm slightly and decided to switch up my plan: I went to the farmers market and then came back and ate breakfast and read the arts section of the newspaper, which was mostly about books. I stopped at the library to return a bunch of things on my way to the farm, where I picked a bucket of blueberries (over five pounds!) under the sweltering sun. (I remembered sunscreen and a hat and water and appropriate clothes, but forgot tissues; I need to remember that blueberry bushes make my nose run!) Luckily, there was a breeze, which I was so grateful for!

I got in a few minutes at the community pool (a very nice way to recover from all that sun!) and watered my garden. The pea vines are withering, so I suspect this will be their last week, since they don’t like the triple-H weather we’re due to get. I’m also thinking I should dig up my strawberry and violet patch and rework that space. The violet roots have really edged everything else out, and it isn’t being used to its maximum potential. I have three tomatoes on my 42 Days plant, flowers on a couple others, and tiny buds on some of the peppers. My herbs (particularly the dill) need trimming and the weeds are growing faster than anything else. Some time in my plot is clearly in order in the next week or so.

Rudi made it home in time for an hour at the park before we headed home to watch the Tony Awards, the only award show I actually like. It seems like The Great Comet would be a good show to see; I just have to find dates where cheap seats are still available.

How was your weekend?