Labor Day weekend 2025 was the first weekend (holiday or otherwise) in several years where someone didn't have an emergency and/or I wasn't feeling well.
So I planned to rest and relax, catch up on BryonySeries copyediting, increase my walk time, finish Tuesday's blog that I drafted a while back, clean my bathroom, celebrate Bertrand's Back-to-School Birthday Bash on Saturday (followed by a marketing dinner), take Tiny to class on Sunday afternoon, and hang out with the kids, cats, and corgi.
First of all, I had a wonderful weekend and am looking forward to work today.
Second of all, the weekend veered a bit from those plans.
* I did rest and relax.
* I did not catch up on BryonySeries copyediting (although I made a nice dent).
* I did increase my walk time (not as much as I'd hoped).
* The cats and corgi got plenty of additional snuggles and cuddles (although they always want more).
* Bertrand's Back-To-School Birthday Bash was the best yet (more about this on Thursday).
* The marketing dinner was pushed back to tonight because the venue we wished to support closed for the holiday weekend.
* Tiny was a solid B+ in class (he needs to work on distractions and "walking nicely" when walking with others).
* And I hung out with family (human and otherwise).
Here are the really lovely reasons why I didn't walk and copyedit as much as I'd hoped:
* On Saturday evening, Rebekah and I spontaneously dived into some deepish cleaning (the first time since before my surgery on July 17).
* On Sunday evening, Rebekah and I finished a K-drama we started earlier this year (we highly recommend this drama!) and then abandoned for time reasons a few months ago (I should also add that, except for binge-watching Bob's Burger's in those early post-recovery days when I faded in and out of a pain/pain killer haze, I haven't watched any television or movies).
* On Monday, Timothy and I (and then Rebekah and and then back to Timothy) finished setting up and trying out the new phone he bought me.
So by early Sunday evening, that left two items on the list: today's blog or cleaning my bathroom.
Now, I 'd cleaned the bathroom on July 16 (the day before surgery), assuming it would be a couple of weeks before I could tackle it again. How could I have known then that those two weeks would become six?
I couldn't put it off one more night (because the marketing dinner was rescheduled for tonight). Wednesday evening, maybe?
Except I had absolutely, no exceptions, promised myself this weekend was the weekend. I did not promise the same about the blog.
So I cleaned the bathroom, the first really major piece of housework since the surgery. It felt great to do "normal" things.
And I paired the cleaning with a call to my uncle, who lives in New York and whose call I'd misssed the previous night. And what a fun call it was! (as it always is). Although he is in his mid-80s and recently widowed (very unexpectedly) for the second time, he is full of proejcts and plans.
While I cleaned ansd scrubbed and swept, we discussed:
* His upcoming solar installation and what he needs to get done of the roof to prpare for it (yes, he still gets up on the roof).
* The tree branches he still needs to cut before the weather changes (for himself and his son-in-law).
* The work bench he got back in order over the weekend.
* The health care and food industry
* What he likes to cook for himself (and how he's only gone out to eat twice this year).
* The honor of meeting his new neighbor's elderly mother - and how his ninety-pound dog has won over his dog-disliking neighbors.
* His model planes and how he's looking for a place to fly them. He had to leave some of those plans in Montana when he moved back East. That led to a discussion about this World War II veteran, including the replica of his plane, the museum that displayed my uncle's plane for a time, and how my uncle met (and was photographed with) this veteran. I also learned that when the veteran died, his co-pilot attencded the funeral at age one hundred, making him the only Doolittle Raider still alive.
* I learned how my father had done his thesis on maximum security prisons, which made sense to me since his own father worked as a prison guard (and we briefly revisted that portion of familiy history). I'm assuming that led to my father's work with the Illinois Department of Corrections - and I recalled hearing "Stateville" for the first time as a child over a dinner conversation, simply because my father had gone there that day.
* I heard about my uncle talk about meeting an old friend for lunch at the halfway point (in my uncle and father's childhood town) and then wandering around this museum, which is housed in the building my uncle and father had attended school ("Of course, it looked much smaller I than I remembered it," my uncle said with a laugh). While there, he found a photo of the Class of 1941, which had my father in it (along with other students whose names my uncle also recalled). Yes, he took a photo of it, No, he doesn't have a smartphone, so he's unable to share it anytime soon.
* We discussed the antique model trains my uncle is rebuilding and how he plans to devote some long, focused time on them when the weather is too cold for outdoor projects.
So as you can see, cleaning the bathroom was the right choice.
And I wound up with a nice blog for today, too.
Happy Tuesday!
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