How Was Your Weekend?

The question of the day on Monday is "How was your weekend?" I can count on being asked at least two or three times on Monday morning by various people. The socially acceptable answers are, of course "Fine." and "Great!" with "Too short!" as a possible variation. It's an elevator question, not an essay question. Even if the weekend was difficult or something really cool happened, it's not the time or place or people with whom to get into it.

The truthful answer about the quality of my weekend depends on my perspective. For example, take this weekend.

I could tell you that this was a frustrating weekend. Our daughter was mildly ill and majorly cranky, so we've had about fifteen time-outs and about seven major temper tantrums. A normal weekend would be between zero and three time-outs and between zero and two temper tantrums, so she's way off kilter. Nothing we did seemed to be right and our normal routines and transitions were sources of angst and fury. Also, I couldn't find the items I wanted for our fall yard work, despite checking two stores and getting lost along the way. We spent two hours raking leaves and pulling weeds, two chores that in my mind should fall at different times of the year but somehow manage to coincide at our house. Half the weeds we pulled in the backyard were colonized from our neighbors wild meadow that they are growing instead of a yard. Which means we pulled vines off our fence and our house but we know it will all be back, since we couldn't get to the source. I had to take a proctored exam at the local community college for an online course I am taking and forgot to bring a pen. I ended up using a very old red pen that I dug up out of my glove box which had my fingers stained red by the end of the test. I goofed up the knitting project I am working on and had to rip out twenty rows of stitching so I could go back and correct my mistake. Frustrating, right?

Squirrel, mixed media. Rose Anne Karesh. 2014.

I could also tell you that this was a wonderful weekend. We spent several hours with a dear friend from out of town whom we don't see nearly often enough. When we got lost we ran across a bagel store that actually had my favorite bagels, pumpernickel, in stock. In our hunts through stores for what we couldn't find, we serendipitously found a hummingbird feeder that I've been wanting for a while and leaf scoops that I'd never heard of before. Leaf scoops are two large handheld plastic paddles with rake teeth along the bottom edges. They make me think of bear paws, and they are excellent for scooping up fallen leaves. Raking went much, much faster than it has in the past. We listened to music and worked as a family as we weeded the backyard. I found a great website where I could order some of the things I couldn't find and now I can look forward to even more flowers next year. We took two long family walks, exploring the neighborhood across the street and finding a shortcut path through to another road that will really help me if I ever make good on my plan to start biking to work. The shortcut not only cuts distance it allows me to stay off a larger road without a bike path that has been a safety barrier. During our walks our daughter found acorns. I'm not sure why, but she is enthralled by acorns this year and collected several pocketfuls to use in various art projects. We worked on one this evening, a mixed media collaboration portrait of a squirrel. She made a new friend at the playground in our neighborhood, a little girl who is about her age and lives across the street. I think my test went pretty well, which is a good feeling for someone who hasn't been in school for a while. I had time to knit and catch up on some TV shows on Saturday night, and even with my mistake the dinosaur project for my daughter is coming along pretty quickly.

So, really, it's all in my perspective and where I focus the lens of my memory. How was my weekend? Most of the time, it's really up to me.