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.

This weekend was not especially full, but seemed exhausting. This may have been due to listening to three World Series games, only one of which we won. There’s always next year.

I finished my Halloween socks — on Halloween morning. (More on those later this week.)

I came up with a Halloween costume — on Halloween afternoon.

I may have chased down some trick-or-treaters who needed to take some of my candy. (Their parents were very excited by my 100 Grand bars.)

Rudi and I slept in on Saturday. I repeated this feat on Sunday.

We went out for tacos and hot drinks (two different restaurants).

We admired the trees or, rather, the leaves of a pocket park.

I went to the farmers market and bought lots of fall’ish foods: white turnips and dried beans and a pie pumpkin and sweet potatoes and broccoli, among other things.

I resumed, but didn’t finish my Robert Galbraith book, but did finish a collection of poetry.

I rode my bike to Georgetown to the library, to a cafe, and to the riverfront.

I dealt with late-inning baseball stress by poaching quince and cleaning the fridge.

I cuddled cats.

I missed the rain.

Weekending along with Karen at Pumpkin Sunrise.

This was my thought process for this year’s Halloween costume:

I’ve been a bit uninspired about Halloween this year, and since it was happening over the weekend, there was no real pressure to get dressed up for work. But that also meant that as of Friday night, I was still mulling over what I could be and coming up empty.

So when I got up yesterday, I thought, I’m not going to bother dressing up right now. Maybe I’ll figure out something in time for trick-or-treaters. But for now, I’ll just put on my Halloween socks and the one shirt I have that has someone in disguise:

[Camouflage, from Threadless.]

However, then I thought, wait, I could do that. I do not have a bee costume. But I could totally be someone pretending, badly, to be a bee! A surprisingly meta idea, for me!

So, to my shirt, I added dark leggings, my yellow petticoat, my yellow sneakers, and Rudi’s yellow & black armwarmers.

It was a good start, but insects have antennae and wings, neither of which I had a quick fix for.

You would think deely boppers would be the sort of thing I would own, but somehow I am lacking any. (In retrospect this may because they are often attached to plastic headbands made for people with normal-sized heads and my desire for one does not outweigh my desire not to have a headache.) I did have a headband, though, and figured I could probably fashion something out of straws or the like. But, then, when I was hunting for a black headband, I opened a box and discovered dowels that had come in a pair of shoes. So I tucked those into my hair and used the bottom of the headband to keep them in place.

What to do about the wings, though? I contemplated a quick cut-out of paper, but thought they’d be too floppy. Then I mulled cutting apart a padded mailer. That thought led me to the roll of air pillows that had come in a package a few weeks back. (It was a gift sent via Amazon, of course, who couldn’t fit something into an appropriately sized box if that was the only one available.) With some help from Rudi, a piece of Scotch tape, and an extra-large binder clip, I had some make-shift wings. (Yes, with a little more planning, I could totally have created a sleeve for the pillows to hide their ugly branding. But I wasn’t trying to be a bee, but just a “bee,” so it was okay for it not to be perfect!) As a bonus, they fluttered very nicely in the breeze!

So there you have it: A last-minute Halloween costume taken from my closet and random bits of stuff I hadn’t thrown away. And a lot of joy from seeing people’s reactions to my costume (and for not having bailed on coming up with something).

Do you have any honey?