Things I’m hoping to do this weekend:

1. Attend my friend John’s 50th birthday party.
2. Go to the library.
3. Collect some leaves for the compost bin at the community garden.
4. Build a website for an Advent Blog Tour. Also, promote said venture. (Would you like to take part? Leave me a comment.)
5. Do a deep clean of the kitchen and the bathroom.
6. Send out the invitations to our holiday party.
7. Wash my handknit socks (and do some other laundry).
8. Sort my clothes and shoes to gather a pile for Goodwill.
9. Bake some bread. (I have a breadmaker; it just requires my pulling it out.)
10. Buy tickets for two holiday-related events.
11. Read.
12. Knit.
13. Sleep.

How about you? What are you planning for the weekend?

Carole used to do these posts every once in a while, and tonight I’m just coming up blank for something to share that won’t take ages to compose. In the interest of posting something here, washing the dishes, and getting to bed in the near future, I’m sharing three things about three random topics:

1. Places I’d Like to Visit
• Hawaii
• Someplace where I can see the Northern Lights or the aurora australis
• Costa Rica
2. Things about My Cats
• Posey has, since this summer, started using the tub to poop in. It doesn’t happen all the time, but happens often enough that it’s a problem.
• We got some long, heavy-duty twist ties with our new Christmas lights, and Corey has adopted them all. He likes to toss them around and carry them around the house and up onto the bed at night. When he’s carrying them, he kind of looks like he has a handlebar mustache.
• Jeremiah is in a playful mood right now. He’s been tumbling in the tub (where Posey has not pooped today) and chasing the rings from the glass milk jug lids and instigating games of chase with Corey.
3. Things I’m Looking Forward To
• Our friend John’s 50th birthday party this weekend.
• Seeing friends and family next week.
• The apartment being clean for our tree-trimming party in a couple weeks.

This weekend included a couple bike rides for baked goods and warm beverages.

Pizza was consumed.

I watched a terrible late-night movie about two people dying of cancer who fall in love, each without knowing the other one is sick. It was not The Fault in Our Stars.

I got a couple loads of laundry done.

I started a new book and a new knitting project (without finishing any old ones).

I was cuddled by cats.

I watched the sunset.

I slept in.

I did not paint my nails.

I did not bake bread.

I did not catch a cold.

My heart breaks for Parisians and the French after the terrorist attacks yesterday and for Beirutis and the Lebanese after those there the day before.

I like living in places where there are four seasons; I may not enjoy all of their aspects, but I do enjoy aspects of each. Sadly, though, winter does not love me back. Short, cold days are not helpful to one who prefers to sleep in: when you rise at noon, there are only a maximum of four hours left of light near the solstice, and that’s only if I bound from my bed straight outside, something that would only happen if my house were on fire, and even then I’d have to stop to stuff the cats into carriers. I don’t even have the benefit of sunlight streaming through windows the way I once did, living as I have the past dozen years below ground. I like the night, but the human body is meant to spend time outdoors and gets out of balance when denied Vitamin D from sunlight. You can take supplements, but it’s not the same.

We’re now also entering our third year of Rudi coaching skiing. The first year was abortive, with his injury occurring so close to the new year, but last year found him gone every weekend day (and several nights) between Christmas and March, save for the weekend he took off to celebrate my birthday (and make up for forcing me to spend my 40th in a hospital room with him). This winter promises more of the same, with the added challenge of also including two weekday nights of his being gone as well each week.

It will be fine. I will be fine. However, I will be more fine if I have a plan. And a schedule of activities that demand my attention and, frankly, my interaction with beings who are not my cats.

So here’s what I’ve been thinking: I’m going to come up with six to ten things I really think I can dig into during the winter season. And, yes, I am terrible at following plans, particularly once they’re public: once I declare them to the world, pretty much I abandon any intention of following through on them. (This flies in the face of everyone who needs to be held accountable by others, but I certainly don’t care what you think about my ditching a plan if I no longer care about it.) But this one might work in the same way those weekend to-do plans I occasionally share here on the blog do: when I get lost in my head and don’t know what I should be doing, this would offer me several things I could work on instead of moping. (It’s not dissimilar from Inigo and Vizzini’s plan in The Princess Bride: when a job goes wrong, go back to the beginning.) There’d be no obligation to get them done, but they’d offer several paths out of the darkness. And let’s face it: when you’re in the darkness, it’s good to know there are any paths nearby, let alone multiple trails.

