I’d hoped for this weekend to split 50-50 sun and rain, but it’s looking more and more like the rain will fall overnight and the days will dry out. Normally, that would be ideal, but I really need to get some cleaning done around the apartment and it’s hard to force myself to forego sunlight when I spend all my weekdays hunkered down over a computer.

So I’ll definitely get outside. The potatoes that are currently growing in my kitchen have thus far refused to plant themselves (although they’re doing really well without soil so far). I raced the clock down to the library the other evening to pick up the latest Sherry Thomas before my hold expired, so I currently am in possession of several books I’m excited about reading. It would be great to spend some time in the park reading. And I probably also should get some actual exercise in, since volleyball starts up in ten days and I’m feeling woefully out of shape.

But that does put some pressure on Rudi and me to get some cleaning done in the evenings. I heard officially this week I’ll be home full-time at least through Labor Day, and there’s some additional thought being given to what the workplace looks like when we do return after that. (The D.C. office space for my organization has closed, so we’re taking the opportunity to reassess realistically what our needs are after 18 months.) Neither Rudi nor I can continue to just pile stuff up, which has been our M.O. for months, so we need to come up with a plan of attack for moving forward and making our small space work while we remain here. Unfortunately, Rudi and I both exist relatively well in chaos, which leads to our living space currently looking like someone set off a bomb in here. Wish us luck with solving that.

Today was a perfect spring day and exactly what I needed after the workweek I endured. Warm in the sun, brisk in the shade. Clear skies. Perfect for working at the garden. A small person who was at the park with his mom helped me spread wood chips on pathways by filling my wheelbarrow a handful at a time (I supplemented by the shovelful) and counting down when I should dump the load.

I stopped for bagels on the way home. They’d just come out of the oven and were still warm when Rudi cut into them.

After a siesta, Rudi and I took a late afternoon jaunt over to one of the nurseries I like. There is a flat of seedlings (including four more strawberry plants) waiting at the garden for me to plant tomorrow; apparently garden supplies are where I’ve decided my budget doesn’t apply. I blame all that fresh air and the oxygen released by all the plants at garden centers. Clearly it’s dangerously intoxicating to my working-inside-on-the-couch-all-pandemic brain.

We had a video chat with friends in Seattle and New Orleans before settling down for the night with big bowls of kale salad for supper.

Rudi’s heading off on a day trip to the mountains for a bike ride tomorrow and I’m going to make myself an Easter brunch after heading to the farmers market. (While I’m hoping to find freshly harvested ramps and greenhouse tomatoes there, neither will feature in my breakfast plans, which instead will fall heavily on the sweet side.) I’m going to putter down at the garden in the early afternoon and then recuperate at the park with a book, knitting, and a drink.

Happy Easter and final day of Passover to those who celebrate and happy Sunday to those who don’t. I’m wishing all of us a relaxing day of leisure.

Past me, the one who kept running up against her vacation limit (at my organization, when you bump up against your maximum vacation allowance, they stop letting you accumulate time off, so I ended up having to take off an emergency half day at one point because I wasn’t going to get the full vacation time I’d earned that pay period), booked a day off each in March and April. I’ve noticed in past years that President’s Day to Memorial Day is the longest drought of federal holidays in any year. Managing a too-heavy workload (and the attendant stress) is currently the biggest challenge of my job, and I suspected that not taking the occasional day off might figuratively kill me.

I have something I’m hoping to do on Monday, but I’m keeping it to myself right now for fear of jinxing it. (Family health emergencies and car woes have scuppered several days off over the past six months; I do not put it past the universe to laugh at me again.)

I do plan to spend some of Easter weekend outside at the garden (we have a public space workday tomorrow morning) and some of it baking. There’s a monthly video chat with friends who now live far away and possibly a get-together with a couple friends who still live nearby. I won’t have to watch the UConn women in the NCAA finals and the two baseball teams I follow had their games canceled due to a COVID outbreak amongst D.C.’s players, so that frees up some time for watching a video, starting a new (or picking up an old) knitting project, and wrapping up a couple books.

