We’re closing in on six months of pandemic shutdowns, travel restrictions, and general malaise. In an effort to keep these last months of the year from spiraling into a hot mess, I thought I’d come up with a list, similar to the ones I often make for weekends, of things I’d like to accomplish each month. I will not get mad at myself if I don’t cross items off, but if I get stuck this gives me a physical place to turn to to see what I could work on.

This month, I’d like to:

• Put away all my office shoes. My shoe storage features in the background of most of my Zoom calls, and if I’m not going back to business clothing until 2021, I can fill that space with my more colorful Chuck Taylors instead.
• Finish my Tour de France KAL shawl. I have knit on it a little each day so far (and KayT, you were right, it is easily memorized).
• If the dedication ceremony for D.C.’s revamped MLK Library is open to the public, attend it.
• Sit in on some of the virtual sessions of the National Book Festival.
• Ride my bike at least once a week now that the weather is cooling off again.
• Go apple picking/cider doughnut acquiring with Sarah.
• Take a long weekend off from work (in addition to Labor Day).
• Call some friends. We’ve all been bad about staying in touch.
• Come up with an actual way to mark Rudi’s and my 25th anniversary of being together.
• Declutter a carload’s worth of stuff to Goodwill.

How about you? What’s on tap for your September?

I have several things I’m hoping to do this weekend:

• Start a new knitting project while watching bike racing — It’s time for the Tour de France Knitalong, and I’m trying to decide on a new shawl pattern to knit. Waiting for daylight to make a yarn decision.
• Pickle cucumbers — I have several just hanging out in the fridge waiting for me to deal with them and probably one more that’s ready to pick down at the garden.
• Make peach ice cream — I bought more plain milk tonight, so we’re ready as soon as the ice cream bowl freezes.
• Work in the garden — I weeded last week, which means there was plenty of space for other weeds to expand into. Sunday looks like it will be a beautiful day for this.
• Read in the park — The biting flies have been particularly nasty this year (because 2020), so we needed more bug spray. We can’t find our preferred brand locally right now, and yesterday’s bottle proved useless. Rudi picked up a new bottle with a formulation he thinks will be closer to what we want today. If it fails, I’m buying DEET.
• Bake fig newtons — I found a recipe for making them with whole figs, rather than jam.

A relatively short list this week, but with lots of making and relaxing. I probably need to wash the kitchen floor again (How does it get so dirty in a house where we wear indoor shoes?), fix the elastic on one of my masks, and do laundry but, honestly, I’m fine if none of that happens this weekend. I’m feeling a little run-down mentally and think spending time doing things I like might help.

What are you hoping to do this last weekend of August?

Nothing makes you remember how lucky you are than having three friends dealing with health-related crises.

Life isn’t all Skittles and beer here, but we’re doing okay and that’s enough. Today, that’s more than enough.

I’m not sure if particulates from the Western fires have made their way across the country or what, but the sunset tonight was just incredible.

Since I don’t have to spend all weekend working, the next few days stretch before me luxuriously. Here’s how I hope to fill them:

• Sleeping in: No obligations tomorrow and Rudi is off on a bike ride with friends.
• Gardening: The back section of my garden is out of control. Plus, Now is the time to put in seeds for lettuce so that I have plants by the time the cool weather comes around.
• Finishing my sock: And thinking what to work on during the Tour de France this year.
• Reading: I’m quite enjoying the book I’m reading, even if it isn’t all happy. Also, I should probably head to Arlington to return my book.
• Going to the farmers market: I wonder what Rudi would think about getting a box of seconds tomatoes for saucing.
• Doing laundry: Doesn’t it feel like I should have less clothing to wash during the pandemic? (Other than masks, of course.)
• Holding an ’80s dance party: It’s been a while, and it’s time.
• Making dill pickles: Our bread & butter ones came out really well, so it’s time to expand our repertoire.

What’s on your weekend to-do list?

I just came back from moving the car. After Rudi came home from a late-evening drive to the grocery store and garden, he parked it on one of the two streets we live at the corner of. It’s the one that has designated weekday rush hour no parking zones, and while they may be lifted during the current emergency, we aren’t so positive there won’t be enforcement that we’re willing to risk the ticket.

We forgot to take the keys with us when we went out to the park after work ended for me tonight and Rudi told me not to worry about it when I went to grab him the key when we came home.

Obviously he meant I shouldn’t worry about it because I could just move it later before I came to bed. (Actually, I’m glad I suddenly remembered it. We have only forgotten to move our car … twice maybe? … in the seventeen years we’ve lived here. But it’s not a lesson you really need to learn more than once a decade.)

Anyway, I wore a mask out to move the car because our stairs up to the sidewalk parallel the sidewalk, so you just never know what’s going to be waiting for you in the city, even after midnight. But once I was in the car, I took it off, and I didn’t have to put it back on for the block and a half it took to walk home from where I parked the car legally.

That’s the furthest I’ve walked outside without a mask since April.

Who could have imagined the world we live in right now?