Weekend Things ~ The Morning After

Back when I was working for The Man, I hated Mondays. I'd wake up Sunday morning, thinking "Ugh, I have to go to work tomorrow." I was destined to be one of those people that die of a heart attack on Sunday night after a lifetime of back-to-work stress. Now that I work for me, Monday is my favorite day. I look forward to reclaiming the peace of a silent house, a reprieve from the "get off your screen" wars. I'm more convinced than ever that the 40-hour work week is inhumane. I'm willing to concede that some people enjoy their jobs and like to work, but even so Mon-Fri, 9-5 is too much. Bring on the national minimum income, I say. This Monday morning, after everyone left for school and the peaceful lull descended, I looked around my house and noticed the signs of a weekend well-spent, though it was a weekend in which the camera didn't come out very much.


The kitchen table: I swear I spent the whole weekend eating: a belated Lunar New Year celebration Saturday with friends (egg rolls, stir fry, tofu, a vaguely Southeast Asian dessert of tropical fruit and coconut milk) and then on Sunday I went on The Table Tour (a walk—not enough snow for skiing or snow-shoeing—around the Arboretum, from table of food to table of food). After two days of eating to repletion I needed to start the day with a bit of a cleanse.



Also on the table: The boys were recently gifted a collection of foreign money, and they spent some time sorting through all the coins Sunday after dinner.

The boys' room: I spent Saturday morning helping the boys deep-clean their room—vacuuming under beds, dusting behind dressers, washing windows. I helped M finish cleaning his closet. He's been working on it for a couple of months. It's been like an archaeology dig, uncovering the layers of M past (I feel like there's an essay in there somewhere). But he'd come to a standstill with one-and-a-half shelves of mementos, bric-a-brac, and dust waiting to be resolved. I held up each item and he decided whether it was to trash, keep, pass on, or store. 

The other side of the closet, however, is a bit of a disaster (despite E's and my efforts on that front a couple of months ago), but I ran out of energy on cleaning before I could tackle that.

My room: Draped over a chair is the result of a little Sunday afternoon sewing—finally making progress on a quilt for Z (thanks to my reading deprivation, I'm forced to find other ways to spend my time).

A shelf in the kitchen: We have a problem in our house which came into sharp relief with the cleaning out M's closet—of a ton of science kits and craft and art kits and kids that spend too much time on screen, not doing projects. So Sunday afternoon, I dragged E and Z off their screens and put them to work making crystals.

My desk: And then E and I started making paper boomerangs. He ran out of time to finish his, but here's where mine landed after a fling around the room.

The living room floor: In another attempt to keep boys off of screens, we've been trying to play more board games around here. When I was a kid, my sister and I played cards and games all the time, but not so these guys, unless there's an adult around directing the activities. We played Pictionary with our friends Saturday night and Taboo—E's favorite—Sunday evening.



The kitchen counter: M has been very into baking lately. He's reached the stage of baking confidence that I don't need to help out except with the occasional bit of advice and making sure we have all the necessary ingredients on hand. One weekend he made chocolate chip cookies three different times. Last week he made chocolate cake and brownies. And Sunday evening he mixed up a batch of banana- chocolate chip muffins.



The sofa: I usually write my morning pages in bed, but when C leaves early for work, like this morning, I get up to help motivate the twins to get out the door, and then curl up in a blanket on the couch to write my Morning Pages. After I finished my breakfast, I came back to this nice scene of morning productivity.