And if nothing else, I’ll be able to turn off my alarms for Monday morning and sleep in. Even if that’s all that happens, there are definitely worse ways to spend the third day of a long weekend.

How are your Easter weekend plans coming along?

I grew up in the Christian faith, which means that when we get near the two major holidays, I have feelings of extreme nostalgia. Not necessarily for organized religion, but for cultural markers, like candlelight carol services and hymns I sang during my six years in choir. So, as I’m writing this, I’m listening to Enrico Caruso sing Faure’s “The Palms,” to scratch that particular itch. Our church was big enough to support four choirs, and “The Palms” was the only song we sang every year together. I associate it with crowded pews (it was also one of the few Sundays a year when even the balcony seating was packed) and soaring sopranos and being a part of something bigger than myself. It’s the same feeling I get at the ocean and listening to certain harmonies and visiting the Reading Room at the British Library and the Library of Congress. (I assume others have similar feelings when looking at mountains and the stars.)

I mentioned that yesterday I felt a little of the weight that’s been keeping me down lift a little, allowing me to make progress on some long-lingering chores. I also took myself out to lunch down by the river, started a book, did some grocery shopping, and visited the garden.

Today was a less productive day from a housekeeping standpoint, but still relatively pleasant. While early-arriving rain kept me from doing the work in the garden I’d meant to, it did not keep Rudi and me from the farmers market (and Rudi’s presence meant he went and emptied with the compost, while I waited in line to get in). I took a nap, wove in yarn ends on my pair of stripey socks and knit until I started making errors on the other pair, read, chatted with my folks, and watched women’s basketball. I ordered a calendar-year refill for my organizer, and because I put that off for a quarter of a year, it was half off. And the grant that I thought I’d need to spend all the wee hours writing turns out not to have been due this weekend, so after checking my schedule for tomorrow (and seeing a time-sensitive email I’d been waiting for had finally arrived on Saturday), I was able to put that aside and veg out with my book a little longer instead. Now, I’m going to wash today’s dishes, hang up the handknits still soaking in the bathroom sink, and join Rudi in bed.

I hope you had a nice weekend, too. Let’s carry it over to the workweek, okay?

I washed the bathroom sink today and put handknits in to soak. And I took out the kitchen trash.

There are lots of things I didn’t do. Every floor in the house needs cleaning. (Periodically I kick over the cat’s water dish and have to wipe it up, but short of relocating Corey’s bowl all over the apartment, I don’t think that’s my best bet.) The fridge needs sorting and Mount Laundry threatens us with avalanches while we sleep.

But all those things needed doing yesterday and I had no clean wool socks, my kitchen trash can only stayed closed because it had a bag of groceries perched on it (oh, I put those away, too), and my bathroom sink looked like a prop from a 1980s movie set in a New York City bus terminal.

Honestly, these were such minor things to feel good about getting done, but I got them done for the first time in a while. And I could choose to feel guilty about the state of the apartment and stress about how much work we need to do before anyone can next stop by (no one has stopped by in 16 months). Or I could take the win and recognize that I looked at several things that needed doing and actually just did them.

I don’t fool myself into thinking this will be an everyday occurrence. Honestly, pretty much any workday barely sees me doing more than basic self-care. But even if I could do a couple things every weekend (clear the coffee table or dust away the cobwebs by the window), it would be a step toward righting the ship.

But for today, I’ll admire my mostly empty trash can and go hang up the socks that should now be clean in my shiny bathroom sink. After all, every sunrise starts with a single ray of light.

I am so fucking sick of Zoom* meetings and Zoom events and Zoom happy hours and Zoom funerals.

*Feel free to substitute any other web-based video conferencing software here. I do not feel any better when my meetings are on Teams or Go To Meetings or any of the others.

(And, yes, I’m so lucky I’m able to take advantage of these platforms and work from home and still see people and listen to fucking eulogies, but I’m just fucking done.)