When I first came up with this idea, I thought it could be fun to tie it to the alphabet, and I thought about starting at the end, particularly since several of my ideas start with later letters:

Ukelele: I have one. I’ve bought video lessons to learn how to play it. I’d like to be able to play at least one song by the time next summer’s camping season comes along.

Volleyball: This is my favorite sport and my one weekly social obligation most of the year. The team I played with this fall wants to play together again when the season begins again in mid-January, so that’s good. Plus, it corresponds to one of the weeknights Rudi will be working.

Writing: I’d like to do a better job at making writing part of my life, whether it’s here or in a journal or in a longer piece. Plus, it’s adaptable: I can go to a coffeehouse or the library and write there, or I can do it at home if I don’t feel like going out.

Yoga: There are several studios near my apartment and I always feel better after I’ve taken a class. Also, it is a thing that requires my leaving the Burrow, possibly on a weekend, and that involves being in a room with other people, even if it’s not necessarily interacting with them.

So those were my core ideas. Right now, “X” and “Z” are unaccounted for. “Z” could be for zoo, which is free, nearby, and open during the day. But I’m not positive how often I’m going to want to tramp around the zoo during the coldest season. “X” is harder, but if you expand it to include “ex-” words, it could stand for excursions, which would, again, serve to get me out of the house, and could include other people if I find some who also want to venture out into the world on the weekend. Or expunge, and I could focus on clearing stuff out of our apartment, which would have the added perk of Rudi not being around when I got rid of all his stuff instead of mine. (Kidding! Mostly.)

I could also back it up a few more letters and including pilates or pasta-making, sweater-knitting, and telephoning faraway friends or traveling to see them.

Or I could abandon the alphabet tie-in altogether, although I like some of the out-of-the-box thinking it could require to complete.

Either way, I have a few more weeks to figure it out. The ski season doesn’t begin in earnest until December, and the holidays keep me entertained (and busy) until the new year. But it would be good to have a plan ready for January and February, even if I chuck it out the window once I’ve shared it with you.

This weekend went by faster than I wanted and less satisfactorily than I expected. I suspect that the former will remain true through the end of the year, although I am hopeful the latter was merely an off mood.

Friday evening began pleasantly. I met Rudi and Shawn for dinner prior to their James Bond movie. I like Bond in small doses and only for free, so I came home, napped, and finished a book.

Saturday arrived with drizzle and damp, so Rudi and I responded by staying in pj’s all day and stringing up a new strand of colored lights around the periphery of the living room. We listened to Hamilton and, later, a webcast of a travel talk about France. We reminisced about our trip seven years ago this week, trying to recall certain details, like what we ate, and thinking fondly about our favorite stops. We improved leftover soup cooked earlier in the week and ate some of the quince I poached last weekend. I knit on my shawl while Rudi’s favorite college football team played on national tv and read some (me, not the football team; that would have been weird).

I overslept the morning, not rising until noon today. A short jaunt to the farmers market proved others had not done similarly, as neither baked goods for breakfast nor milk for the week were available. The sun had peeked out, though, so after returning home to eat something and do a load of laundry, I made plans to head out on my bike. Rudi came home from his bike ride, so he joined me for a jaunt to the garden and then a trip to Georgetown, where we purchased snacks and hot drinks. We spent a pleasant hour or so down by the river before the sun disappeared into Virginia. I’ll have to make sure to get out on the early side for lunches this week to soak up some more Vitamin D, because the early sunset is discouraging and certainly doesn’t improve my outlook. I’m finishing tonight with a chapter of the final Harry Potter book, where Harry, Ron, and Hermione are carting around the cursed necklace and generally having a miserable time of things. It’s comforting: I might be having an uninspired, unproductive weekend, but at least I’m not fleeing from the world’s worst criminal. Perspective: it’s good to have.