Another weekend, another to do list.

Things I hope to accomplish:

• Finish four books
• Finalize my first shortlist (15 titles) for the Cybils panel
• Have dinner with Rudi and Julia
• Go to Crafty Bastards, which also involves investigating the new Union Market
• Wash laundry
• Change the sheets
• Wash curtains
• Sort library books into piles so I can reclaim some of our living room by returning a bunch of them.
• Write 5 book reviews
• Finish my red Christmas socks (I was down to the toe decreases when I stopped earlier this year.)
• Make a green tomato pie
• Make bread
• Mop the bathroom floor
• Mop the kitchen floor when I put the food mill away
• Switch out my summer and winter clothes
• Find my missing handknits
• Call Fragers to see if they have garlic bulbs
• Pull up dead/dying summer plants and put in fall/winter veg at the garden
• Do some of my reading outside in the sun, since it’s supposed to be nice
• Compose this year’s tree trimming invitation
• Go to the farmers market
• Get a minimum of six hours of sleep both nights and still get up before noon.

Just to make sure you’re awake, Craig Ferguson just informed me that Christmas is only 45 days away. We now return you to your regularly scheduled three beautiful things:

1. Julia and I meet up as it’s getting toward the newly early eventide. We walk along the Mall, sipping tea, and watching a glorious sunset.

2. Four states opposed hate from the voting booth.

3. The central branch of the Arlington County Public Library is open Sunday evenings until 9 p.m. I have never been to a non-college library that kept such hours before, and it fills an unrealized need in my life.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

1. Optional: Become a Cybils judge.
2. Request books from your library.
3. Request more books from your library.
4. When the holds all come in at once, go pick up the books from the library.
5. Put the books in a bag. (They don’t belong to you after all, and you’d feel awful if you hurt them because you hadn’t learned how to juggle before taking up this fitness regime.) While a canvas bag will allow for ease of mind, a large and sturdy plastic bag will add to the difficulty of the routine, as you will have to carry it in unusual ways to keep the books from breaking the bag, exercising different sets of muscles.
6. Take the books with you while running other errands. Bonus fitness points may be gained should these errands generate additional parcels to juggle.
7. Carry the books and all additional packages/bags/hangers of dry cleaning nearly a mile to get home. (Should you live closer, feel free to take an extra walk around the block or up and down the driveway.)
8. Repeat steps 2-8 later in the week.

I admit that I was worried about this election. So many ways for it to go so wrong. So much at stake. So long we’ve been hearing about it. I felt worn down by it all and stressed. And I didn’t really want to be worried in public, even among friends, even after a massive infusion of sugar. Which did not make me good company when I found myself hanging out at a bar watching election returns.

But if I’d stayed home, I would have missed out on being part of this:

The impromptu crowd at Lafayette Park, just north of the White House, on Election Night, shortly after President Obama clinched a second term.

Four years ago, we were in a car, heading home after Barack Obama won the presidency, when we found ourselves caught up among revelers heading toward the White House.

This year we got off the bus by the White House and became revelers ourselves, four (Rudi, John, Nicole, and me) among hundreds of jubilant voters.

It was a good night.

If you were my

favorite hat

and my fingerless mitts

and five pairs of socks, where would you be hanging out waiting for me to find you?

When it was just the hat and mitts missing, I thought they could be in the pockets of something I’d neglected to check, but the addition of the socks in the same color family suggest they were the final wash of the season and I put them someplace “safe” but separate from the rest of my woolens.

And I don’t know where that safe place is.

::sigh::

Please, knit goods, all of you together yell very loudly at exactly the same moment and I will come find you!

Things I did (or didn’t) accomplish this weekend:

• Finish four books (Done!)
• Go to the charity benefit at Politics and Prose (done! bonus: Christmas shopping!)
• Wash laundry (one load done; another will happen in the morning)
• Vacuum (done)
• Write three book reviews (one)
• Knit 10 rows on a sock (Fail)
• Wash the bathroom sink (yes)
• Handwash socks (the pile that was in the bathroom got done; those in the bedroom did not)
• Make applesauce (apples cooked down, but haven’t run them through the mill yet)
• Make a pie/tart (fail; although there’s a pie crust in the fridge now)
• Make bread (nope)
• Mop the bathroom floor (nope)
• Mop the kitchen floor (nope)
• Switch out my summer and winter clothes (nope)
• Listen to music (some, but less than I’d have liked)
• Plant fall/winter veg in the garden (didn’t even go down to the garden)
• Think about going over to the Arlington Library to acquire more Cybils nominees (16 books picked up)
• See if Michael and Julia have time to get together (got together with Julia for a walk)
• Sit outside in the sun, should it appear (no sun Saturday; failure to sit outside on Sunday)
• Go to the farmers market (yup)
• Make a pot of chocolate (and drank it while eating cider doughnuts for breakfast)
• Get a minimum of six hours of sleep both nights and still get up before noon. (Accomplished!)

It was an ambitious list, as Karen wrote. I’m not wholly disappointed with what I got done, particularly since I finished four Cybils nominees and have clean underwear for tomorrow.